Reflections on Writing a Play amidst many Research Projects

This post is a continuation of the status of the play that I began to work on earlier in the semester.  As it turns out, writing a good play is a lot of very hard work.  I had stated earlier on that I was collaborating with a fellow classmate Martin M.  As we each continued our individual research blogs for the class, we consistently strove to pick up on things that we wanted to use in the play.  Since my emphasis was the teaching methods of the Renaissance, I decided that I would examine the strategies used by Shakespeare in writing his plays so that I could mimic those strategies, not simply their end results (his plays). 

Aesthetic Cohesion, Transliteration, and Morality in Historia Danica, "Hamlet," and "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern"

This post is a continuation of my emphasis on Renaissance Teaching Methods.  It is also a follow up post to previous research that I mentioned performing in regards to a relationship between Hisotria Danica, “Hamlet,” and “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.”  I will be discussing how transliteration affected the depiction of morality in the portrayal of several more explicit scenes.  Let me begin by explaining a bit about transliteration.

Reviewing Brandon's blog "Get thee to a Nunnery"

This post is part of how my Shakespeare class is developing a scalable process for online interaction and evaluation among classmates through blogs.  I have previously done an evaluation of Max O’s blog, and learned a lot about the benefits of clear organization.  It was a good learning experience, especially since it required a critical analysis of a kindred blog.  At this time I will be examining Brandon P’s blog "Get thee to a Nunnery."  He is focused on Shakespeare in pop culture, and argues that Shakespearean references are identifiable enough within these works that they are not simply aesthetically pleasing, but rather point individuals towards Shakespeare.  Let me show what he has done to illustrate this:

Performing The Tempest through Skype

I had the opportunity last week to help Cara with her dramatic reading of Act 5 Scene 1 from the Tempest.  She wanted to integrate a digital mediation in the performance so we read the play via Skype and the class listened in.  I think that it was an interesting experience.  There were several technological difficulties, but in the end I think that it was cool.  The students would have had a unique time because they only heard the play, they couldn’t see us reading it, and there were no physical actors.  It would be like “watching” a youtube video with your monitor turned off.  So the experience was completely linguistic.  This meant that the feeling designed by the syntax and the flow of dialogue completely controlled the performance, and when someone forgot a line or took too long a different cast member had to step in because the flow was essential to keeping the tone and “realism” of the play alive. 

I think that it was entertaining, and was a good way of getting into the text maybe even more, because stage fright was extremely minimized.  If I had the time I think it would be great to do more analysis of this maybe looking back at radio performances done prior to the “video killed the radio stars” era.  Thanks for the opportunity Cara.  

Renaissance Learning: My Personal Findings

This course has been challenging and rewarding at the same time.  The learning curve was substantially high at the beginning of the course, yet rather than being daunting, I feel that the experience has inspired me.  This post is a summation of my observations about the academic blog, and my emphasis on Renaissance Teaching Methods.  I have built a personal learning plan that reached the following working thesis.  I call it working because while it does make a specific claim, that claim is mostly based on my learning process thus far, and given additional time, would likely further adjust becoming even more specific.  Here is that thesis:

Returning to the Renaissance Teaching Methods employed to teach English, particularly the practice of the Imitation of subject and form, will help students develop a system of analysis that they can apply to texts in visual, audio, tactile, and written formats.

Let me explain how I got here:

Kindred Blog's Outside Our Class

After today’s class I thought that it would be a good idea to check out the www.icerocket.com website and see if anyone else was addressing the same issues that I am on my blog.  I thought I would find something, but didn’t really believe that it would be directly related to my blog.  I was pleasantly surprised to find a post by Rebecca, a student at Kansas City Art Institute, which did a close reading of the Brutus-Marc Anthony speech from Julius Caesar.  It was a good post where she examined the appearance of the classical models (logos, ethos, pathos) in the speech.  It was interesting to read, and to see that the same subject is being discussed elsewhere via the blog interface.  I left a comment on her post that I will reiterate below.  It was cool to make this connection.

Rhetorical Exercise-Imitation

In this post I will be engaging in a few Rhetorical Exercises to demonstrate what I have learned thus far in my study of the Renaissance Teaching Method.  I will be following the four categories of change defined in Dr. Burtons summary.  While engaging in these practice segments has been a part of my plan for some time now, I was reading in Brooke K’s recent blog regarding the art of Imitation and felt a greater desire to engage the subject directly.  I will be demonstrating the art of Imitation in the two forms described in my post Critical Definitions 2.  I will be basing my derivatives From Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18:

Notes on the Technology Forum

While organizing my notes from the Technology Forum from last Friday, I wanted to include a video clip from the event.  When I went to the BYU homepage to find a clip, I saw that their article closely mirrors the things that I found intriguing.  So, rather than list all my notes here, i suggest reading their article for a summary.  In this post i will go over some of the things that seemed most applicable to this blog that i did not see in that article.  

BYU Technology Forum: Zuckerberg and Senator Hatch

Today I am writing this blog from a Forum on technology at Brigham Young University.  The forum speakers are Mark Zuckerberg and Senator Orin Hatch.  My Previous post about the changing Literary Canon addressed a few questions about the new reader audience that is developing as a product of the advancement of technology.  Zuckerberg has been able to successfully capitalize on this new readership through his invention of Facebook.  Because the nature of this blog deals directly with utilizing technology to communication information of an academic nature, while attending the forum I’m looking for the methods employed in the creation of Facebook that helped to maintain participant interest.  This is a great opportunity, and I am grateful to Dr. Burton for suggesting our attendance as a class.


The Forum was excellent and I will post my notes once I have them better organized.  There were a few key moments when subjects were addressed that have a clear application to my focus on teaching.  

The Literary Canon: Comics, and Blogs Included?

Are we stepping up the information ladder to reach the plateau of information exchange?  I have an observation that I would like to take the time to share.  This is a break from my regular focus on teaching methods and models.  In this post I will map out a transition that I have noticed and how that transition should be affecting the idea of the modern literary canon.

Critical Definitions 2

This post is the second part of my Critical Definitions and is a continuation of my overall emphasis on Renaissance Teaching Methods.  In this post I will offer definitions for the terms that I have learned associated with the skill of literary genesis in that era.

Critical Definitions

This post is a continuation of my focus on Renaissance Teaching Methods.  Through my studies I have discovered that in order to engage with literature on the level that I described in my post on Renaissance Teaching Motivations, I have to “graduate” my comprehension of the terms used in the study of language.  Knowing that this difficulty presents itself, this post offers the first half of a few definitions before diving into my discoveries:

Shakespeare Viral Games

This post is a continuation of my emphasis on Renaissance Teaching methods.  In this particular entry I will focus on a loose modern adaptation of the principle of analysis and genesis as applied to a Shakespeare viral game.  I will show where a particular relationship between a few aspects of the Renaissance teaching method and this digital mediation. 

Renaissance Teaching Motivations

This is a continuation of my focus on Renaissance Teaching Methods.  In this post I will specifically detail the type of understanding that I hope to gain from learning these methods.  I will then spend some time reviewing what I have learned about the motivations that fueled Renaissance learning.

Focusing on Renaissance Teaching Methods

In my blog I am continuing to refine my focus, and will be spending considerable time over the next few weeks learning about the methods of Renaissance learning.  I want to know what Shakespeare was doing when he learned to write so that I can incorporate these methods, which have proved highly successful, into my own writing.  In order to reach this goal I will:

• Identify the motivations for Renaissance education
• Examine Renaissance Teaching Skills
• Review and analyze some examples from the period
• revision: Analyze contemporary works for his time and find the similar process?
• revision: look to the source work and see the process from a section of it to the Shakespearian transformation of it (should show the method)
• Track the progression of these methods into their modern counterparts (if they exist)
• Apply these methods to an analysis of various Shakespeare works (specifically his plays)
• Teach in some setting according to these methods
• Apply these methods to a revision of the play that I am writing with Martin

This post will function as a hub for my learning and I will refer to and expand it as I continue to explore these specifics.   Here we go!

Letter to Martin

Here is a reply to an email that Martin sent me about our play:

I think this is dead on.  I’m finishing up the introductory scene to justify the incorporation of fictional characters with “real” people.  I am doing some interesting things with the fruit and Schrödinger’s Cat.  I think together the two paradoxes will help to justify what otherwise could be seen as simply meta-Theater: a term I am not sure I want directly applied to this.  We will have to see, I suppose that will be up to the critics to judge.  I love how loaded you made the scene, it was fantastic.  I wanted to be sure that it wasn’t just me thinking it was funny, so I had the dimmest one of my roommates read a section of it and he was laughing quite a bit, so I think we are dead on in that field.  I don’t think I want to do the Butterfly scene in the beginning.  I think it would play out better latter on.  Your characterization of hamlet works great.  I have some ideas about him being there and not there at the same time that we’ll need to discuss but that idea doesn’t come into the fore till much later, so for now we should be good.

As far as “scene two,” I think that keeping it funny is a good idea.  Perhaps a parallel to the plight of Hamlet occurring among the actual characters would be a good way of illustrating the need for better resolution without needing to have him directly discuss it.  Again the double entendre should work great here.  I’ll get my scene over to you and then this next one that we are working on can kind of tie the two together, so that we can then move on to act 2. 

These are my thoughts,

Bryan

Winter's Tale Analysis of Context

During the interview with Fred Adams he mentioned that to create realistic characters Shakespeare principally visited the pubs and played to his audience.  Since I am analyzing the strategies that Shakespeare employed in crafting his works these contextual details appealed to my interest.  In reading act 3 scene 2 from the “Winter’s Tale” for today, I couldn’t help but recall this conversation and clearly see the connection.  While thinking about this connection I read Max's blog and he had some great insights that helped lead me to this conclusion.

Adjusting the Connotations

For class we are reviewing a segment of the play Julius Caesar.  We need to review the section according to a specific Literary Theory.  We are reviewing Act 3 Scene 2.  In this scene Brutus has killed Caesar and is explaining to the Plebeian's his reasons, at the finishing of his remarks Antony arrives with the body of Caesar and gives an address.  Since i have been focusing on Rhetorical strategies of the plays in my blog I wanted utilize a literary theory that would add to this focus.  I decided to do a Structuralist reading of this scene, specifically focusing on the True Symbol defined by Saussure...

Searching for a Source

I enjoyed a bit of serendipity when searching for a scholarly source for today.  I visited the library and hunted down the Shakespeare section.  I wanted to unearth a book focused particularly on rhetorical strategies in Shakespeare.  So, I went personally to the section of Shakespeare research and I found a book titled “Why Shakespeare” by Gerald M. Picniss.  Provided my focus on the idea of compartmentalizing the tools of Shakespeare’s success, I was intrigued by the title of this work.  It did not disappoint.  I was able to review some brief segments of the book, and look forward to utilizing it more fully.  The book attempts to explain the specific strategies incorporated in Shakespeare’s plays that make them successful.  He analyses the structure of the plays in the first half of the book, while the latter half hone in on the various Rhetorical strategies of the plays.  For instance chapter six deals exclusively with the mixing of Verse and Prose in the plays and how this mixture engages the viewer mentally through its development of wit.  This chapter specifically will help me in my rhetorical analysis of the plays, which I am very excited about since I am attempting to imitate much of this in the play that I am crafting.

Plotting to Avoid Disaster

Here is a plot summary for the play.  I suggest enlarging the image.  These really are the bare bones of it.  There are so many things that go on in it, and a flurry of concepts that we want to approach.  The summary is separated into three main segments.  “The Events” gives a brief blow by blow for each act of the play.  So far it looks like a five act play.   The other two segments deal with the progression of two of the main concepts that underpin the idea of the play.  As you can tell one deals directly with Hamlet, while the other concept deals with academia.  I wanted to keep the construction of the play fairly simple so that I could focus on concepts.  This is in line with the tips from Tom Stoppard that I posted about previously.  Since I said I would catalog the progress of the play, I wanted to get this posted.  Right now Martin is doing some research while working on a few character sketches, and I am working on the opening scene.  Hopefully I will have that done by the weekend.  Feel free to comment or ask questions.

Progress on Personal Learning

By Rockcohen

I am going to give a review of my blog "Decrypting Shakespeare" hereafter for the benefit of Dr. Burton in examining my progress in the course, to clarify my efforts thus far and where I am going to my readers, and to provide a self-evaluation of my tactics so that I may engage Shakespeare even more acutely.  It is a good opportunity to ensure a tight focus as I continue to decode the mysteries of the "Shakespearian"...

Peer Blog Evaluation

I’m briefly evaluating the blog "On Shakespeare" by Max O.  This will be enjoyable for me since I have been regularly reading from his blog throughout the class thus far.  He has a great blog worth looking into.  let me explain why...

The Flash Mob

Hey everybody, if you haven't yet had a chance to poll in on what you think of the latest BYU Shakespeare Flash Mob idea be sure to do it soon.  Whitney is doing a great job of trying to get this organized and underway.  Help her out.  Go check it out!  I think this will be an awesome opportunity to experience Shakespeare in an alternate format, not just reading or watching a film, and I am pretty excited about it!

Prose and Carnegie

I was reviewing Sara C’s Blog and when I came across her post about the impact of Shakespeare in Andrew Carnegie’s Autobiography, I was surprised.  I had forgotten that we have that same class, and I thought it was funny, because I had just finished reading that section and thought that it would be cool to post about.  I think that she does a great job of putting it out there in context. My take on it was a little different.  As I continued reading in his autobiography I wondered in the back of my mind what impact his fascination with Shakespeare as a child would have in adulthood.  One thing that stood out to me was Carnegie’s desire to accumulate a precise vocabulary. 

Pretending to be John

Cara’s interview was awesome!  I am so glad that I went!  We got to ask Fred Adams several Questions and he unloaded great information on us!  I hadn’t provided any questions beforehand, but since John wasn’t able to attend I pretended to be him and asked his question.  I'm glad he made some.  Thanks John!  It was fun.  I will post some of my favorite parts of the interview on here later, but check out Cara’s blog! She will have it transcribed there soon.  It is definitely worth reviewing if you are looking for a good research angle.

Showing Initiative

I think that Cara is giving us a great opportunity to fine tune our skills in communicating with professionals in the field of Shakespeare studies by letting us sit in on her interview with Fred Adams today.  She has gone through substantial effort to make the interview available to anyone in the class who wants to participate.  Even though I don’t have much in the way of questions to add to her effort, I am going to be there and support her on this.  If you have the time I think you should come too.  This beats sitting in the library.  We'll be in room 4116 in the JFSB.  See you there!

Making a Play

So, after much consideration and analysis Martin and I have decided to write a play based on our observations of several of Shakespeare’s works, as well as a few other key plays that relate to the themes that we are discovering.  I think this will be a good opportunity to synthesize my learning, and to put into action a few of the specifics that I have observed as linguistic trends.  We have a lot of ideas and plan to record our journey from concept to concrete on our individual blogs.  To keep them from being mirror blogs of each other, I will be putting in a lot of the back reasoning behind the choices I make in crafting the play so as to show the relationship between the things I study, and the play.  If all goes according to plan we should have the plot outline completed, and a handful of scenes for the play done by the end of next week.  As I post the ideas and progress of the play, please feel free to provide as much input as you would like.  This is a bit ambitious, but it is the overall end project that I hope to do for the course since it will reflect the things learned throughout this course in an engaging way, or at least I sure hope that you find this more entertaining than a term paper.

Culture as a Weapon?

Honestly, I had no idea what a “Moor” was and had to look it up while I was reading the play.  In the article “’That which Heaven Hath Forbid the Ottomites’: The Turks in Shakespeare’s Othello” by Joseph Locket he explains “Othello is a Moor, one of the North Africans remaining in Spain after the overthrow of the Islamic governments there.”  Luckily, in our class discussion last Friday my group really dug into Othello, particularly in the aspect of the importance of race.  We all agreed that perhaps the issue of race was one of the strong points of Othello that makes the play so distinct from many of the other main tragedies.  For instance, the rage expressed my Desdemona’s Father would seem like the same old paternal anger seen in a Shakespeare tragedy where it not for his prejudice towards Othello because he is the Moor.  Furthermore, I thought it was interesting that Othello was THE Moor, not just a moor of Venice.  Shakespeare goes through a good deal of trouble within the play to make this distinction a strong apparatus for comprehending the play with much more that simply defining Othello by his title. 

This focus on language was a key thing I notices when reading the play.  Compared to his other plays the diction of Othello seemed to contain a great deal of sophistication.  For instance, the enraged Duke berates Othello saying “the bloody book of law / you shall yourself read in the bitter letter / after your own sense – yea, though our proper son / stood in your action.”  I know Shakespeare is known for inverting sentence structure by repositioning verbs, and sometimes he sounds a bit like Yoda, (or I guess I should say Yoda sounds like Shakespeare) but the point is this play in particular seems replete with Sonnet-like lines.  This is significant in my opinion because it suggests to me that he is hiding something in the language of the play itself.  I have to admit that at first I really didn’t catch as many of these references as I have in review, but after reading Locket’s paper I think I was really on to something.  His paper is great if you want a good starting point for reading this play in light of the racial issues it brings to the surface.  I think reading it in this light both interesting, and timely given the conflict between the “western world” and the “eastern world” in contemporary society.  Clearly from the lines of Othello we see that this contention is ages old.

Dying for a Soliloquy

I think I have been spoiled.  I really enjoyed the Soul bearing soliloquies in Hamlet and Richard the III and found myself earnestly craving a peak into the mind of Iago.  He certainly steals the stage through the first 2 acts, but when I drew close to the end of the first act my hopes were diminishing.  To my great exultation, just as the 1st act reached its end all other characters walked off the stage and Iago began to bear his soul!  I wanted to jump up and down with fiendish laughter! (I guess that was my way of preparing to enter the mind of the madman)

When I thought about why I wanted to read a Soliloquy so much I remembered my earlier post about self-reflective characters and how they are more easily accessible.  This in turn lead me to review Iago’s dialogue up to that point to see what was making his character so complicated that I yearned for easier access.  I discovered that he employs several striking maxims that at once draw my attention, and obscure my understanding.  For instance:

-          “We cannot all be masters, nor all masters

Cannot be truly followed.”

-          “I am not what I am.”

-          “If the beam of our lives had not

One scale of reason to poise another of sensuality, the

Blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us

To most preposterous conclusions.”

These awesome lines were some of my favorites up to this point.  I think that I enjoy them so much because they contain many characteristics similar to those found in Shakespeare’s Sonnets.  For instance compare the two phrases:

-          “We cannot all be masters, nor all masters cannot be truly followed” – Iago

-          “My glass shall not persuade me I am old

So long as youth and thou are of one date” – Sonnet 22

Both sections attempt to define abstract ideas through concrete examples.  Both contain an argument, and a rebuttal.  I am certain that there are many more similarities that can be drawn, but the singularity of this mode of expression really drew me in.  As I continue to review the plays I’ll make certain to investigate this bleeding over of Sonnet form within the play. 

A bit of a rough spot

Dear Reader,

  I want to thank you for taking the time to read my blog.  I know sometimes it can be a drugging task, and that occasionally I may not make sense; Nevertheless, I want to assure you that your efforts are appreciated.  Last week was rough for me.  I had to leave town and attend the funeral of a close friend.  It was a difficult experience, but all is well that time consoles.  I am letting you know this so that you will understand why last week I did not post.  There were simply too many other things needing my attention and while I did read and nearly finish the comedy Measure for Measure, I had very minimal comments to leave at the time.  I really think my reading of it did little justice to the play, and plan to re-read it in a few weeks. I will post then about my experience.  Thanks for your understanding.

Thanks again for sticking with me,

Bryan

P.S. this week I’ll be reading Othello and am very excited to document this experience.  That I can recall, I have not yet read this play, so here goes!

Analysis Tip from Tom Stoppard

As I said in an earlier post I have done considerable work in analyzing “Hamlet” and “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.”  After what we talked about it class today, I really think I would like to polish it up and post about it when we finish covering the learning outcome for breadth in a few weeks.  I am glad that we are reading several plays rather rapidly at the offset since this will help to satisfy that requirement and I can already see how doing this is gearing me up for a future more thorough analysis.   I sort of think of it as an intense training exercise.  I am posting this video now because I don’t want to forget about it, as I will need it later on, and because so many other students in the class have expressed ideas in production.  

I really like what Stoppard says in this clip about the need for definite control of the order of events in the play.  His emphasis on this as a strategy for crafting a successful scene helps me to form a clearer idea for how I would like to perform analysis of plays, and films.  This crept into my mind since i recently finished watching the film of Richard the III.  It is a short clip and I think you’ll find it useful especially if you are one of those planning a production.

Consider the Audience

A Reading Audience

While the script is fantastic for Richard the III I realized while I was reading it through that I was having a bit of a hard time keeping up with the many characters.  It seemed like everyone was dying off just as you got to know them!  In an effort then to help me keep track I thought I would watch a film adaptation.  I jumped out on a limb and watched the 1995 version.  There were some parts that I could see getting bad before I got there so I would just look away, but it is Richard the III so it simply couldn’t be a pleasant story. 

A Film Audience

As I said, I decided to do this in the first place to try and get a better feel for the flow of the play and so I was following along with my book while I watched the movie.  It was interesting to see how the film played with timing the events.  Often segments that did not appear till the next scene would be interspersed with moments from the prior scene.  This made it difficult to follow at times, but I always found my bearings again and continued.  Another aesthetic choice was to shorten the dialogue.  For example in Act 4 scene 4 when King Richard is manipulating Queen Elizabeth to convince her to let him marry her daughter half of his main persuasive argument, lines 296-316, are simply removed.  This choice plays well to this screening of the film, giving it a much faster pace, and facilitating rapid shifts from event to event (building the tension of the coup and sustaining that tension as Richards power was challenged).

A Modern Play Audience

Given that a modern 2000’s audience has grown in a world full of instant messaging, fast food, and instant information, I wonder how much more of this play would need to be cut to keep a modern audience entertained?  Would it need to be shortened?  Do people who aren’t there for a class assignment really want to sit through a 2+ hour play?  I wish there was a performance of this going on nearby; I’d like to examine that.  

Cross Characterization

As I am reading through “Richard the III” I can’t help but notice a simple connection in characterization that exists between this play and “Hamlet.”  Throughout the later the audience is fascinated by the psychological depth of Hamlet.  For example, in act 2 scene 2 he curses:

“Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!...

  I a dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak

  Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,

  And can say nothing – no, not for a king

  Upon whose property and most dear life

  A damned defeat was made.  Am I a coward?”

Similarly, in “Richard the III” the audience is at once repulsed, and allured by the king-to-be.  Look at his opening soliloquy:

           “Cheated of feature by dissembling Nature,

 Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time

 Into this breathing world scarce half made up,

And that so lamely and unfashionable

That dogs bark at me as I halt by them-…

And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover

            To entertain these fair well-spoken days,

            I am determined to prove a villain

            And hate the idle pleasures of these days.”

There is a similarity among these self aware characters that makes them more accessible to the audience.  While a given individual might not correlate with the death-plotting of these characters, by making them self aware the audience is able to relate to their sense of brooding, their questioning nature that muses over the finite principles of life.  These two of Shakespeare’s psychological characters in this way attach themselves to the dark side of human nature in the audience, which even if detested, or overcome through saintly living, is still recognizable in some degree in the audience.  What other similarities I will find by cross analyzing the plays?  This is fun!

Ranting Against Academic Sources

I have been working on a post that does a deep analysis of “Hamlet” and “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead,” but have nearly given up on it altogether.  I have the bulk of the analysis done, nevertheless there is a key article that I want to cite which ties the analysis together perfectly.  Sadly, this article of wonders is a peer reviewed academic article.  In laymen’s terms this means that the article was written by a university scholar, and then reviewed by an established panel to ensure that the article was academically correct, and “important.”  In my words, this means that you can’t view it unless you pay for a subscription to the academic website that hosts the article, or are lucky enough to attend a university that pays this cost for you.  (Hooray school!) Unfortunately, in my situation said document simply will not properly load.  I managed to load it once and read it, and have since been unable to recreate the cosmic circumstance that provided the portal of access needed to read this academic article of amazement (if you can’t tell I’m a little bitter). 

Acta non Verba

I started this post with the Latin phrase that means “Action not Words.”  I chose this title because of what I discovered on my recent exploits.  Today I drove back to Provo Utah from a nearly week-long excursion to see my best friend get married.  On the trip back, being heavily loaded with work to do, I made my friend drive for half the trip and read almost the entire first act of The Tragedy of King Richard the III.  She is not much of a rhetorician so it was interesting to see how she reacted to hearing old English.  I didn’t bother to attempt to explain the meaning behind obscure words, rather the more I noticed that she was not paying attention the more animated I became.  It was interesting to see the play really ‘come to life’ this way, and draws my attention to the reasoning behind WHY Shakespeare needs to be viewed or heard to be best understood.  The rhetorical structure of the play lends itself to the public audience more easily than to the private audience by virtue of its climax/resolution structure.  The scene for instance presents a problem and then begins the process of complicating the problem, or resolving it, but almost without fail the movement in Shakespeare’s plays is forward.  If you look at this play in particular, Richards’ dark plans grow more heinous as the scene progresses and the ebb and flow of the conversation among the characters peaks around the same moment of potential plot growth. This is a fascinating observation that I intend to explore further as I review the remainder of the play this week and as I move on to other plays in the weeks to follow.

Lost in Translation?

While searching for critical reviews and strategies for understanding Shakespeare I came across this nicely organized site called www.enotes.com which I found useful.  I particularly liked the clarity in the segment explaining methods for understanding the language of Shakespeare.  Check it out.  This website is also one that will list a side-by-side modern translation with the original text, and appears to have several plays that can be seen thus.  I found particularly useful the explanation of the double entendre as it is a concept that drenches the text of “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” which is a derivative work of Hamlet by Tom Stoppard.  More on this to come…

Personal Learning Plan

Through my review of Shakespeare I want to learn, synthesize, and appropriate the method of writing found in his works.  To gain this understanding and to manifest it I will read a few of his plays from each genre (Tragedy, Romance, Comedy, History) and utilize specific tools of Renaissance learning to recreate certain passages of the plays.  My end goal for the next few months is to create my own play utilizing the methods that Shakespeare employed to create his plays.

Hamlet is for the Dogs?

If you didn't get a chance to, I suggest checking out Johnny's blog where he enacts the confrontation between Laertes and Hamlet using his pet dogs.  It's worth the two minutes and thirty seconds of your life that it takes.

A posse ad esse

I started this post with a Latin Phrase that roughly translated means “from possibility to actuality.”  I still think of Latin as a power Language, and at the least intriguing, but this particular phrase encompasses the dilemma that I will address.  In my last post I posed questions about the plagiarisms of Shakespeare.  In my class we began discussing that, and my professor pointed out that while Shakespeare did clearly take many of his ideas from other works, many of the ideas were taken from works written in other languages.  As a by-product of his Renaissance education Shakespeare was skilled at analyzing which specific aspects of a work, even when in a language like Latin, made the work into a success.  Honestly, I covet this ability and think that it ought to be the focus of modern English education much more often than it is, but I digress.  Shakespeare utilized this model to heist the concepts he found most effective and to re-imagine them in his own way; in this way Shakespeare took a possibility and molded it into actuality.  For instance, the story of Hamlet closely follows that of Saxo Grammaticus’s Hisotria Danica, yet in my review of it I noticed that where Saxo’s work turned graphic, Shakespeare erred on the side of caution.

Finding out the protagonists intentions:

Hamlet = Ophelia                                 Danica = a Harlot

Killing Polonius:

Hamlet = stabbed                                 Danica = cut into pieces and dropped in the sewer

The End:

Hamlet = a duel and poison                  Danica = a Holocaust, and a vengeful second wife

The more tempered approach utilized by Shakespeare has had a longer lasting appeal, which really does say volumes about the limitations of creative expression.  Returning to my focus, while core features of the stories are the same, or similar, the interpretation of the events is different.  Interestingly, in looking up the definition of plagiarism the Encyclopedia Britannica defined it thus:
     The act of taking the writings of another person and passing them off as one’s own.
But also contained an intriguing closing comment that stated:

     If only thoughts are duplicated, expressed in different words, there is no breach of contract.

So, in this context is Shakespeare really a plagiarist? Or was he simply a really good reader, both of texts and audiences?

sources

Shakespeare is considered a fantastic plagiarist.  Substantial evidence shows that most of his concepts were taken from other works.  What about his plagiarism makes his efforts so successful?  What about plagiarism has changed so much from his time to ours?  What makes his reinterpretations of ancient, and sometimes not so ancient, text so alluring?  Yesterday and today I have spent a lot of time looking at the source works from which he may have derived his story ideas.  More to come soon…

Hamlet and tragic heroes

We are starting the course by reading the play Hamlet.  I really enjoy Hamlet because of the superb examples of the psychological character.  Writing a tragedy is really nothing new, but, in my opinion, it is the ability of Shakespeare to allow his audience to peer into the internal workings of his characters that really makes the play so universal.  At the same time this makes me wonder, if Hamlet were not so complex on the interior would the play still be as marvelous?  What is it about a tragic character that seems to fascinate humanity?  Are we really that morbid at the core?  Because I like to hear it rather than read it, I am attaching here a video clip form Youtube where Kenneth Barnagh recites Hamlet’s first soliloquy.  It is really well done.

...by way of introduction

Audere est facere – Latin for: To dare is to do.

Hello,

  My name is Bryan and I am currently taking a course where we will be studying Shakespeare.  As part of the course I intend to document my learning experience and share those insights with the world through this blog.  I will make regular weekly contributions as I learn and research Shakespeare, his life, and his plays.  As there has been so much research done on the subject, I will be attempting to streamline those sources that appear to offer strong supportive evidence for their claims, rather than simply posting “status updates.”  Because of the proliferation of information on Shakespeare I chose to underscore my blog with that quote from Nietzsche.  As I study I will refine a more specific project that I will fashion as an illustration of my synthesized learning, which will include the academic research and the imitation of his art forms.  Now off to the search for knowledge.