Essay Instructions: I need an expert on Shakespeare who will have the specific books needed for this paper. Let me know if it is possible, because I need to order 6 additional 3 page papers and a final 10 page paper on this subject matter between now and Oct. 27th using the books. The books you need are: Title - Riverside Shakespeare by William Shakespeare, The Cambridge Companion by Margreta de Grazia and Stanley Wells, and the films: 1. SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE (Directed by John Madden, written by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard, with Gwyneth Paltrow, Geoffrey Rush, Joseph Fiennes, Tom Wilkinson, Judi Dench, 1998). 2. ELIZABETH w/Cate Blanchett. 1998.
Read from listed readings reading and see the listed films, keep notes, then write a thoughtful, formal response. Be mindful to cite specific passages from the texts to support your assertions and your main points. Cite from the texts listed and refer to specific incidents in the films.
Essay Subject Matter: Shakespeare - The Poet of Love
READINGs:
Riverside:
“General Introduction,” 1-26;
“Sonnets,” pp. 1839-1842;
Sonnets for Discussion: 1, 12, 14, 15, 18, 19, 20, 23, 26, 29, 30, 31, 36, 40, 55, 57, 73, 80, 87, 94, 106, 116, 126, 135, 138.
Cambridge Companion:
"Shakespeare's Life" (1-12)
"The Reproduction of Shakespeare's Texts" (13-30);
"Shakespeare and the Craft of Language" (49-64);
"Playhouses, Players, and Playgoers in Shakespeare's Time" (99-114)
FILM
1. SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE (Directed by John Madden, written by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard, with Gwyneth Paltrow, Geoffrey Rush, Joseph Fiennes, Tom Wilkinson, Judi Dench, 1998)
2. ELIZABETH w/Cate Blanchett. 1998.
WEB SITES
Shakespeare's Sonnets
http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/shakesonnets/
The Great Chain of Being
http://www.stanford.edu/class/engl174b/chain.html
DISCUSSION Material for Essay:
The sonnets present a variety of often conflicting views on love, ranging from the romantic to the comic, from the sincere to the cynical. In your critical essay, there are a number of questions to be answered. You may choose to select one and focus on it rather trying to encompass the entire sonnet sequence in your answer—or you may take a more general and comparative perspective. Here are some possibilities:
Contrast Sonnet 18 in terms of the “immortality conceit” used with the apparent “deep” realism of Sonnet 138, in which a view of love as “mutual deception” is given. What other sonnets express the “immortality conceit” and which of them is the best, in your opinion, and why?
Concerning the delicate and intricate structure of the sonnet, explicate any one sonnet in terms of its prosody (rhyme, meter, and other musical devices such as alliteration), its rhetoric (metaphor, simile, and other tropes), and its versification (sequence, stanza, quatrain, couplet, and line—iambic pentameter). How does a Shakespearean sonnet differ from a Petrarchan sonnet? What is the aesthetic worth of a sonnet in terms of musicality?
In which sonnets does the “Dark Lady” appear? Why is she or he given this name? Is the unknown “dark lady” of the sonnets perhaps a man, indicating a homosexual subtext to the sequence? Is it possible that the Dark Lady was an African slave? Who have been suggested as possible candidates for the Dark Lady? How are these possibilities expressed in the sonnets?
SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE is not only a delightful contemporary drama written by an outstanding playwright, Tom Stoppard, but it also provides an exceptional insight into the historical circumstances under which Shakespeare wrote. In the film, Stoppard dramatizes a number of important issues of the time, issues that separate us, as an audience, from those who went to see stage performances of Shakespeare's plays. For example, what effect to you think the prohibition against women actors had on the writing of plays? Why was this prohibition so strongly maintained? Why did such a prohibition exist? How does ELIZABETH add to the historical context necessary to understanding Shakespeare's drama?
In the movie, one of the characters is a Puritan. What is the historical background of closing of the theaters under the Oliver Cromwell? When and why were the theaters closed, what are the reasons given in the act of Parliament that closed them, and can you see an historical parallel developing in today's audiences concerning sex and violence? What is the role of sex and violence in Shakespeare's plays?
Our understanding of the impact Shakespeare's plays had on an audience is clouded if our relationship to the play is through a modern medium—in the case of this class, film—and not a stage production. Performances viewed in this medium, film, are quite different than stage drama. The most apparent difference between film and stage drama is that the former is recorded performance—a “mediated” and not “immediate” experience—while the latter is spontaneous because it is live. This is an enormous difference because it means that one of the essential aspects of live, stage theater— “interactivity”—is lost in film. This loss is crucial because Elizabethan-Jacobean drama maintained a performance-audience relationship that is not present even in stage drama today—the audience of Shakespeare's time was active, not passive. Although is it considered normal that today's audiences are passive, whether at a film or stage performance, that was not the case in Shakespeare's time. For example, it is not unusual in one of Shakespeare's plays for a character to “step out” of the play's story and directly address a question or comment to the audience as an “aside.” The limitations of the medium of film prevent this level of interactivity and habit, while convention and custom prevent such participation even when it is possible in a stage drama. Even attempts to use an “interactive” media such as the internet to perform Shakespeare, while to some extent resolving the issue of interactivity, are unable to overcome the lack of “intersubjectivity” in media other than stage drama—that is, the ability of the “person” behind the “persona” to come through. How do you think film performance differs from stage performance? What are some of the greatest differences? Research what are known as the structural “dramatic unities” that are inherited from the Greeks by the Elizabethans and explain how the medium of film inherently lends itself to violating these unities. Please give close attention to the classical unities of time and place.
