English 324A, Spring, 2023

Assignments and Updates

 

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Tuesday, April 4:

Reading: Get as far as you can with reading the first two acts of Twelfth Night, and then re-watch the first three scenes of both productions, both the Loveboat version and the 16th Contemporary versions. For each scene, pick a speech (or part of a speech!) of 4 or more lines that you would like to speak if YOU were in the play...., imagining you would speak the two of them.Would you speak them differently in the two productions?

Thursday, April 6: In a similar way,compare the Letter scenes--what is different? and once you find differences, what are they and why do you imagine they are different?

Tuesday, April 11: Writing: Read and view Act 5 of the Original Conditions production carefully--it is an unusual "Act" because it is really only ONE scene! Indeed, if you just read it, you may not find that it even makes sense! A Director has some work to do to figure out how to make this Act work.

So: Your job is to describe as best you can what you think are the most clever/effective examples of successful blocking in this very busy and complicated Act. It is a chaotic scene early on, and it confuses each of the cast. Describe as best you can how this complicated act is enacted, and how they use the stage area to do so.

Thursday, April 13: Reading: Julius Caesar

This is the next of Shakespeare's most admired plays and continues to be played for many modern playgoers. There are several versions in the Drama OnLine; The one I would like to use as our official version is at:

https://www.dramaonlinelibrary.com/video?docid=do-9781350997028&tocid=do-9781350997028_5185707676001

Read the play's first act--it will help sort out who is who and why everyone has heard the phrase "The Ides of March." There is also in the early part of the play a much quoted verbal battle between Brutus on one side and Julius Caesar's friend Anthony on the other. The oratorical battle between them represents the possibility of the end of a centuries-long history of Roman rule. Caesar had for the preceding few years increasingly seemed to be plotting to become not just an elected Roman Consul but the first of the Roman Emperors.

All of that seems very much in the past by more than 2000 years, but you may change your mind before we finish reading it....

Some would say it is hard to read this play at this point in history as many of our own world's countries increasingly have broken from the Republic Form of government (a word borrowed from Latin's "Res Publica," Rome's name for an imperfect but at the time of this play still an on-going government in Rome) and replaced it by a single strong leader form of government.

So the central issue in this play goes to the question of whether Caesar's real goal was the end of the traditional Roman Republic in a favor of a cult of personality, or whether he would support and defend Rome's traditional government that had lasted for 500 years: consuls elected every two years by the Roman Public. This is more or less a story of a first installment of an attempt of a very new kind of government for the Romans. Would it be possible? Was it right? Was it the beginning of a civil war that would lead to a new form of government?

We shall see....but first there is another very well-known part of the play: the rhetorical battle between Brutus and Mark Antony. Who is going to win? And how is this "battle" reflected in Shakespeare's text? There is much to wonder about as it does or does not help us think of our own very similar struggle.

 

And now we are on to Antony and Cleopatra. It is something like part II of Julius Caesar.

https://www.dramaonlinelibrary.com/video?docid=do-9781350996717&tocid=do-9781350996717_5185687012001

To be sure, Caesar Augustus, Julius Caesar's adopted son, more or less replaces Caesar in the quest to take over not just Rome, but all of Rome's conquests. Antony and Cleopatra is the sequel, and we are lucky in that the production to watch on Drama Online is really one of the fine ones. Pay attention to the aura of the various events and the description of these events; it is a play that offers a rich array of scenes that offer what is more or less different from any other scene. In that sense it is one of Shakespeare's most engaging plays. You can start with the dance that prefaces the opening of Act 1, Scene 1, and then go on to the scene with Antony, or the scene with the eunuch, or the scene in Rome where a set of courtiers engage in a kind of scurrilous gossip session, or when Cleopatra's boat and its character is described or any of the stagings of emotion that emerge throughout the show, right to the very last highly charged play-within-a-play in the last act.

I will have missed some of these vivid scenes here, but in your paper for Thursday see if you can explore one I list above or another that you find well worth unpacking and I might have missed it my own self!

All's Well that Ends Well

I've sent you a trigger warning about the play's use of the "Bed Trick,"something that was relatively common in 16th and 17th drama. For me, it has interests, but it also has a kind of nastiness to it. The male hero might easily enough be labelled "nasty," and the female hero is certainly much more likeable, which in a way justifies the "trick." This usually happens, as it does here, when a man has promised to marry a woman but then dumps her instead. She hasn't been physically attacked, but has been ignored when the guy should have kept his promise of marriage but didn't, leaving the woman in the lurch.

The "Trick," then, is to substitute the woman who had been deserted for a different woman who would have been the guy's next victim. The trick is that the woman who had been wronged by the man then substitutes herself for the woman the guy thinks he is going to sleep with. So the wronged woman quite intentionally takes the place of the woman the guy thinks he is going to sleep with. That then is revealed the next day, and the guy is now bound in one way or another to marry the woman he had jilted in the first place.

So it's not a rape, and it's not so much a trick as it is a device to right a wrong and to expose the male's perfidy, and thus to restore the promised marriage that the male had abandoned.

Obviously, this describes well the situation in All's Well--and, indeed, it all ends "Well" because Bertram is represented here as deciding that Helen is pretty cool after all, and they end the play with a kiss--not a fake one, but a real one.

But there is more in the play than this plot, even though this plot is the most visible of the conflicts. For there is a war, a French King, and a mother-figure along with a number of other characters. The question: what do we make of this plot? what is Shakespeare trying to do, and how does he do it?

Again, pick a scene that you find of interest, and describe what you see and why it interests you. Or describe how this play differs from A&C. Both have a strong theme of love, but one could say there is a significant difference between them in how their actions turn out....

 

As You Like It

I've been a little slow getting something up here for As You Like It, but I hope you have been watching the video and thinking about what YOU think is going on. You might start with the observation that AYLI is both like and very much unlike All's Well That Ends Well. AYLI is a kind of carnival of love-matches along with a world in which its women, and not its men, manage the job of creating loving couples. AWTEW, by contrast, is populated with a man who, left to his own devices, might never find a good partner. AYLI devotes the whole second half of the play to life in the woods and how not just to fall in love but to scout out a proper partner as well.

Or so I am thinking about it before I watch it again by Tuesday. So given some sense of what I think here, what do YOU see? You might even be able to think of a subtitle for this play that captures its energies, a subtitle that summarizes the way love developes here: As You Like It, or ....(??) As usual, Write up for Tuesday what you are thinking as you have followed the play....

 

OTHELLO

In last Thursday's class I more or less hit a stone wall with Othello; and then as the week ended I found myself getting sick. So I've kept myself at home, and am feeling better. But I want to make sure I don't bring anything in for you to catch, so we'll next meet on Thursday. The only good thing about having a cold is that I've had a lot of time to get my head straight as we go to Othello.

So yes, we will return to the TWO productions on the Drama page of Othello. It is the same play, of course, one put on by The National Theatre, and the other by The Globe, but the two productions are mounted in interestingly different ways. We did something like this earlier when we watched the two productions of Twelfth Night viewed as we opened the course, and there as here, we could say that while it is the same play, it is also a different show, nevertheless.

For Thursday, then, identify and describe how each of the two performances differ from the other in Acts I and II. It is, of course, the "same" play, but the two versions are still different and with different effects. Think about casting, about lighting, about use of sound, differences in using the set, and so on....

We will also set a schedule for the rest of the quarter.

 

KING LEAR

Many will tell you that King Lear is the very height of Shakespeare's work. Some like Hamlet, too, but I think Lear offers a much bigger window to family and humanity than anything else he writes. We are again lucky to have two productions, one at the Globe and one at the National Theatre. (It is also the show that includes various curses found on Tee-shirts.)

We looked at the first 15 minutes in class; dysfunction, quite obviously, is the name of the game. It begins with a bizarre and damaging game that Lear plays with his daughters,(just asGloucester does with his son Edmund in Act Ii) and is followed by a crash between generations, a crash that drives Lear and some others to the very edge of destruction. I won't suggest that everyone's family has of necessity paralleled what we see here, but it feasts on the notion that families can indeed be brutal. Fortunately, there is something of a restoration, though it doesn't restore it all.

Think, too, of Beginnings, Middles, and Ends. It can be a good guide to the chaos that permeates the script from Act 1 all the way to Act 5. I try to think of dysfunction followed by revision as the goal by the end, even if no one there is interested in picking up the crown.

All of that is a little mysterious--see if you can make sense of it once you've gotten to the end of Act V. See you on Tuesday! and don't forget that next week is Sonnet week.... If you want, you can perform as best you can the underlying drama for the sonnet you want to perform.

Finally, I may not have been successful at suggesting about what you should be writing about Lear, and it's hard to pick something to write about, largely because it is a huge play, with several different narratives, all going at the same time. And that can leave you wondering how you can get a hold on a play that has as many story lines as this one has. For Tuesday I don't expect a lot--it's a big play and it's hard to follow it. To make progress, first off I recommend you go to the King Lear Wikipedia entry and read it through:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Lear

The End of the Class:

We are now very near the end of the quarter--we have the two classes we'll hold this week and I will hold class on the 30th and the 1st of June to collect your portfolios. You can hand in your portfolios on May 24, though that might be too tight to do well. anyone who needs time to turn in their Portfolio can do so on Tuesdaythe 30th or June 1st.

I'll also be asking whether any of you want to visit the Rare Book Department in the UW Library on Thursday; I am looking forward to it, though not everyone is as devoted to 400 year old books as I am. Frederick Morgan Padelford, after whom Padelford Hall was named, was a serious book collector of Renaissance books, and gave most of his private library to the UW. We will see and even (carefully) hold some of the most important volumes in its entire collection.

 

But before that we still have The Tempest to read and talk our way through. I think you'll like it. Traditionally it's been thought of as Shakespeare's very last play. You'll see why once you start watching it, and if for some reason it isn't clear, you'll see in the final scenes exactly why. (I also urged you to watch the Donmar Theatre performance too, but you may not have time for that, so don't worry.)

Weathering The Tempest.

The Globe version of The Tempest is as good a production of this play as I've seen (and I've seen a lot). It brings out the comedy that lightens the feel of the play, even as Prospero is serious both about the future of his daughter and the righting of the great wrong that occurred 12 years earlier. And as I watched the play again, I thought it particularly rich--comedy at some points, potential tragedy at others. And you should be able to feel the play's complexity as something of a commentary on human life itself (Freud must have liked this play).

I have also suggested you think about the much more recent ways of thinking of this play now, seeing Caliban in very different terms from the traditional script. Instead of untutored and mean on an island in the middle of nowhere, other productions may see Caliban as a kind of proto-colonialized native of an island where Prospero was less the victim of his brother's villainy than a Colonial ruler of Caliban's world.

That suggestion has launched a lively conversation that is read by some current critics as much in modern terms as in the traditional ones. You might keep it in mind as you enjoy (and yes, I think you will enjoy it) a very well performed play.

Finally, a note on the Sonnet project. We have talked about this, and what I've asked you to do is find a sonnet that you see as a kind of mini-play, and do your best to read it (or recite it!) with as much expression and emotion as you can give it. A number of you already performed your sonnet last class hour. We'll give all of you who haven't yet had a chance to "perform" your sonnet. Don't worry about being a great actor--that's not the point. It's a way to have fun as you also do something you may never in your life get the chance to do again. You can work in pairs, too, if that will help or if your joint choices enable doing so. And if you are rushed, you can put the Sonnet assignment off to May 30 or June 1 classes

 

Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez

by Richard Rodriguez