English 3 - shakespeare
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No homework over the weekend. When we meet next we’ll begin our next text, Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Please be sure to bring your copy of Hamlet to class. We’ll hold off on Volume B of the anthology until we finish Hamlet.
tuesday, october 16 (6)
An introduction to drama, an introduction to Shakespeare, an introduction to revenge tragedy, and an introduction to Hamlet; We'll start just by looking at the first 19 lines of the play to see how TENSION, SUSPENSE, and ANXIETY -- the three buzz words at the beginning of this play -- take center stage.
As you read Hamlet you'll employ the following process:
FILM: Watch the scene/s in the 2008 Gregory Doran production with Patrick Stewart and David Tennant, staged at the RSC in Stratford-upon-Avon. You can access the production here. You’ll need to use our log in credentials (strakejesuit, crusaders).
SUMMARY: Read The RSC Shakespeare's scene-by-scene analysis of the corresponding scene so that you’re absolutely clear on the plot as it appears in the original text and have some thematic insight. Use this summary and ONLY THIS SUMMARY.
TEXT: Read it. Slowly. Carefully. Attentively. Resist the urge to skim. You may even consider rereading (Heed Nabokov’s words!), perhaps thinking about any questions I post under the nightly reading. Read the play aloud, with friends, if you can.
FILM: Watch it again, thinking about and explaining why the production does what it does. Be an actor-director.
By our next class, I’d like you to work your way through the rest of 1.1, using the F-S-T-F system. What major sources of conflict are introduced at the beginning of the play? What are the circumstances? What is Horatio like?
wednesday, october 17 (7)
Introducing iambic pentameter, prose & verse, two concepts for better understanding and enjoyment of Shakespeare’s plays; Hamlet 1.1
By our next class, I’d like you to read 1.2.1-128, stopping just before Hamlet’s very first soliloquy. Think about the following two questions as you read and watch:
(1) Hamlet, the master listener: Everything Hamlet says in the play reveals his acute sensitivity to language. How do his early interchanges already reveal this trait? Why do you think it matters?
(2) Exploring motives and feelings: Why does Claudius rebuke Hamlet so strongly for his grief? Why does he not declare Hamlet as his heir? Why does he refuse Hamlet’s request to return to Wittenberg? What does Claudius feel toward Hamlet? Is Hamlet’s agreement to obey his mother sincere? Does Claudius really believe that Hamlet gives a "loving and a fair reply?"
friday, october 19 (1)
Hamlet, 1.2; A little history of drama and why we can’t believe anything anyone on stage says
By our next class you’ll finish working through 1.2, Hamlet’s soliloquy and his reunion with Horatio. Read this short article on the nature of ghosts in Shakespeare's England. It's important to establish the premise that an Elizabethan/Jacobean theatregoer thought ghosts were all too real, and that they appeared to the living to make known the nature of their deaths. Soliloquies follow a character as he or she thinks. List Hamlet’s thoughts in his first soliloquy and decide whether you see a logical series of thoughts. Do you? What of that? How has Hamlet's attitude changed by the end of the scene even in the short time since his first soliloquy? Look especially closely at the last four lines of the scene: Horatio assumes the appearance of the ghost means trouble for Denmark, but Hamlet senses something else is amiss. The truth must out.
tuesday, october 23 (3)
Hamlet’s first soliloquy: We’ll go back and look carefully at Hamlet's first soliloquy ("Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt..."). Then we’ll watch Rory Kinnear, Kenneth Branagh, and David Tennant perform it. In each performance, what is it that is really bothering Hamlet about what has happened since his father's death? How would you describe the tone of each Hamlet's feelings? Detached, impassioned, rational, ironic, or what?
By our next class, please work through all of 1.3, wherein we meet Ophelia for the first time, and we meet Polonius and Laertes more formally. Choose at least two of the following and respond in your notes.
(1) Laertes uses images of treasure, war, masks, and disease to warn Ophelia about Hamlet and his intentions and her risks. Is Laertes pompous, caring, loving, tender with Ophelia? What impression does his language make?
(2) Ophelia. What impression do you get of her in 1.3? How does she respond to and interact with her brother? Why, do you think? What kind of language does she use?
(3) How strong a relationship do Laertes and Ophelia have? How close are they? What does the playwright do to develop their characters?
(4) How does the mood of the scene change when Polonius enters? How would you characterize the way he speaks throughout the scene? Is Polonius a loving father or a strict authoritarian? Is any of his advice good advice, or is it merely empty rhetoric?
(5) What do Laertes and Ophelia think of their father? How do they react to him in the David Tennant production?
(6) Notice how Ophelia breaks her promise to Laertes almost as soon as he exits. What of that?
wednesday, october 24 (4)
Set first Hamlet assignment; We’ll then move to discuss 1.3.
I’ll be out on Kairos during our next class, so you’ll have a longer reading assignment to do. We will not meet in class during our next scheduled meeting.
Your next reading assignment is to finish Act 1. After you work through the two scenes—it will take you a while if you do it properly—answer the following in your notes:
(1) Like Hamlet, in his soliloquy in 1.2, the ghost seems little interested in affairs of state. His mind is consumed with family matters at first. He expressed revulsion at Gertrude’s sexual relationship with Claudius; he is sickened by the thought of her betrayal; and he speaks bitterly of “garbage” and “lust.” But after the ghost vents about his wife, he also laments about the moral state of Denmark, perhaps adding a moral push for revenge itself. Does he suggest that the ends justify the means? Can they?
(2) "The time is out of joint. O cursed spite, / That ever I was born to set it right." How do these lines perfectly reflect everything we know about Hamlet thus far?
friday, october 26 (6)
Kubus on Kairos - Free to work on Hamlet assignment and reading of 1.4-1.5
MONDAY, OCTOBER 29 (7)
We’ll discuss 1.3-1.5.
By tomorrow’s class I’d like you to work through 2.1 and 2.2.1-167, stopping just before Hamlet enters, reading a book. Let’s focus on Ophelia and what her father puts her through in this section.
wednesday, OCTOBER 31 (1)
Today we’ll begin the longest scene in the play, 2.2.
By the day of our next class, you are to finish 2.2. It’s a long scene, so be sure to give yourself enough time to watch and to read. How does Hamlet disassemble the bumbling Polonius? At what point does Hamlet knows R&G “were sent for?” It’s earlier than you think, I think.
what's due?
Monday, October 15 - Choose and purchase novel
Friday, November 2 - Vocabulary Quiz, Units 5-6
Monday, November 5 - Hamlet Assignment #1
Monday, November 12 - Book Check 1
Monday, December 3 - Long-term Novel Project Due
Monday, December 17 - Fall Final Exam
current text to bring daily
Hamlet study links
The RSC Shakespeare's scene-by-scene analysis
ONGOING EXTRA CREDIT
Required reading can at times feel like drudgery. And while it's important to do the reading I set for the class, I fully recognize that you'd rather have a say in what it is we read. Unfortunately the freshman curriculum has little student choice built in, so your ongoing extra credit gives you the opportunity to read an outside text in your own time at some point during the semester. I'm very happy to reward you with additional course credit if you take it upon yourself to read a text outside of class and meet with me to discuss it. A few things:
(1) This must be a text you've never read before.
(2) It should be imaginative and of recognized literary merit. The text must be approved beforehand.
(3) The amount of credit awarded is variable depending on the chosen text and how our follow up conversation goes.
(4) While you may read as much as you'd like, I will only award extra credit once per semester.
enjoying literature
Literature's emotional lessons
Authors on the power of literature
How reading makes us more human
STUDYING LITERATURE
"6 reading habits from Harvard"
Achebe, "The Truth of Fiction"
Questions for analyzing novels
Poetry videos
