the BIG favor
While researching I have had some questions that I NEED help with from readers because I cant seem to figure them out on my own, so please comment. The class has been very helpful thus far and I just need one more little help and I should be perfect.
Questions for the Class
1. Sonnets?
-Where do I look to find when they were written? and help with understand what they are about?
-If you know anything about the sonnets please tell me because I am TOTALLY at a loss with them.
2. Those of you that know Shakespeare biography: can you offer any more insights into identifying Shakespeare's personality/motives through his plays; preferably from the plays I am reviewing but I welcome any good insight?
-The plays I am reviewing are Henry VI part 1-3 and Hamlet, the Tempest, and A Winters Tale.
3. Idea's for memorizing?
- I am having a hard time memorizing the Saint Crispins day monologue in Henry V so I was wondering if anyone has any idea's on how to memorize speeches such as that or should I just cut it down?
I. Introduction
A. Introduce Shakespeare
B. The problem: He is the most influential writers of are day so a lot has been written about him
C. many have noticed the problem. Me, Education Director, PBS.
D. PBS says that we must understand the man to silence all the radical views of Shakespeare
E. This paper continues that idea on the basis of he writing’s in retrospect of his biography.
F. This paper argues that by using Shakespeare’s writing’s and what little primary research we have, we can determine Shakespeare’s motivations behind writing his play’s and from that establish that he wrote for the money to begin with, but later in life, he wrote more so for himself and less to entertain and make a living.
II. Why we read?
First, before we can talk about the subject we must first legitimize this approach. We will review why it is that people read books, specifically Shakespeare.
- “The Rise of the Novel” by Ian Watt
- Holland, Normon. "The Mind of Books: A Long Look at Psychoanalytical Literary Criticism."
(refer to blog posts on march 8 and Jan 24)
-To truly understand Shakespeare’s personality we must understand a psychoanalyst.
(example of how Shakespeare used to go to the pub to get characters for his play)
- He showed us how we worked. Did the audiences in the Globe have collective "I thought it was just me!" moments? Maybe not, but he changed the way they accessed the characters in the theater, which ultimately influenced the way we as human beings see ourselves. His soliloquies paved the way for Woolf's streams of consciousness, and these are at the core of so much of today's literature
- This book might be subtitled "How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare," but is also a reminder of how his work became part of us, and how in doing so we invented someone who is more than a glove-maker's son from Stratford. It's a book about Shakespeare, but it's also a book that examines the whys and hows of art. As such, it is eminently successful.
-The designer of psychoanalytical literary criticism was very much into Shakespeare writings
III. We will use the earliest plays Shakespeare wrote to determine his motives and thus his character early in his career. The play’s used will be Henry VI parts 1-3. We will review the Form, Content and who the play’s appealed to.
A. Content: Shakespeare used the most popular genre to write on first
B. Form: Used a popular form of verse for that time and didn’t deviate
-See blog Jan 18 & 24
C. What audience did these plays appeal to?:
-Was considered Tudor propaganda (the leadership of the time)
-Appealed to the nature of human kind (in text book)(history plays wikipedia)
-It had jokes for the rich and the poor (farting etc)
This is interesting to remember when you hear people glibly saying that Shakespeare was "merely" the Stephen King of his times. Usually, what they mean he wasn't an intellectual giant, just a guy writing prolific quantities of popular fiction, as if there are scores of Governor General and Nobel-worthy geniuses lost to time. Shakespeare, in this view, is just a man who gives the masses the slop that they want so that he can make a buck. It's an attempt to diminish his work, to lower him to the status of a hack.
Shakespeare wasn’t rich andneed to provide for his family so he was an ambitious young man similar to students that go to school, however he had a gift. He understood the minds of people and understood words.
IV. The later plays depict the true character Shakespeare. By reviewing the form, content, and who the play appealed to of Shakespeare’s later plays we can see this. The plays we will review is Hamlet, A Winter’s tale, and the tempest.Just from the titles of the first three and last couple of plays you can see more of the diversity.
A. Form: the from was not ridged as it was in his earlier plays.
-see blog on Jan 24
B. Content: The content was on experiences he had, unique things he learned, and diversity which was not common but what he cared about.
-Blog on Hamlet
-Blog on a winters tale
-Books read
C. Appeal: He still appealed to his audience, but he put a lot of himself in the plays.
-Teachers tweet on how hamlet is a biography of himself
-Winters tale is a last goodbye & happy love unlike we had seen and focused more on getting back to roots (see a winter’s tale blog)
- Greenblatt does note that in spite of his aloofness, Shakespeare never really shook his middle-class roots:
He never showed signs of boredom at the small talk, trivial pursuits, and foolish games of ordinary people.
-“The tempest” is on magic “The highest act of his magician Prospero is to give up his magical powers and return to the place from which he had come.”
"attempting to establish himself now not as a popular playwright but as a cultivated poet, someone who could gracefully conjure up the mythological world to which his university-educated rival poets claimed virtually exclusive access." (will and the world by Stephan Greenblatt)
The last paragraph leads right into conclusion that Shakespeare was an actor at heart plan and simple and towards the end of his life his thoughts turn to his roots. Those that loved him. He had been a skin flint “In fact, time and again, Greenblatt hints at the idea that Shakespeare was a skinflint who had little use for other people and mostly made choices for his own benefit. It's not a fatal flaw”. But now before he dies his thoughts turn to home. He wanted to remember those that loved him for who he was not for what he was.
-Who was William Shakespeare? by Celeste Mannis
http://books.google.com/books?id=1XeeT8eDG3wC&printsec=frontcover&dq=william+and+shakespeare&hl=en&ei=ZEt1TfzmOY-4sQOI-8G3BA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false
V. Conclusion: Shake was an actor (the movie the prestige)
This book might be subtitled "How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare," but is also a reminder of how his work became part of us, and how in doing so we invented someone who is more than a glove-maker's son from Stratford. It's a book about Shakespeare, but it's also a book that examines the whys and hows of art. As such, it is eminently successful. Why we know very little about him is because as an actor you know not to give away your secrets. (Email on will and the world and German bro).
- Because of how this class was structured at first, While reading in this class I have seen how Shakespeare has matured
Questions for the Class
1. Sonnets?
-Where do I look to find when they were written? and what they are about?
2. Those of you that know Shakespeare biography: can you offer any more insights into Identifying Shakespeare through his plays; preferably from the plays I am reviewing but I welcome any good insight?
3. Idea's for memorizing?
- I am having a hard time memorizing that final speech in Henry V so I was wondering if anyone has any idea's on how to memorize or should I just cut it down?
To do list for me for this blog:
1. link
2. pictures
3. add more scholarly references I have read and references to the text book.
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