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january february march april may
Day Date Topic Homework for next class
T 10-Jan

Introduction to Shakespeare

Links:

PowerPoint

Read:

Bedford Companion to Shakespeare (BCS) Ch. 4 (109-128); Ch. 9 (303-326)

 

What to study for quiz

R 12-Jan

Shakespeare's Company

Politics and Religion

Context

Read:

  • BCS chapter 2 (pp 36-59)
  • Bring your Shakespeare text

Shakespeare's Rhetorical tropes

What to study for quiz

T 17-Jan

Read Shakespeare's language (handout)

Context

Read Richard III, 1.1 (and see speech of this character as he kills Henry VI at the end of Henry VI part 3)

History Plays: Context

Read:

Imagery Analysis
Richard III Acts 1-3

R 19-Jan

Richard III, acts 1-3

Film

  • 14:20 Princess Anne mourns her dead husband/fiance, the murdered son of Henry VI
  • 30:19 1.3 Richard orchestrates a domestic scene
  • 47:04 children and Richard (2.2)
  • 48:00 3.1 Regent Richard and young prince Edward (now king)
  • 59:35 3.7 staged show with Lord Mayer
  • 1.08.55 Richard loses Buckingham's good will
  • 1:17:00-1:26 4.4 Queen Margaret and the women
  • 1:32:10 5.5 Battlefield (night before)

Themes

  • Three levels: psychological, metaphysical, political
  • Motifs:
    • Richard as playwright
    • Women and children
    • Comparison to Julius Caesar plot (Richard as Caesar/ Richard as Brutus)
    • cannibalism, vampirism, beasts of prey

Context

  • Richard III, acts 3-5

Imagery Analysis (we'll do this one in class)

Example reading sheet

What to study for quiz

T 24-Jan

Richard III, acts 4-5

Read Marlowe's Edward II (1-3)

What to study for quiz

R 26-Jan

 

Read 1599: Prologue

What to study for Quiz

T 31-Jan

Marlowe's Edward II (1592-3; contemporary of Henry VI 1)

A Mortimer, thou knowest that he is slaine,
And so shalt thou be too: why staies he heere?
Bring him unto a hurdle, drag him foorth,
Hang him I say, and set his quarters up,
But bring his head back presently to me.

weepe not for Mortimer,
That scornes the world, and as a traveller,
Goes to discover countries yet unknowne.

1599: Introduction

Read Henry V 1-2

Imagery Analysis

R 2-Feb

1599: Prologue

Text

History

Henry V- Acts 1 and 2

 

History and Context

Shakespeare's texts

Shakespeare's stagecraft

  • 1599 Chapter 1 (23-103)

What to study for quiz

T 7-Feb

Read Shapiro, 1599 23-103

Discussion; excerpts from Henry V (film) and Elizabeth I

Critical Approaches: Source Study

Context:

Battle of Wills

Great Blow in Ireland

Burial at Westminster

Sermon at Richmond

Read Henry V: 3-5
R 9-Feb

Henry V-- Acts 3-5

Imagery Analysis Discussion

Paper 1 Discussion

Henry V, etc.

I can drink with any tinker in his own language -- Prince Hal, I Henry IV

  • Metaphorical patterns: plants and weeds/farming/manual labor/rape/dismemberment/eating and vomiting/illegitimacy/animals
  • [2:12:40] Long view of war? cf 5.3.320-7 and epilogue
  • The ironic circle: 1 Henry VI
  • [42.39] Seige of Harfleur 3.0, 3.1
  • King as Linguist: [1:12:39] 4.0, 4.1 vs. 5.2 (Willliams and Harry -- language of class)
  • Foils of king as linguist:
    • Pistol and French Soldier 4.4
    • Fluellen 4.7
  • [1:30:50] Glory of war? 2 speeches in 4.3
    • Killing of boys 4.6-7
    • Pistol's end 5.1
  • Elizabethan Parallels: The Earl of Essex Prologue 5.0 (and see 1599, 23-103)

 

Shapiro 107-170

What to study for quiz

T 14-Feb

Read Shapiro 1599 107-170

See excepts Elizabeth I

 

Context:

Book Burning

Is this a Holiday?

Julius Caesar 1-2

Imagery Analysis

R 16-Feb

Discussion of thesis statements

Julius Caesar, Acts 1-2

 

Julius Caesar 3-5

 

What to study for quiz

T 21-Feb ADVISING DAY: NO CLASS
R 23-Feb

Julius Caesar, Acts 3-5

  • Rhetoric of non-rhetoric: Antony 3.2, 4.1
  • Men and Women: 4.2
  • Reading history: 5.1-2

Context

Adaptations and Diversions

Read Shapiro 1599: 173-249

What to study for quiz

T 28-Feb

Read Shapiro 1599: 173-249

Critical approaches: Materialist Criticism

Fluff

Context -- AYLI

  • SOG 175-185
  • As you Like it 1-2

Imagery Analysis

What to study for quiz

Take home midterm

R 1-Mar MIDTERM BREAK
T 6-Mar

As You Like It, Acts 1-2

  • 2.1 Introduction to duke and court
  • 2.4-7 minor characters of double plot
  • 1. 2-3 cross dressing
  • 3.2 continued
  • Ardenne/ Arden as forest/garden
  • Biblical allusions: Adam and feuding brothers
  • Pastoral elements: Silvius/ Phoebe and English reality check version Wiliam and Audrey (allusions to Marlowe)
  • Plot changes from Lodge's Rosalynde

Context

Petarch's Five Stages of Man from his Tronfi: 1. Man in his youthful state is the slave of love. 2. As he advances in age, he feels the inconveniences of his amatory propensities, and endeavours to conquer them by chastity. 3. Amidst the victory which he obtains over himself, Death steps in, and levels alike the victor and the vanquished. 4. But Fame arrives after death, and makes man as it were live again after death, and survive it for ages by his fame. 5. But man even by fame cannot live for ever, if God has not granted him a happy existence throughout eternity. Thus Love triumphs over Man; Chastity triumphs over Love; Death triumphs over both; Fame triumphs over Death; Time triumphs over Fame; and Eternity triumphs over Time.

Take home midterm due

R 8-Mar

As You LIke It, Acts 3-5

 

Shaprio 254-320

 

What to study for quiz

T 13-Mar

Shapiro, 1599 254-320

Critical Approaches: Psychoanalytic Criticsm (Case: Janet Adelman's Suffocating Mothers)

 

  • Hamlet 1-2

Imagery Analysis

What to study for quiz

 

R 15-Mar

Hamlet Acts 1-2

Hamlet, the Text

 

hamlet 3-5

Imagery Analysis

What to study for quiz

T 20-Mar

SPRING LITERARY FESTIVAL

Hamlet Acts 3-5

Hamlet: the text

  • Hamlet end
  • Shapiro epilogue

What to study for quiz

R 22-Mar

SPRING LITERARY FESTIVAL

Research Paper (due in stages)

Theories of Tragedy:

Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is admirable, complete (composed of an introduction, a middle part and an ending), and possesses magnitude; in language made pleasurable, each of its species separated in different parts; performed by actors, not through narration; effecting through pity and fear the purification of such emotions. — Aristotle, who adds that the protagonist should be great & the reversal attributable to hamartia or misstep, not "tragic flaw"

"When powerful forces come into conflict, individuals are sometimes the site of that conflict and are destroyed by it." — Sean McEvoy, scholar

"Viewed externally, Hamlet's death may be seen to have been brought about accidentally...but in Hamlet's soul, we understand that death has lurked from the beginning: the sandbank of finitude cannot suffice his sorrow and tenderness....we feel he is a man whom inner disgust has almost consumed well before death comes upon him from outside." — G.W.F.Hegel

[Medieval revenge feuds aka Romeo and Juliet are intolerable to society, and yet as the] "first modern intellectual of our literature," Hamlet realizes that "power is in the hands of a class whose values humane people feel they must repudiate." — Arnold Kettle, Marxist [The "fatal flaw" is not in the individual but in the state and the social order it upholds]

"Tragedy is so far from being a proof of the pessimism of the Greeks that it may, on the contrary, be considered a decisive rebuttal....Saying Yes to life even in its strangest and most painful episodes, the will to life rejoicing in its own inexhaustible vitality even as it witnesses the destruction of its greatest heroes ... Not in order to be liberated from terror and pity, not in order to purge oneself of a dangerous affect by its vehement discharge — which is how Aristotle understood tragedy — but in order to celebrate oneself the eternal joy of becoming, beyond all terror and pity...." — Friedrich Nietzsche

Reading:

King Lear 1,2 (Read The Tragedy of King Lear (right-hand facing pages only, staring on 2319) based on F1, not The History of King Lear (left-hand facing pages) based on Q1, and not the conflated text that follows. Note differences from recording....))

BCS ch. 6 (94-211)

Imagery Analysis

T 27-Mar

Textual studies and the problem of King Lear (PowerPoint)

Performed at court in December 1605. Reference to Harsnett's Popish Impostures puts it no earlier than 1603. The Tragedy of King Lear (Folio) 1-2 vs. the History of King Lear (Quarto1 set from foul papers)

  • Inexperienced printer: lineation errors. Two typesetters: aural errors. Illegible handwriting.
  • Folio thought to be Q2 (which comes from Q2) but annotated against promptbook (now lost).

The Play

Scenes

The Tragedy ofKing Lear 3-5

Imagery Analysis

What to study fur quiz

R 29-Mar

LAST DAY FOR ADMIN OR HEALTH Withdrawal

Common imagery and word patterns in Lear: nature, carnivorous animals, monstrosity, redemption and "redeem", female sexuality, dressing/ undressing, clothing and nakedness

The Tragedy of King Lear 3-4

  • Lear 3.2 (Olivier)
  • Lear 3.2 (James Earl Jones)
  • Lear 3.2 (Interesting all female production at USC)
  • 3.2, 3.4 Lear's madness and "Poor Tom"
  • 3.7 Blinding of Gloucester
  • 4.1, 4.5 Gloucester and his father
  • 4.3, 5.3 Cordelia's explicit equation with Jesus and the possibility of redemption.

Questions: Can goodness overcome evil? Is nature benificent or hostile to humanity? Explore the paradox of "naturalness."

Bestial and paradoxical female sexuality

 

On the paradox

  • Paradox (new world encyclopedia)
  • Star Trek TNG Finale scene
  • continued (1:56)

Romance or "Tragicomedy"

Reading: Beaumont and Fletcher, Knight of the Burning Pestle Prologue and 1-2 (pdf) or ebook or online text or framed version (linked by scene and act)

What to study for quiz

T 3-Apr SPRING BREAK: NO CLASS
R 5-Apr SPRING BREAK: NO CLASS
T 10-Apr

Research paper rubric (keep and bring to class to show you've met deadlines; hand in with paper)

Imagery sheets

Lear on homelessness

Beaumont and Fletcher, Knight of the Burning Pestle

Plot summary and character list

Reading: Beaumont and Fletcher, Knight of the Burning Pestle Prologue and 1-2 (pdf) or ebook or online text or framed version (linked by scene and act)

 

R 12-Apr ''''

BCS chapter 3: 79-99 Kinds of Drama

What to study for quiz

T 17-Apr

"" ""; Introduction to Romance

Genre:

Comedy as conflict between women and patriarchal ideology, siding with young against the old

Tragedy as conflicts between great men (mostly) and a hostile world.

Histories as episodic chronicles with comic and /or and tragic shapes

  • Emphasis on the mediated nature of historical texts (mediated by point of view and historical context)
  • Shallow's speech in Henry IV 2 (3:05)
  • Henry IV part 2: Falstaff's speech

Romance: reconciliations of conflicts between age and youth with semi-religious overtimes: sin, expiation, repentance, forgiveness; fall, question, redemption; suffering and divine providence (grace)

  • Episodic; comic ending endangered and postponed; emphasis on quest or adventure
  • Comic ending achieved at great cost
  • Return to magical and supernatural themes of Midsummer Night's Dream
  • Redemption achieved by means of female agency, female forgiveness, or the birth or marriage ofdaughters

Romance, masque, and spectacle

Masque: an overview

Winter's Tale 1-2

Plus review these lessons and explain how you'd apply one of them to WT

R 19-Apr

Winter's Tale 1-2 Sources; Induction to Bartholomew Fair (Jonson's complaint); Simon Forman's reaction

Mythic Structure — Christian or Pagan?

Drama as Political; Extremes in Shakespeare

Scenes

  • Play scenes
  • Act 1 (all)
  • Act 2.2 (41.06)
  • Act 2.3 (46.30)

Winter's Tale 3-5

Quz: I will give a short essay quiz that will assume you've read the play and kept track of character names

T 24-Apr

Winter's Tale 3-5

Paulina's wonder cabinet

Engines of our Ingenuity's European Renaissance

Play scenes

  • 3.2 Trial
  • 3.3 Antigonus leaves baby
  • 4.1 chorus
  • 4.3-4 Autolycus and Sheep Shearing
  • 5.3 Paulina and the statue

FINAL EXAM PREP

R 26-Apr

FINAL EXAM REVIEW

"Who would not undergoe all kind of toil, To be well stor'd with such a winter's tale?" - Marlowe and Nash, Dido Queen of Carthage

"O, these flawes and starts would well become /A womans story, at a Winters fire." - Shakespeare, Macbeth

T 1-May 12-2:30: 303 EXAM TIME
W 2-May 12-2:30: 431 EXAM TIME
F 4-May 12-2:30 304 EXAM TIME
january february march april may

 

 

 
Dr. Mary Adams, instructor
last updated 26-apr-12