Exeunt 232

Shakespeare, you have been engaged!

When I woke up yesterday morning, I must admit I was a little stressed out. Amy hadn't made it to class and I hadn't received the recordings of the book to send on to J.J. and Austin. BUT when I got on my computer lo and behold, there was an email with the recordings! So I quickly downloaded them and then proceeded to piece them together using Windows Movie Maker. While that was saving I went online and looked at LibriVox and Audible to see how I could have the world hear our book.

There was no luck. It seemed as if you needed to download their software. So I came up with the next best thing and headed to YouTube! When my movie finished making itself I uploaded my first video ever on YouTube. Success!! We are online (here is the link again and we've had three views!).

After getting the video on YouTube I proceeded to choose a cut for our sample for Engaging Shakespeare and then I sent everything to J.J and Austin, and we were ready to go! Here's the sample that we chose to play, I think people really liked it!

That night when it came time to go to Engaging Shakespeare, I put on a purple dress and went up to the JFSB! I arrived and walked in the door to see the art group putting up their pieces. They looked great! I was super impressed with how many pieces each person in their group did. As the night progressed and we saw what everyone had done I was even more impressed. Everyone was so good and you could tell a lot of work went into all of the projects.

I thought that the audience also got more interactive as we went on. I really enjoyed telling them not only about our book project and the work that we had put into them, but also about my blog post. It was really fun to see people respond to something I had written about and had such a fun time doing!

Learning Outcomes, you have been met!

Gain Shakespeare Literacy

I would say I have definitely gained a breadth and a depth of Shakespeare's work. I have never read four of the plays this semester, let alone heard of two of them! But I actually enjoyed these ones so much. I especially loved a Winter's Tale. It was also reading a Winter's Tale that I feel like I really started getting into blogging and analyzing the text. I think it's evident in these two posts.

What I loved even more was being able to see this play performed on stage. I thought that the performance was phenomenal and it really captured the emotions I had been hoping to see come through after reading the play. Seeing the play also helped me understand the role of the Clown and the Fool in Shakespeare's plays. I understand now why he incorporated them into his plays and how they are much funnier in a performance than in the reading.

While this isn't related to a Winter's Tale, I also enjoyed seeing parts of other Shakespeare's plays, or at least related themes, pop up in books I was reading this past semester. The most obvious one is the connections I drew through my reading of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, but I also found connections in All Creatures Great and Small.

Analyze Shakespeare Critically

I got better as the semester went on analyzing Shakespeare both textually and contextually. I must admit that the contextual analysis took me longer to catch onto and it was harder for me to do for a while, but I think that I finally caught onto it. Here are a some of my textual analyses posts and a few of my favorite contextual analyses posts.

Engage Shakespeare Creatively

I think that this aspect of the learning outcomes was mainly fulfilled in the final project. I consider the recording of an audiobook to be a performance in many ways. We were each first of all assigned to cut down the script (which I think we did rather effectively). Then we were cast into our characters, which we had to, or at least I did, consider motives and emotions behind the lines. Then there was the recording and the rerecording! It got easier as we went on and we all, well at least I did, got more comfortable in the sound booth the more we recorded.

I also think some of my creative engagement with Shakespeare has been in my attempt to connect with nature in the text. This was harder at the beginning but the more I got into the works the more connections I was able to find. This might just be because King Lear has so many nature, especially bird, connections!

Share Shakespeare Meaningfully

I think the blog posts were a big part of helping me share Shakespeare meaningfully because they gave me time to think about and then talk out my ideas. The project also helped with this as did the requirement to try to connect with people on a local and global level. I think I did this through the previous assignment, but the final project also now helped with this because our book and all the other projects are on the web!

Adieu....

Well I guess that's everything. I can't believe the semester is over! It went so fast and I can't believe that we got through six of Shakespeare's works in that time! Hopefully I'll continue to see Shakespeare in the world around me and I'll remember all of his insights. I guess if nothing else I can just pick up another play and start reading on my own. In some ways the conclusion of this class is just another end leading to a more enlightened beginning.

You Lost Me William...

So I've been on two kicks this whole semester with Shakespeare. The first concerned how characters set up and perceive their reality, and the second is with nature. Now I love all of the nature references in Shakespeare, because I love nature, I mean the focus on my major is the natural world. This being said I love all the insights and knowledge that Shakespeare has of the natural world and I can relate to all of them quite easily. That is until Act V of King Lear. Yes, I met my match in Shakespearean nature lingo with this line of Lear's:

"She's dead as earth."

This is of course speaking of his faithful daughter but the simile just doesn't make sense to me. Because, well, earth or (as I'm taking it for this post) soil/dirt is really quite alive in many ways! See even when major disasters come through the earth rebounds. It is in the soil that life springs from. Earth, dirt, soil whatever you want to call it, is the foundation for life.

Confused by my logic? Let my try to be clearer. When a disaster such as a fire goes through an area or ecosystem almost everything is wiped out. Animals flee the area if they aren't killed and vegetation burns to a crisp (just watch the fire in Bambi if you don't believe me). Then there is nothing, just the earth/soil and the charred remains. While this may seem like a bad thing, in many ecosystems it is actually needed. For in the soil life begins to stir.

Soil contains bacteria, microorganisms, nutrients, small animals and seeds (hello, life!). Plants such as the aspen tree actually depend on fire for their survival. When a fire comes through an area containing aspen, sure all the big aspen are decimated but their root system senses the heat and when the flames are gone the roots send up green shoots called suckers. These are brand new trees! The aspen has grown so dependent on fire that it is now almost virtually the only way it can reproduce.

Now that's a little off topic but it's important. If there wasn't soil/earth this life couldn't first of all be preserved because there would be no substrate, but secondly it couldn't come back. Because soil in in some way seemingly invincible the life that plants such as the aspen store in the soil is saved and then continues.

Many other plants store on their seeds in the earth and then depend on it to grow out of and provide the nutrients necessary to grow. When the plants grow you enter the food chain. Plants are eaten by herbivores which are then in turn eaten by carnivores! This also is true in the ocean! The seafloor often contains eggs of animals as well as in shallow areas it grows aquatic plants and provides the foundation for coral.

The whole biosphere is dependent on the existence on soil or earth!!! That is why Lear's statement "dead as earth" is so confusing to me! Shakespeare has me stumped!

Unless I guess, Shakespeare is trying to say that Cordelia may appear dead and of no use but her previous life and now current death has provided spiritual life in many ways. People see the errors of their ways and learn. We as readers also see how we can be and can then improve ourselves and our lives....but I just don't know about that...it seems like a stretch.

Any ideas? (And I'm sorry this sounds like a lecture, but I guess that's just how it came out.)

Birds, Birds, Birds!

I have noticed so many bird references in King Lear. Seriously it's nuts! There's at least 2 references in every Act! Anyways I posted once on a bird reference already, but I just want to put up a few more. I mean its interesting to see them scattered in the play, but I also really like the meaning behind each of them!

Act One

• "The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long,/That it had it head bit off by it young." - This one I actually already went into great depth talking about already (see above link), so...yeah.

• "Detested kite!" - The kite being spoken of here is not the children's toy. No a kite is actually a bird that is found in many parts of the world. What you many not know is that kite's typically eat carrion, so in many ways they can be compared to vultures. This line is also addressed to Goneril, after Lear has discovered part of her sinister nature. Just another way Shakespeare portrays the relationship on a deeper level!

Act Two

• "Renegade, affirm, and turn their halcyon beaks/With every gale and vary of their masters." - Now I actually got more insight on this one from my Dover Thrift Edition of the play. In the footnotes it told me that a halcyon is another name for a kingfisher. See it was a common belief that if a kingfisher had a cord tied around it's neck and was then suspended, that it's beak would face the direction that the wind is coming from. I honestly have no idea how this could have come about because there is no scientific proof to support this but it does make an interesting point. By using this comparison Kent is talking about how those people around him are very flaky and easily persuaded by anyone who comes their way! They simply want to follow and support those who will bring them the most profit in the end, even if it means betraying their current employers.

• "Winter's not gone yet if wild geese fly that way."

• • • • 
        
    "Oh Regan, she hath tied/Sharp-tooth'd unkindness, like a vulture here." - In the script it has Lear point to his heart right after this line. In some ways I wonder if Lear is trying to say that after discovering his daughter's true natures that his heart has died and they are mercilessly feeding on it. They are showing no mercy to his aching soul, and instead they keep battering it. (Just a thought)

• 
  

• "To be a comrade with with wolf and owl."

Act Three

• "Judicious punishment! 't was this flesh begot/Those pelican daughters." - Not going to lie, when I read this one I was really confused. I couldn't figure out what this meant. But once again my footnotes helped me out. According to Medieval legends and myths, the pelican would stab itself when food was scare and thus allow its young to drink its blood. Some other sources say that the pelican young would stab the mother with there own beaks. However this is only a myth. Pelicans do not in fact drink the blood of their parents, but once again this common misconception adds much to Lear's new view of his daughters. I think is is one point where he finally sees just how little his daughters care for him and just how much have been using him. He sees the reality of their nature and how they are like the cuckoo and the pelican. They only want him for what he has to materially give them, and if he dies in the process they could care less.

• "The foul fiend haunts poor Tom in the voice of a nightingale." - I don't understand this one at all simply because the song of nightingale is actually quite beautiful! Any ideas?

Well there you go! All the bird references I have found so far in King Lear! I'll admit I love them. I think in general they really add to the vibrancy of the story. But it might just be the nature lover in me. It also makes me really excited for my Ornithology class this upcoming semester!

Parasitic Families

Hopefully your parents don't consider you to be a parasite. But this what the Fool seems to be insinuating about Goneril, and frankly he's right. (This is one of the first glimpses at what we will see in King Lear about parent-child relationships.)

The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long,

That it had it head bit off by it young. (Act 1 scene 4)

Now, I don't know how much you know about a cuckoo, that is the bird, and so I would like to enlighten you because I think this analogy really illuminates what Fool is trying to illustrate to Lear. It also really demonstrates the first glance at family relationships in this play.

The common cuckoo lays its eggs in the nests of other birds. The birds don't recognize the egg as one that is not their own. The cuckoo eggs develops a lot faster than other birds and so generally it hatches before the other bird. The newly hatched cuckoo chick then proceeds to push the other eggs out of the nest and eliminates the other competition. As it grows the other adult birds feed the cuckoo chick for 16 hours everyday. See one cuckoo chick is usually about the equivalent of feeding

10 of the regular bird's chick. This is an enormous task!! This is so much work for the birds that end up being smaller than their chick that they are unable to produce another nest full of their own chicks! The cuckoo literally takes all and gives back nothing. (And just for your enjoyment here is a video so you can see that this is real life! Sorry its a link but it decided not to embed....)

Once you know and see this, you can see why choosing to compare Goneril to a cuckoo is such a vivid description, and why it should have snapped Lear back to the reality of his relationship right away.

See, Goneril is only using Lear and is unwilling to give back anything in return. Her whole life she has been fed, protected, and cared for by Lear and the wealth that he has to supply. And much like the cuckoo chick, which has no love or concern for its providers, she has no concern for her father. She just demands, takes, demands more and then schemes to take more! She doesn't even truly love him and wants him totally out of her castle! She is treacherous, and I am sure would have taken out her other siblings, like the cuckoo does the other eggs, if a chance had been given to her before!

Like the other birds, I cannot believe Lear has not seen this before. He is so blinded by pride that he doesn't want to see what is really missing from his life and the many flaws that he has. He doesn't want to truly understand that his daughter is manipulative, cunning, smooth tongued and is planning his downfall. He is being worked over by his daughter and yet he keeps allowing it to happen, until he finally comes to see the truth. But even then he is still blinded as he decides to go see his daughter Regan, who is also like the cuckoo but he has yet to believe that. The only child who is true to him is Cordelia, and he pushed her out of his nest by himself.

They Said and Thought What?!

So in my last post about my plan for my analysis I mentioned going over some themes in Antony and Cleopatra. However if I go over all of those this post would be huge, so I'm just going to touch on two topics that I have hit in previous posts. The first will be nature references and the second with be, of course, reality perception.

Earthiness

Like I've said before, I've noticed that Shakespeare loves the nature references, and I personally find them very effective. Now the movie Cleopatra wasn't in Shakespeare's words. This is because they actually base the movie off of the fantastical perception of Cleopatra's mortal life. However, the second half is about her relationship with Antony, which Shakespeare wrote the play about! So it works. But since they don't use the actual play lines I had to just look at how they might decide to incorporate the natural world into the film.

Sadly there is only one point that stands out to me in how they used the natural world to make a point. See there is a part of the movie where a dead body is thrown over the wall as a warning to Cleopatra. So as the body is removed and Cleopatra fears for her and her son's life, the sky turns dark, the wind picks up, and it begins to rain. As with in many movies, they used nature to set the gloomy and ominous mood.

BUT don't worry! As mentioned before the play is loaded with nature references! Here are a few of my favorites that I think just really pack the punch.

"When my good stars, that were my former guides,/Have empty left their orbs, and shot their fires/Into the abysm of hell."


"His legs bestrid the ocean: he rear;d arm/Crested the world: his voice was propertied/As all the tuned spheres, and that to friends;/But when he meant to quail and shake the orb, He was as rattling thunder."


"Sometimes we see a cloud that's dragonish;/A vapour sometime like a bear or lion,/A tower'd citadel, a pendent rock,/A forked mountain, or blue promontory/With trees upon't that nod unto the world,/And mock our eyes with air."





Is this real life?

Antony and Cleopatra is full of people believing what they want to and choosing to ignore the blatant and obvious truth. Mainly it is between the two main characters themselves, and this was actually very apparent in the movie.

So there's a soothslayer in the movie who predicts that Julius Cesear will become Emperor and reign with Cleopatra at his side. Of course, this doesn't happen and Cesear is killed by the Senate and Cleopatra sent running back to Egypt. However they both obviously wanted to believe it, so they did despite obvious signs indicating otherwise.

Also, an interesting note about the movie, both Cleopatra and Cesear believe they are gods, and thus they cannot be killed by mortal hands. Cesear is so convinced that he is untouchable that even when Cleopatra expresses some of her fears about a potential assassination, he blows her off telling her she is silly. But at the same time Cleopatra constantly brags of her divinity! Neither want to admit to their weaknesses and just claim they are right because they are divine. It's crazy!

(Just as a side note, Cleopatra believes she is Isis and destined to rule the world.)

Now I'm sorry this is getting long so here are just few lines from the play how people have chosen to reconstruct their reality so they can justify their actions or get what they want. (Cleopatra is a pro at this.)

"If you find him sad,/Say I am dancing; if in mirth, report/That I am sudden sick"

"You praise yourself/By laying defects of judgement to me"

"All is lost;/This foul Eqyptian hath betrayed me." - This is actually Antony! He feels guilty about desterting his men in battle and running after Cleopatra like a dog, so he decides to find some way to be angry at her instead of himself!


You're at the end!

There are so many other great manipulations of reality, but I'm sure by this time this post is so long you don't want to read anymore! So I'll leave you with this. I just think it is so interesting that so many of Shakespeare's characters seem to have problems answering for their actions, so they feel the need to alter reality so they can feel better about themselves.

It makes me wonder how much I do this in my own life...Think about it. Do you do this is your life? I'm sure we all do in someway, because after all Shakespeare is the master and showing our human flaws in his characters.

Initial Reaction....WHEW!!!

Can I just say that Antony and Cleopatra was way more complicated, and a lot longer than I thought it would be?! There were so many subplots in the reading of the play that I was so thankful for online scene by scene summaries so I could make sure I was reading the play correctly!

Let's just say that in the midst of their complicated and blossoming love, Antony and Cleopatra have to deal with war! I'm not gonna lie I was often confused by motivations of characters and I think I will have to go back and examine more of why they do what they do.

While I was reading I also found themes that I would like to go back and examine. These include the following:

~Poison references
~Manipulation of others
~How the characters choose to perceive their reality
~Nature references
~Ambition versus Passion

I actually didn't find in my initial reading as many reality crisis as I thought I would find but I want to go back and examine those. I didn't see too much of this is in the movie either actually. What really interested me why how quickly the characters are to believe things that may or may not be there.

A quick thought on the movie Cleopatra is simply, wow. It was four hours long and the first two hours actually portray a plot that happens before the play even begins! In face it is more a movie about Julius Cesar and Cleopatra at first! Not only that but Cleopatra at first had such ambitious motivations and she didn't seem as cruel or cold as the play seems to make her out to be. I just thought that was such an interesting choice to do those things. In some ways it really added to the dynamics of the relationship Antony and Cleopatra had, but it also took away. I was ready to get to the point and have the movie end after the first two hours.

Yep, those are just my first thoughts after looking at the two versions of the story so just wait for the in depth analysis to come next week!!

Wintry Blasts and Thawing Rays

I've been thinking about the theme of winter and spring in a Winter's Tale. You know the play starts out in winter and the second half is in the spring but I think that for Leontes the majority of the play is in fact spent in the winter time.

Now I don't mean this in the literal sense, Leontes doesn't have himself in a room with a snow-maker on 24/7 while catching hypothermia and drinking hot cocoa. Nope, I think that he is in "winter" in his soul. His mind is frozen in the moment 16 years ago, his heart gone cold and hope shoveled from his soul. He is in "winter" because he believes there is no way he can ever come back from his crimes. (Especially since Paulina keeps blasting him with icy stares and bitter guilt trips.)

But in Act V scene 1, I believe he begins to see the sun's rays in the distance. He slowly begins to thaw out when his long lost daughter appears and finally bursts through the ice when Hermione is revealed to be alive! His winter had ended and he has found hope, and springtime, once again.


(Just a side note, I think that if I were in charge of costuming for this play, I would keep Leontes in dull colors until the final scene. I would then choose to put him in a more earthy or spring-time color to show that vibrant hope that is returning to his soul and the new happy reality he has found.)

It's "Nature"al

The Bohemians must have been a nature lovers. All throughout Act 4 I found so many nature references and I love them. Shakespeare is a master of imagery and I find his nature analogies and references so powerful. To me they really illustrate that point that he is trying to drive across. (Granted I'm a Wildlife Conservation major so I'm a bit biased.) So here a few of my favorite nature references in a Winter's Tale...well in Act 4 but I hope to find even more!!



But come; our dance, I pray:/Your hand, my Perdita:so turtles pair/That never mean to part


(that quote reminds me a lot of Romeo and Juliet when he references pilgrims hands)


I wish you/A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do/Nothing but that; move still, still so,/And own no other function




And finally my favorite one....

For never gazed the moon/Upon the water, as he'll stand and read/As 't were my daughter's eyes




In my opinion the true romance of language is nature...not Italian, Spanish or French. Because when you speak in terms of nature everyone knows what you are talking about.