3rd response, due Jan 30: Titus Andronicus in Context

Titus Andronicus is a very difficult play for a modern audience. Many people dislike it so much that they can't believe Shakespeare wrote it! But it was one of his most popular plays during his lifetime. Why such a disparity of response? This assignment asks you to imagine what it was that made Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences love this play. Beyond the violence, what else might have appealed to them? Why did later public opinion turn against the tragedy? This assignment requires you to make an imaginative leap of faith and to really put yourself in an Early Modern person's shoes. Does this thought exercise change the way you think about this play?

Also, for fun, a link to an piece in the Smithsonian about Julie Taymor, who directed the film of Titus Andronicus as well as the Broadway Lion King.  In this interview, she talks about those, and MSND. 
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/why-shakespeare-is-julie-taymors-superhero-180947631/

Response paper due in commonplace book by the 23: Character Study

A Midsummer Night's Dream showcases some intriguing, yet frustrating, characters. What's bothering Titania, really? How can Bottom be so asinine and yet so perceptive? Why can't we tell the four lovers apart? What motivates Puck? Who is Theseus?

For this short response paper (to be stored in your Commonplace Book and submitted for review on the 23rd of January) choose a character from this play to explore.  What do you find interesting about her? If you were to perform her part, how would you interpret her words and actions? Is she believable or overblown, flat or complex? Does she bug you? Why?

The Sonnets

The sonnets, often with a facsimile of the 1609 Quarto Version. It also includes sonnets by Shakespeare's contemporaries:
http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/printing

An overview of the sonnets' history and controversy:
http://public.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/shakespeare/sonnets.html

an awesome hypertextual concordance:
http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~rac101/concord/texts/sonnets/

searchable sonnets: http://www.samdutton.com/shearch/

This allows you to compare sonnets side by side:
http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/sonnets/sonnets.php

for the language buffs, the sonnets translated into Latin:
http://www.slu.edu/colleges/AS/languages/classical/latin/tchmat/pedagogy/latinitas/dv/dv.html

Reflection on Stage or Screen Performance

Chances are you've seen Shakespeare on screen, and likely on stage too. This reflection (at least one is due, but you are welcome to write more) asks you to write a bit about an adaptation or production you recently observed. How does the staging, the actors' performances, the music, the era of the production, and the screenplay choices effect the text of the play?

Here is a list of MANY different screen adaptations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_William_Shakespeare_film_adaptations

Theater Company Performance

One of the major requirements for this course asks you to form a playing company of approximately 5 other students. For information on the playing companies of the period, see:
http://shakespearecontext.blogspot.com/2014/01/contemporary-performance.html
You will be responsible for staging one 25 minute scene from a play of your choice, as well as preparing impromptu readings in class. Your group can sign up for a time slot in the semester for your performance, which must be staged and memorized.

As a group, you will write a 5 page reflection document addressing the following questions, and anything else you might add. What portion of the play did you choose? How did you decide upon the play? What are the strengths of the members of your company? What choices did you make in your staging of the play? Did you include musical interludes or non-verbal performance? Why or why not?
 Now that you have performed your piece, what would you do differently the second time? Has this experience changed your perspective on Shakespeare's plays at all?

To be turned in on the class period after the performance

Contemporary Performance

Henslowe's Diary: the personal record of the owner of The Rose theater:

http://www.henslowe-alleyn.org.uk/essays/henslowediary.html

http://books.google.com/books/about/Henslowe_s_Diary_Text.html?id=3jYVAAAAYAAJ

Primary sources related to contemporary stagings:

http://shakespearestaging.berkeley.edu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=31&Itemid=191

On Playing Companies:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playing_company

to sense what has been lost:
http://www.lostplays.org/index.php/Main_Page

reviews of current period productions on Broadway:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/11/theater/reviews/twelfth-night-and-richard-iii-with-mark-rylance.html?_r=0

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/events/theatre/twelfth-night-richard-iii-belasco-theatre

Word-Study Exercise:

Choose 3 words over the course of the semester and do a thorough word-study on each using the LEME, the OED, the glossary and bibliographical trail from your readings and other sources. Prepare a response (in your commonplace book) that maps your discoveries, walks us through the origin (etymology) of the word, its history and meaning in EME, and, if applicable, its modern life. 

Questions to ask:

• What about this word intrigued you? Did you know the word before? Can you describe these

qualities to your classmates?

• Does the word exist in modern usage? If so, does it have the same meaning? If not, why do you think the meaning has changed?
• What is the etymology of the word? Does its adoption tell us something about England’s history?
•  Did it replace another word with a synonymous meaning? If so, why?
• What kind of work is it doing in Shakespeare’s oeuvre? Did he coin it? Is it used elsewhere at the time? Does he seem aware of the multiple

resources:

http://shakespearecontext.blogspot.com/2014/01/basic-resources.html

Reception Study

As an English major, you probably have a favorite author, and chances are that author had something to say about Shakespeare. For this short critical essay, show how a later author engages in a dialogue with 'The Immortal Bard.' Does your author resent, dislike, admire, or worship Shakespeare? Can you show specific moments where this influence is most palpable? 

One resource:

http://shakespearecontext.blogspot.com/2014/01/pre-20th-century-critics-on-shakespeare.html

This critical paper will be 5-6 pp, double-spaced. 

Shakespeare's Sources

Folger primary source list: http://www.folger.edu/eduPrimSrcArch.cfm?CFID=10450826&CFTOKEN=444ef60a8865b763-78F62897-3473-0E4E-CC6E2ECA695CC169

a helpful graph organized by work:

http://shakespeare-w.com/english/shakespeare/source.html

Source Study

Shakespeare did not come up with his plotlines; nearly all are based on at least one source. For this paper, please compare one specific aspect of a Shakespearean play with what you find in one of its sources (e.g. Hamlet's cunning in Saxo v. Shakespeare).

The first place to look for sources is in the intro and critical notes to the plays in Norton. 

Some online resources are listed here:

Holinshed: 

http://www.cems.ox.ac.uk/holinshed/

http://shakespeare-w.com/english/shakespeare/source.html

Folger primary source list: http://www.folger.edu/eduPrimSrcArch.cfm?CFID=10450826&CFTOKEN=444ef60a8865b763-78F62897-3473-0E4E-CC6E2ECA695CC169

http://shakespearecontext.blogspot.com/2014/01/basic-resources.html

This critical paper will be 5-6 pp, double-spaced. 

Your Commonplace Book

Early Modern scholars and artists often collected fragments of things that interested them, ideas, and quotations in journal-like collections called Commonplace Books: http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/reading/commonplace.html

see http://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/2010/04/the-glass-box-and-the-commonplace-book.html

for an explanation of the uses of the Commonplace Book. 

Also, 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonplace_book

For this class, you will start one of your own. It can be analog (in a journal reserved for the task) or digital (in a blog format so you have some creative freedom), but the idea is to start keeping scraps, bits and pieces of quotations, ideas that others generate, or things that strike you as interesting from this Class on Shakespeare. 

You may wish to start with some thematic interests; your first assignment will be to identify some of the motifs, ideas, or themes you have run across in Shakespeare's work that you find compelling. Then begin collecting text, even drawing things, musing, charting, etc. 

The Commonplace Book will become a record of your hunches, ideas, and theories in this class, and you will use it later to generate critical writing. 

These will be due on Thursday every other week, starting on the 23rd of January. 

Illustrations and Illuminations

Shakespeare Illustrated:

http://shakespeare.emory.edu/illustrated_introduction.cfm

Photographs of Players and Productions:

http://www.ulib.csuohio.edu/shakespeare/

Shakespearean Poetics

shakespearean verse and prose: 

http://cla.calpoly.edu/~dschwart/engl339/verseprose.html

The Forest of Rhetoric, a resource for understanding the art of turning a phrase:

http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/silva.htm

Shakespeare in his Space and Time

Map of Early Modern London:

http://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/STPA2.htm

See the Bard's Birthplace: 

http://www.shakespeare.org.uk/home.html

on the Elizabethan Age: 

http://www.elizabethan-era.org.uk/elizabethan-age.htm

pbs show in search of shakespeare:

http://www.pbs.org/shakespeare/theshow/

On the Theaters of the Period:

http://shalt.dmu.ac.uk/index.html

Maps of London: 
http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/crace/index.html

historical resources:
http://www.connectedhistories.org/

Some interesting articles: 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/9203296/Neil-MacGregor-interview-Shakespeares-Restless-World-a-history-in-objects.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/8853306/Shakespeare-conspiracy-theories.html

Musical and Theatrical Performance

Performance of Shakespeare: 

http://shakespearestaging.berkeley.edu/

Bardbox: 

http://bardbox.wordpress.com/

On the use of music in the plays: 

http://www.britannica.com/shakespeare/article-9396030

Listen to music in the time of Shakespeare: 

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLY0HG7j1maOjUyzGjnfL250Pg-GE0DcA0

Online videos of productions across the world:

http://globalshakespeares.mit.edu/#

Textual Studies

quartos: 

http://www.quartos.org/

British Library: 

http://www.bl.uk/treasures/shakespeare/homepage.html

Early Modern resources. Manuscripts, maps, editions, facsimiles: 

http://earlymodernweb.org/resources/category/primary-sources/

Basic Resources

World Shakespeare Bibliography Online: 

http://www.worldshakesbib.org/

Internet Shakespeare Editons. Editions of the Plays and many resources:

http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/

Visualizing English print: 

http://winedarksea.org/?p=1799

Oxford English Dictionary: 

https://library.umaine.edu/auth/auth.asp

Lexicon of Early Modern English:

http://leme.library.utoronto.ca/

good online editions:
http://www.folgerdigitaltexts.org/

open source shakespeare

http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/

Britannica's guide to Shakespeare: 

http://www.britannica.com/shakespeare

Virtual Shakespeare

fly through 17th c. london:

http://www.openculture.com/2013/11/fly-through-17th-century-london.html

tour of globe:

http://www.shakespearesglobe.com/about-us/virtual-tour

the globe film: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK_apD7Aec8

virtual globe:

http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/converse/movies/sound_globe.swf

Pre-20th Century Critics on Shakespeare

shakespeare and his critics: http://shakespearean.org.uk/

Ben Johnson:

http://www.bartleby.com/27/2.html

Sam Johnson:

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/j/johnson/samuel/preface/preface.html#preface

John Dryden:

http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/drampoet.html

Pope's preface to Shakespeare:

http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/pope-shakespeare.html

Carlyle (search for King Shakespeare): 

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=1091

Tolstoy: 

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27726

The Original Pronunciation

Here are some resources for coming to understand the way Shakespeare's English 
sounded. 

An introductory podcast from NPR on pronunciation: 

http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2012/03/24/149160526/shakespeares-accent-how-did-the-bard-really-sound

Meier's pdf aiding learning OP: 

http://www.paulmeier.com/OP.pdf

Shakespearean pronunciation: 

http://www.openculture.com/2013/09/what-shakespeare-sounded-like-to-shakespeare.html

Crystal's pronouncing Shakespeare: 

http://www.pronouncingshakespeare.com/

http://originalpronunciation.com/learning-op/