shakespeare essay quotes – Flashcards

-taken from Ovid, and schoolboys would already have the original -Venus going from beautiful and put-together to wild and running in the fields -Shakespeare incorporates other myths from the Metamorphoses, like Narcissus -draws off Echo myth, when Venus' weeping voice comes back to her -Salmakis, nymph who tries to make love with Hermaphroditis, aggressive female lover, they become one being with two sexes

-popular genre of poetry in england in this time -scillaes Metamorphosis, Thomas Lodge -Hero and Leander, Christopher Marlowe -epyllion is diminutive form of epic -shorter subjects from myth, main subject is love -Venus and Adonis written while theatres were closed with plague in 1590's -this is the first piece to be published, and his most popular -many editions -entertaining, witty, challenging -thematically engaged with language conversion -Venus tries to convert Adonis to loving her -Shakespeare flips gender conventions, mixes up myths -not a successful conversion narrative -he refuses to be changed by her -narrator, Venus speech, to a lesser extent Adonis speed -self-reflexively comments on its own status as dialectic form -poetry was supposed to be the highest rhetorical form -Venus has delightful, persuasive words, Adonis must arm himself against her -perfectly rhythmic and metered, pentameter -iambic -rhyme scheme ABABCC, sestet stanza form

-formal poetry uses meter to order language -length and sound in verse -most Shakespeare is accentual-syllabic, most English poetry since 14th c, counting syllables and stresses -all spoken language has rhythm, but only metered poetry has meter -3 major factors for determining where stresses fall in a line: word accent, grammatical function of a word, and prevailing metrical accent -Venus and the narrator express their feeling on poetry -"Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear" -"like a nymph... no footing seen", self reflexive moment, sprezzatura, a poetry so light and natural that you don't sense the feet -"'Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear, Or, like a fairy, trip upon the green, Or, like a nymph, with long dishevell'd hair, Dance on the sands, and yet no footing seen: Love is a spirit all compact of fire, Not gross to sink, but light, and will aspire."

-birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it -horse dumps Adonis to have sex with a beautiful mare -epyllia often have these often have these long digressions -Adonis, like mare, is coy -Venus suggests Adonis do it like a horse -horses making love, image of fearless natural desire -allegory of gender, sexual honour and propriety have no effect -line 285 behaviour explained by Venus -line 391, love makes you free in this image -Venus wants adonis to be more like his horse -punning on deer, my dear, but also a deer ranging on her body -she's super wordy and persuasive, but he is coy like the mare, kicks at the stallion -Adonis blushes when he loses his horse, conversion/inversion of traditional gender roles -gender constructs of the period: women passive, men active -Shakespeare plays around with this -she seizes him right off his horse and is very forceful and active -she's red hot, he's frosty in desire -humoral theory; choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic and sanguine -imbalance of humours causes illness -wet, hot, cold and dry are your options -sex related: men are hot and dry, women are cool and wet -Venus has masculine humoral temperament -she puts him on top to be active, but he's no taker -the lists of love, chivalric, lances in tournament, phallic imagery -but he can't get it up and she can't get to Elysium -Adonis feminized, "mermaids voice", "thrice fairer than myself" -she objectifies him, describes all the sensory / bodily ways she loves him -Adonis refusing advances is feminizing in this paradigm -Venus wishes she was a man, her masculine qualities extend to her persuasive power -she does most of the talking in the poem -Adonis speaks little, makes arguments against love, he only likes hunting -he also argues that he is too young for love, "before I know myself, seek not to know me", starting to sound more mature -he also says it's getting late, wants to go home, he sleeps better on his own -irony: love doesn't kill him in the end, but hunting -his next argument is that she is "loose", says she's lying about wanting to procreate -he says lust is insatiable and grotesque -he begins learning rhetoric, contrasts love with lust in anaphora -he's unripe and unwilling to disturb his peace of mind, he doesn't desire her at all -weak arguments also "feminize" -Shakespeare asks us to reconsider our gender roles, question the validity of arguments against love

-Venus is the day star, but becomes Adonis, "So glides he in the night from Venus's eye" -chiasmus: wise in folly, foolish-witty -lament genre, a literature of tears -popular in poetry and music -John Dowland, Lacrimae for lute -sorrow can be full of pleasure and beauty, very popular -fashionable to be melancholic in your humours, excess of black bile -Ficino: melancholy when you're in love -John Donne, total melancholic lover, illuminate tenebras nostras domina (lighten our shadows, lady) -takes something spiritual, makes it about erotic love -her grief has copious complex stages -aestheticized despair -overflowing enjambment when she thinks he's dead, chiasmus about tears in her eyes -"variable passions" grief and passion are erotic -but when she's actually seeing his body, it is a more realistic and grotesque grief -her tears no longer as stars, but snails -it's like an earthquake internalized, heart groaning, hugeness, internal disruption -line 1123, Adonis passive and dead, pierced in groin: extreme feminized -when Venus curses, sets up tragic paradigm of lovers, and sorrow that comes with passion -the experience of grief changes venus' perspective -she sees double, then triple, curses love itself -Adonis transformed into a flower symbolizing all the beauty and grief of mortal love

-more serious undertaking for Shakespeare -takes on gender constructions, ideas of masculine and feminine honour -his dedication of the book is much more intimate, from poet to patron -antistrophe (yours x3, greater x2) -dedicated to henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton -Shakespearean gossip: fair youth Adonis might be inspired by Henry -this epillion again from Ovid, from the fasti

-8 AD, collection of poetry -Roman deities explain origins of Roman festivals -6 books, one for each month (unfinished, since Ovid was exiled by Augustus from January to June) -Lucrece is in book 2 -also in Livy's history of Rome -Shakespeare takes image of her hair stirring in death and puts it before the R, in her sleep -amplifies his source poem, 14 times longer, transposes images, enriches with resonance -sAmuel Daniel, Shakespeare's contemporary, publishes complaint poem, Rosamund (the ghost of Lucrece) -it is written in rhyme royal, ABABBCC -popularized in English by Chaucer in Troilus and Crisede and some of the tales -slower, father stanzas in Shakespeare moves with more gravity -aural and temporal variety -doesn't always end in closed couplet -can be tercet, when 2 couplets ABA BB CC -or quatrain / tercet; ABAB BCC -concerned with love, desire, eros and matters of Rome -overthrow Tarquin, establish Roman republic -tragic mini epic

-laid out p. 279, The Argument -Lucretia is the most chaste of all women -Sextus Tarquinius filled with lust -Tarquin violates Lucrece, and she commits suicide, making her father and husband promise revenge -provoke sympathy of people, overthrow kings: democracy -the poem is not about what happens, but about the language, psychological exploration -disturbingly beautiful language -tells you the whole plot in the Argument because it's not about spoilers or the plot -the poem is disturbing and difficult -describe her beauty, some man may overhear and get lustful, not a sympathetic opinion -we see thru Tarquin's creepy objectifying eyes -empathetic discomfort, not sympathetic but you can empathize (ew bad??? i hate this class) -poetic language can change the auditor's thinking -sense that we might be tainted or polluted by hearing the beautiful poetry -self-conscious poem about issue of beauty and virtue -trouble between outward appearance and inward intention, Tarquin appears good -meditation on problem of desire, it is never sated -Lucrece is uneducated in lust, which is dangerous, can't read subtleties in glassy margins of his eyes -Tarquin is a politician, full of words -line 120, revolving, obtaining, feminine endings, aurally dramatizes his churning mind -he's abysmally nasty, wants Lucrece because she's chaste, travesty to principles of goodness -very perverse man, he says "the fault is thine" -this guy will inherit the throne of rome -Renaissance: internal and external order link the kingdom linked to king

-plato says: people in power have passions uncontrolled by reason -Tarquin being led and ruled by his appetites -the soul, according to Plato, has 3 parts: reason, spirit and appetites -uses allegory of chariot for well-parted soul, charioteer is reason, the other 2 are horses -charioteer to keep both horses going in same direction -he has 2 forces inside fighting, cannot rule his own self, his reason doesn't step in -so he can't rule the state either, and Lucrece reminds him of this -Shakespeare uses language to convert the topography of bodies (Venus is a meadow, Lucrece is a fortress) -artistic conversion, modulation of well-established thematics -of Shakespeare's 38 plays, only 3 have no traceable source materials, not such an original genius -"metaphor" in Greek, to carry over -Adonis literally converted into a symbol, a flower at the end -confirmation bias; if you're looking for something you will find it

-adonis into a flower -venus' gender roles -converted from ovid -wooing: venus tries to convert Adonis from indifferent to lustful -venus converted by grief, double conversion, maybe he's dead and then sees-the-body -conversion of venus' attitude, from goddess of love into goddess of grief, which humanizes her -her curse on love changes how all lovers will love after that -why does adonis say no? -death is a conversion, he is converted by death into a flower -sexuality as conversion -double rejection: Venus as an individual -but also love itself since she's the goddess of love, he's scorning her and her job

-the conversion of lu from pure and faithful wife to impure -psychological conversion in Tarquin, from nobility to really not noble -Lu begins as a victim, then takes agency, she takes the action to kill herself, "I am the mistress of my fate" -change in narration, from Tarquin's story to hers -act itself as a conversion, the collapse of a fortress, again with the topography of bodies -Tarquin: from qualities of a leader into out of control (social conversion: his behaviour, psychological: his mind; the two merge together) -conversion of her blood, as it spills from her it is otherwise from what it would have been if Tarquin had not touched her, darker in colour (Latin has many words for blood in different contexts)

-his candle can't be blown by the wind, too lusty and hot -lu has been weaving while other wives go out dancing -tragic irony: audience knows what tragic "hero" doesn't know (Tarquin's imperfect knowledge) -he misinterprets all the warnings -platonic idea of disordered soul led by apetites, but also Christian sinner -"the blackest sin is cleared by absolution" described as serpent-like as he enters her room, both Satanic and phallic -his perspective is disorderly, shouldn't be our won -his soul is deluded, blinded by a reflection of moonlight which is a reflection of sunlight -allegory of the cave (from plato's republic), most people deluded on what is reality, most of us chained in a cave looking at shadows of puppets, think that's reality -if they leave the cave they will be blinded by the light -Tarquin's perception is off -experience of beauty cannot change his perverted soul -we see her through his eyes, but narrator holds us back from total objectification -reminds us that Tarquin is tyrannical creep -her hair stirs in death in Ovid, here transposed to moving in sleep -chiasmus in wanton modesty etc. -translucent skin: Renaissance aesthetic goals, blue veins are popular (a tan isn't popular) -he wants to conquer, beauty breeds ambition

-how do you lead with tyrannical soul? -if you can't rule your appetites you can't rule a nation -Lucrece uses this argument to talk him out of it -Ovid's Lucrece is silent, Shakespeare's is an eloquent orator -in Shakespeare she never kisses him as in Britten opera, but is immediately alarmed -periodic sentence: used in Latin -rhetoric, endless subordinate clauses before the main clause and verb -a lot of rhetorical punch, litany of responses, also uses anaphora -by, by, by, stoop to honour, not to foul desire (zeugma) -anaphora: me me me thee, draw him to her perception -then persuasive closing couplet, be moved by my tears -he is unmoved, words are not enough -his heart is hard, un-moveable, implacable by language, not following the model a reader should -Tarquin interrupts Lucrece, he won't engage in arguments, just repeats himself with threats -wolf and lamb, image from Ovid -his conquest is hollow, nothing healeth, both he and Lucrece changed forever -he wasn't converted by her words, but was by his actions -depicted in art: Titian -then Rome becomes a democracy

-social conversion / change requires witnesses -tempting to cover up uncomfy truths, slaves in Plato's cave don't want to go into the sunlight -Tarquin hopes to keep it secret, so does Lucrece -and therefore... unseen sin to remain untold -her character, like her skin is translucent -unable to perceive his malicious intent from his wandering eye -she knows she cannot keep a secret -story about societal change when we look a trauma and taboos -foundation myth of the roman republic, reveal the brutalities of tarquin to the roman people -when she kills herself, brutus parades her body in streets of rome, evil private act of tarquin in public eye -brutus to collatinus, we will get revenge -confronted with tyranny of their leader, people rise up and overthrow tarquin -private horror converted to the public

-becomes through death an impetus for change -but destroyed by double standard that says her honour is ruined by tarquin -Shakespeare brings this problem to air, asking us to consider injustice -shows her internalizing the crime -worried she will become notorious, thinks she has hurt her husband -stain / spot language, invisible disgrace, private scar -worried Collatine wounded through her -grapples with pain, and disjunct between her honourable actions and the shame she feels nevertheless -she is not to blame, she knows -asks husband and father and Brutus: her identity was based on chastity, constructed by men, how to live now? -Lucrece finds society gives no recourse -Shakespeare insists she is blameless, she eeps with her maid -men are marble, women waxen minds, formed as marble wills (women soft transparent) -women are only corrupt because of men, who make the system -Brutus uses his male privilege to comment, Lu is internalized, the action of another's wrong, should not have had to die -she is a perfect woman via society, and her goodness destroys her, paradox -asks us to reconsider unjust social constructs about female honour -complex reaction to trauma and grief in Lu, she is forever changed by her pain -2 rivers of blood, one black one red -worried for husband, compassionate in her grief, still a person who is full of love and concern -she worries she may have gotten pregnant -common trauma reaction, stay silent to prevent further pain from loved ones -but for change, we need witnesses, peeping boy in Titan's painting -"I am the master of my fate", regaining some agency, she feels empowered as she dies

-grief/trauma can change our perception of art in a positive way -poem describing another artifact -depiction of the fall of troy -devotional attention to description, she speaks to the painting, beauty can be destructive -while waiting for Collatinus, searches painting to help her grieve -art is important in moments of shock and grief -makes her way to the painting, Hecuba (priam's wife), king and queen of troy -lucrece finds in hecuba a model of suffering -again, kidnapping of helen by paris had huge consequences for society -Romans affiliated with troy, greeks are bad guys for lu -art helps her release her anger and frustration, engaging with characters of painting, she becomes a better reader for her experience -traumatized conversion of her thought, she becomes more perceptive reader of art -reevaluate commodification of beauty and victim blaming

-plays in verse: properties of sound and language still important -blank verse, popular in english poetry, probably one third of english poetry -still new in shakespeare's time -first found in henry howard earl of surrey, translated Virgil's Aeniad -debate in literary circles about rhyme, blank verse is not rhymed -we saw ancients as models of good poetry, greeks and romans don't rhyme -rhyme can be a little jingly and unrhyming sounds more serious and heavy -thomas campion, user of rhyme, trashes rhyme nevertheless -he thought relying on rhyme made your meter get sloppy, poets use rhyme to make it sound like poetry, but no internal structure -philip sidney said: Ancients (quantitative) and modern (accentual) -he says ancient better for music, express passion -modern (rhyme) sounds musical, both are good

-introduced by surrey translating virgil's Aeniad -debate over merits of rhyme in english verse -Samuel Daniel, "Rosalind", ghost Lucrece, for rhyme -Thomas Campion, against -Sidney all about English being best vernacular language, good for rhyme and unrhymed -Sidney knew lots of languages so he knew -in Shakespeare times, poets experimenting with unrhymed verse

-first poet to do a good job on blank verse -plays, Tamburlaine, Doctor faustus -Shakespeare himself instrumental for blank verse plays -John Milton still had to defend his use of it in Paradise Lost -Milton says our best English tragedies, definitely meaning Shakespeare, already gaining status -Shakespeare dies 1616, only half of his plays had been published in quartos -1623, first folio edition, all his plays that we know of -ben jonson, a poet and contemporary playwright, unites elegy for the folios -imitates Shakespeare's prosody -Jonson always scans perfectly, writes in couplets -but he does play around and try to sound like Shakespeare, more caesura, substitutions, enjambment -Shakespeare's writing sounds like common speech, colloquial -paying homage to Shakespeare's poetic elasticity

-Ascham, treatise "The Schoolmaster" from Cicero (Ascham tutored Queen Liz) -let child write things, then translate it into Latin -come to know authors style that he can translate from english back into Latin original without knowing the original -learning by imitation -when you imitate author, you know what diction they will use -you devote your creativity to the style of another orator, another voice -students study how Romans and Greeks translate and imitate each other -trying to situate English poetry in this language tradition

-first performed 1590-1592, revived 1594 (same year as R of L published) -themes: consequence of r, nature of grief, female honour, private vs. public tragedies -first shakespeare play published, also his first tragedy -his name does not appear in 1594 edition -he was not well known enough to bother at the time, his name wouldn't sell -"the most lamentable Romaine tragedie", Titus not easily a tragedy or a history play alone

-in Aristotelean sense, must have a hero whose downfall evokes pity and fear in audience, giving us catharsis -but Titus is unsettling, not purifying -Titus elicits pity on 1st act, but his grief turns to madness and revenge -leaves uncomfortable curiosity, not pity -revenge tragedy: very popular genre -titus to outdo "the spanish tragedy" by thomas kyd, very popular at the time -Tamora dresses as Revenge personified, spoof on tropes of revenge tragedy and Kyd's play -this is not simple, many people get revenge: Titus, Marcus, Tamora, Lavinia, Aaron, little Lucius all get revenge plots -Tamora, "I'll find a day to massacre them all" -young Lucius swears revenge on Tamora, some pretty gross stuff -references to Lucrece, Tarquin, Brutus, Philomel -not to talk about formation of democracy, but revenge

-composite character of othello and iago

-waver between justice and revenge -play set in a christian world, mercy -even tamora believes the ods are merciful by nature -tend to feature injury done to socially disempowered BY the powerful -Titus damages Tamora -emperor to subjects: Saturninus injures Titus -revenge tragedy as genre

-about succession: question of quality of good leadership -plays: julius caesar, antony and cleopatra, coriollanus and titus -employs questions of ledership in titus -saturninus and bassianus vying for the crown -s. because oldest son, B because better person -begins in campaign between brothers -shakespeare explains theatricality in opening scene -theatre as new medium to be explored, permanent playhouses being built -shape of stage, position of audience is new question -Titus as test play, comment on / play with potential and limits of theatre

-visible wall separating audience from players -we look in on the action, that is a separate world and reality -2 realities do not interact -witness parallel world, Coleridge willingly suspend our disbelief -this era of theatre has less of a 4th wall, more participatory and interactive -not a passive audience, many standing, it was daylight (open roof lighting) -titus performed before the Globe, put on at The Rose theatre -probably resembled The Swan theatre -trapdoors in stage -thrust stage, people all around, no 4th wall -more intimate between players and audience -break 4th wall, meta theatrical moment -visceral engagement of audience -crowd gets pushed around by chariots, groundlings becomes actors i the play -Saturninus and Bassiannus give their campaign speeches to the audience -spectators involved, turn English viewers into Roman citixzens, tie-dye between worlds -like being in a kind of liturgy -asks us to make a judgement, decide for ourselves who would make the best king -decide that Saturninus is slimy despite primo genitor -Titus is traditional, makes tragic error to support Saturninus, we see immediately that it is a flaw -hands and gesture very important in this play, can speak, Lavinia muted by hands being cut off -Shakespeare's stage was bloody, used lots of fake blood, lots of graphic spectacular violence and stage magic

-the Peacham drawing, 1593 -depicts a few scenes at once -Tamora begging Titus not to kill her eldest son, everyone looks like Romans, Tamora looks like an Elizabethan (not Gothic) queen -historical mixture in costuming -Tamora would have been played by a man -back then, historical anachronism was no big deal -Shakespeare has more diffuse sources than other 3 plays (those from Plutarch)

-epyllia used greek/roman mythography -titus different, use of monstrous sources -prose history and ballad version of titus, similar dates to the play -unclear which, including the play, came first -ballad, william byrd, "fortune" -ballads: curt action in media res, ballad stanza (quatrains) -remember: england had public executions at this time, titus spectatoes used to seeing people killed -main source, like lucrece and venus and adonis, is Ovid (book 6 of metamorphoses) -myth of Philomela, also of Daphne and Apollo -Daphne runs from Apollo, escaping rape, turned into a laurel tree -Lavinia is humanization of Daphne myth -Philomela more important

-myth begins with strange and ominous mix of celebration and meanin -imagery of hands -Procne sends husband Tirius to fetch sister Philomela for a visit -Tirius aflame with her beauty, unstoppable lustful desire taken up in Shakespeare

-revenge tragedy -somewhat Roman play, but it is a made up story (no historical Titus) -source with Ovid's philomela -Procne marries Tirius, their son Itys (book 6 metam.) -Tirius struck by lust for Procne's sister Philomela -cabin in the woods, dark and ancient trees -nature as danger, also seen in Titus -Philomela protests with outstretched hands, an important imagery motif in Titus, Lavinia echoing Philomela -murder as charity in compassion in this world, Titus charitably murders Lavinia -Titus has letters of complaint shot with arrows up to the gods -Saturninus: whining about it as he's publicly shamed -Tirius cuts out Philomela's tongue -Philomela weaves a tapestry to describe her ordeal, sends it to Procne, piece of art as communication -in Titus, Lavinia chased young Lucius to get at his books -Lavinia uses Ovid's Metamorphoses (more like meta-morphoses) to communicate what has happened, intertextuality -they're all guessing why she's flipping through pages, Marcus guesses it's because it belonged to Lavinia's dead sister -stricken with grief, we turn to art -Marcus is wrong, but still theme of art as comfort -then they figure it out, gloomy woods etc. almost directly quoting Ovid -source for plot points, prop on stage facilitating a moment of revelation of the play -themes more obliquely drawn from Ovidian source -in grief for Philomela, Procne goes mad as does Titus and plans revenge, kills own son Itys (the image of his father)and feeds him to Tirius -imagery of tigresses, wild jungles -Philomela throws decapitated head of Itys at father as he eats -magic tricks on stage to feign decapitation, trap doors -cannibalism in both grotesque endings

-goes beyond ovid -hands cut off as well as tongue, there are 2 perpetrators (chiron and demetrius) -he bakes 2 kids into pie, not one -titus remarks upon his one-upping ovid -greek model seneca, wrote revenge tragedies -says you must always outdo the last tragedian -shakespeare exploring new technology of theatre, points out what you can do onstage -explores difference between poetry / language and action / spectacle -Marcus finds Lavinia, does not help her while she bleeds, just monologues -consider the difference between speaking and acting -super alliterative musical language as reference to Orpheus, Lavinia is musical orphic figure -speech takes 4-5 minutes, slows own action of play, makes Lavinia into an object to be interpreted and understood -both ekphrasis and disturbing take on a blazon -stanley wells described speech as psychological portrait -discomfort: takes ages to say the thoughts of a moment -experiment with monologue and soliloquy -uncomfortable, villains are more eloquent than more sympathetic guys -Aaron and Tamora have great speeches, Lucius doesn't -Aaron says his favourite thin about Tamora is her wit -Tamora can manipulate with poetic words, conflated with her relationship with nature (rustic Goths) -"i'm incorporate in Rome", Rome has become a monster -parrots scene, control language to creepy effect -in Shakespearean theatre, there are no sets, just oral cues, and Tamora gives those, to change audience perception of setting -describes nature with different moods to change setting, even if action has not moved

-Saturninus is insecure about whether he or Lucius is most beloved by the Romans -she gives musical speech and uses rhyme -language goes through your ear to your heart, and Tamora is very skilled at this, as is Aaron -both are eventually undone by their own words, overconfident in abilities -Aaron heard cooing to his child, calling it the issue of an empress -hubris leads to downfall -Tamora underestimates the extent of Titus madness -we don't even know if Titus knows how mad he is -finally an aside to relieve audience from uncomfortable ignorance -invoking incongruous genre of court masque, for more ambiguity

-spectacular entertainment, costume and masks -allegory to tell moralistic simple tale, reaffirming power hierarchies -$$ elaborate sets, clarity of meaning -aristocrats showing off to each other -but in Titus, not much clarity of meaning -affirms power of king -symbolic, simple and clear -when Quintus and Martius find Bassianus' body, audience knows they will be framed for his murder and Shakespeare plays this irony for laughs -Elizabethan stage used pigs blood -putting Lucius, a child, through it, shows the violence will continue in generations to come -tragedy is meant to purge you and offer hope to start fresh -maybe the child of Tamora and Aaron will be the most hopeful chance

-adaptation, excessive version of Ovid's Philomela -theme of conretizing metaphors -Titus takes ashes to ashes imagery literally -reminder to be humble, but turns humility into the grotesque -plays on poetry / metaphor vs. spectacle / reality -literal reading is dangerous

-Titus had opened with funeral, war triumph and wedding -this too is a mix of love and war -Theseus and Hippolita getting married, Aegian king to follow tradition, creates conflict -Ovid: thisbee and pyramus muth -classical setting, Athens -love triangles too -but comedy, happy ending -more circuitous than tragedy, which escalates up -comedy is fundamentally tragedy averted -The Divine Comedy is not funny, but man escapes his tragic fate, gains undeserved salvation -descend into hell, then up through purgatory and into Paradise (the structure of comedy), assent (often, in shakespeare, towards a wedding) -the woods are a place of spiritual confusion -Helena and Hermia must be lost in the wods before they can reach happy endings

-unsure when first written / performed but probably 1594-5 -around the same time as romeo and juliet and richard 2 -no single literary source: thomas north's translation of plutarch's lives (theseus and hippolita), also chaucer's knights tale -theseus subdues Amazons, captures Hippolita for his wife -Shakespeare always complicates his sources -mixture of love and war, but moving towards love -they've both been having love affairs with fairies

-marital troubles -she accuses oberon of sleeping with Hippolita -he accuses her back, a love square -creates parallel structure between 2 couples, sometimes same 2 actors will play both couples -Pyramus and Thisbe are from Ovid, mechanicals (low class, speak in prose) act these out -Pyramus and Thisbe is the source of Romeo and Juliet -golden ass also

-almost always means lower class speakers -ethics of love poetry; fairies are natural phenomenon, could be a sort of cupid -fairies usually supposed to be malignant -comment in the fickle nature of young love? -starts off grim, progresses into a comedy: the opposite trajectory of romeo and juliet -comedy is tragedy averted -not as funny when read on the page, also some of the jokes don't age so well (cuckold jokes were the best back then) -tragic characters nobler than life, which is sadder when they fail -comedic characters are more ridiculous than life -Theseus is the least ridiculous, doesn't even believe the fantasy around him -"fairy weaving spiders come not here", not iambic pentameter but trochaic tetrameter catalectic -catalectic means missing one syllable off the end -this meter used by fairies as well as Macbeth's witches, also Blake's Tyger, feels like a nursery rhyme but also supernatural

-Demetrius into someone who loves someone else (emotional) -Bottom into an ass (physical) -gender roles (helena actively pursuing Demetrius) -marriage: from lovers to spouses -from war to peace, Hippolita becoming a wife and not a warrior princess -fairies acting in a play, temporarily converting their identities -reality / fantasy -human / fairy world -conversion of first scene (hermia will die) to last scene (happily ever after) -common in shakespeare: begin in a city, go into forest / green space, stuff happens, you find a solution -changeling, a way to explain physical disability -Titania's role, begins hostile to Oberon, but then becomes mistress again -sleep: convert everything when you sleep in the forest -beginning, first lines are important -"in four days". blurry about how time passes -"Hippolita, I wooed thee by my sword", freaky, this scene can be played different ways -you can play Hippolita has hostile or loving -Greek myth being converted to shakespeare -same conquered bride dynamic as Tamora in Titus but with a better ending -is this stockholm syndrome? is she wooed for real? -is it believable that an Amazon Queen would happily wed Theseus? -their "love" is more ethicall shady than that of Helena and Demetrius -ribald pun: "I wooed thee with my sword"

-chaucer knight's tale is the source for Theseus and Hippolita -conquers Amazons, marry H their queen -begin with fall of warrior princess, matriarchal monarch -and metamorphosis, Pyramus and Thisbe, acted out by mechanicals -young love thwarted by parents, Aegeus, young lovers elope, but ending is tragic, there's a lion and double suicides -Ovid, myrtle flower, purple / red flower -The Golden Ass, first novel, Roman, picaresque, Lucius having adventures -Bottom enacts this myth -medieval fairies are mean -Tinkerbell tries to murder Wendy? -Oberon and Titania are not human size but had human size lovers -how was this size done onstage? other fairies are tiny, could be played by children, but maybe not -huge burly workmen from Athens could be double cast as tiny fairies for humour

-Robin Goodfellow -calls self a hobgoblin -Oberon and Titania are nice, but Puck is close to mischievious source -Satanic figure originally, causes problems -folk tradition was always just a little outdated -Reginald Scott, tract says witches aren't real -English version of a satyr -but he's also being Cupid in this play -impassion people with irrational love -all their names/personality traits similar, all fools -all susceptible to Cupids and Pucks -Ovidian, love hits arbitrarily -what's the difference between Cupids bow and potion?-it can seem not as deeo, arbitrary, but Demetrius gets a different love spell than the others -not "fall in love with whoever you see" but "fall for your true love" -Elizabethan marriage law: if you promise to marry someone it is a legally binding contract

-Anglicizing the Athenian countryside -Oberon's speech p. 166, description of flowers -current Shakespeare performance is smoother, less incantational, less strict to iambic meter -we are less inclined to like metrical verse -but Shakespeare doesn't write regular poetry, he keeps it metrically engaging and full of substitutions

-not all blank verse -boisterous comic prose from the mechanicals, sometimes rhyming couplets -stychomythia: interlocking lines, linguistic duet -Lysander laments, Hermia presses him on -Helena imitates Hermia in her language, want to make my tongue speak as yours does -then she does become like Hermia, two men love her -performative language / speech act as vows, blessings, benedictions -starveling heckled for being an unrealistic man in the moon, parodic speech-act of Oberon's proclamations

-of time, place and action -time: either 24 hours, or real time -the temporality of this play doesn't really make sense at all -male power vs. female power, Theseus and Hippolita -Aegeus father vs. Hermia -symbols: the moon is love -meeting by moonlight, mechanicals have moonshine

-lunacy and madness -associated with women -menstruation: fickle, changeful, inconstancy -in this play, men are fickle -Theseus has womanizer history

-plato says it can help you get at truths -myth can access truth that reason cannot -midsummer night's dream is dreamlike web of interwoven sources and perspectives -use your imagination, multifaceted nature of desire -reason / passion united through marriages

-dichotomy mixed in titular characters -reason is masculine and passion is feminize, but they mix up this gendered binary -still part of gender ideas -reason: men, Rome, and Roman power -Cleopatra: Egypt, the east, passion, sexuality, feminine (orientalism) -this is the longest shakespeare play

-picks up where Julius Caesar leaves off -1st century BC, Rome goes into civil war -transition from republic to empire -Julius Caesar: dictator, already defeated Pompey -Julius then killed by Brutus and friends -Octavius, grand-nephew, takes on name Caesar -A and C are from 40-30 BC -Rome ruled by a triumvirate, Lepidus rules North Africa, Anthony Asia, and Octavius Europe -shift focus from internal Roman politics to the East and Love -intertwining empire with sexuality -Mars and Venus, love and war -eunuch Mardian references them -source, Plutarch's Lives (a favourite of Shakespeare) -Bill used North's translation -description of Cleopatra on her throne/boat, but not seen, only poetic report (your imagination makes it more fantastic) -we don't know what she looks like, beggared all description, her performance of power more beautiful than her body -described only as "tawny" -the water chases the oars, it wasnt to be beaten -"makes fancy outwork nature" -imagine her as an ideal type -meta, Cleopatra says I don't want a squeaky little boy to play me in a pageant, but this is to be said by a boy actor on Shakespeare's stage -she's also supposed to be old, wife of Julius Caesar, many children -no blazon of her body, her surroundings only -orientalist portrait of Egyptian culture -patronizing negative view of Eastern cultures by Westerners -orientalism becoming widespread in Renaissance as colonialism takes off -19th c brits love this racist play, put it on very sexualized -Cleopatra was 7th, the last pharaoh -historical / political relevance, Queen Liz had just died ad the Empire was expanding -Liz and Cleo both the last of their line -powerful lady monarch figures

-lucrece and titus also -changing political landscape effects human experience -political conversions

-tragedy, called so in 1st folio -chorus-like characters -tragic irony, Charmian outlives Cleo by 2 minutes -Iras will have similar fate, says fortune teller -Enobarbus makes death / orgasm comparison -"nothing" means vagina in Renaissance, love for Anthony as a delicious poison

-centered on a love story -conventions of romance: hero goes off to become himself -but antony goes away and loses himself on his trip -closest Shakespeare ever gets to epic -scope of the play s the whole known world -big temporal scope too -depends very heavily on blank verse, only a few rhymes throughout -modeled on Aeniad, old example of blank verse -Dido and Aeneas are figures, types, tragic lovers -Dido also an African Queen, of carthage -Aeneas is Roman general torn by duty and love -Aeneas doesn't lose himself -heartbreak and suicide -Eros, Philo, both named for "love" -Eros is lust-love, Philo is familial love -Elysian Fields where we couch on flowers -A and C are giants, larger than life -Antony associated with Hercules, a descendent- when he loses himself, Hercules leaves him -hautbois is an oboe, soldiers hear it, many line breaks but when scanned, they still add up to iambic pentameter -break up parts of the line with the different voices -plays include music, important part of theatre -Romans sing and dance, music making crucial to this play -Dalibela interrupting her, he takes the end of all her lives -makes Antony into giant, godlike personality in Cleo's imagination -Caesar: so great a thing should have made earthquake (when Anthony dies) -his death on a huge, epic, cosmic scale -earthquake at the death of Jesus Christ, huge also -many references to Revelation and to christ in the play -"how much do you love me", new heaven and new earth, all from book of revelations -reference to the new jerusalem -Caesar references Pax Romana, linked to Pax Christiana -pagan pre-version, not a direct foreshadowing (Antony is magic figure and not a Christian) -everyone has a beautiful tragic death -compelling, competing perspectives for our attention and sympathies -chorus gone, but there are pseudo-choric figures

-philo and demetrius frame the play within a play -but do we always believe choric pronouncements? -Antony's tragedy, says chorus (dominant perspective), he's lost his true authentic self -he's not himself anymore -Oracle at Delphi, "gnothi seauton", (know thyself) -it also says "nothing in excess", to be virtuous, Antony betrays both -Enobarbus tells the rough truth, Antony rebukes him -Caesar is full because he has a core self, to answer to antony's emptiness -Antony says "I have fled myself", he is empty, but still a larger than life figure -even Cleopatra doesn't have a messenger whipped as he does, though Cleo strikes a messenger for telling bad news (tempestuous character), sends many a day because she misses him -self-loss described by Antony himself as dissolving, disintegrating in water -C and A different senses of self

-caesar pits antony's own forces against him, battle as image of Antony's self destruction -Enobarbus' death as precursor / dramatization of Antony's self betrayal as a force of destruction

-understands self as wise fool -choric figure, comments on action -understands self as loyal, loves Antony -Antony and Caesar insult each other but reach a political understanding -Mecenas says, forget the past, think about the present -Enobarbus speaks mostly in prose, comic fool, some poetic moments -speaks truth to power, Antony dislikes it and is angry -Eno both immovably loyal but also speaks rough truths, really understands Antony's nature, one of appetites -Antony agrees to marry Octavia -Menas and Enobarbus discuss this, Eno says her personality is cold and solid not an attractive personality -Eno says Antony doesn't want this typical Roman wife, he will return to Cleopatra -although he makes peace in Rome, 'in the east my pleasure lies' -Eno predicts his own death, what will we do? think and die, understands self as a loyal fool -sees Antony deserted by followers, questions his own loyalty then sticks with it -makes his will the lord of his reason (Tarquin did this, discarded soul), bad from and Roman perspective -Enobarbus thinks Cleo leaving Anthony -Anthony has a messenger whipped,over-compensates by self-nomination (I am Antony! means I am not Antony anymore) -asserting when he is least himself, scene ends with Eno deciding to leave him -when valour preys on reason, it eats the sword it fights with -Anthony confounds the description of himself, still magnanimous glorious leader, sends Eno's treasure after him -wishes Eno well -soldier that reports this to Eno says your Emperor continues to be a good guy, hero: Eno feels guilty -confronted with Antony's gift, he faces his sudden disloyalty, betrayer: he is destroyed -dies of a broken heart, soldiers are confused -his suffering is wholly inward, no division between will and thought -perfect unity of thought and action in betrayal from loyal servant to traitorous realist -opposite of Antony's botched eviscerating himself, inner becomes outer, guts -calls Eros to come stab him -he falls on his sword, how? not dead? tsks guards to stab him, pitiful -Eros stabs self: active, Romans se suicide as very manly -Antony falls on his sword, passive, penetrated and emasculated finally -Enobarbus, "transform us not to women"

-"vir" means "man" (see also: vigour) -to be virtuous is to be manly from a Roman perspective -comedic, Enobarbus thinks he hears Antony coming, but it is Cleo -has to do with Cleo's masculine-ness and Antony's feminization -his love for Cleo makes him less manly? -they're never alone together onstage, but others talk about them -part of their sex play is to wear each other's clothes, which she says was glorious and fun -his emasculation described at very beginning, Philo compares Antony to a fan, then eunuchs come on with fans -Antony compared to eunuch fan -Caesar makes this comment too: thinks gender dynamic of Cleo and Anthony is disturbing -mirrors the time Queen Liz addressed her troops as a Prince, in war needed to be masculine -Antony approves this, she spoke as well as a man would have -perspective, anamorphosis, Cleopatra says Antony is multi-faceted -of course she is the most complex, changeable, Eno describes her infinite variety, combo of high and raunchy -she's a complex and changeable character, paradox in her personhood -in Rome, self-contradiction destroys you, but it makes her, which entices Romans -"rare Egyptian, royal wench" -expressions of admiration, association with the feminine (fickle) -Isis, goddess of moon, Antony calls her Thetis, change faces -idea of discontinuous selfhood is idea being explored in the Renaissance -Montagne: the self is not an essence but more fragmented -the self is a series of theatrical construction, no fixed and substantial existence -perpectual fluid state of becoming -Roman idea of identity vs. new idea of personhood and value -other characters can only see inconstancy as bad

-system of performance -you enact who you are, it's all performance -Cleo adheres to this, everything is playing -even love: asks Antony to quantify his love, she's a materialist -asks him to act out his feelings -excellent dissembling, it's all from his persona, not from anywhere internal -both putting up a front -idleness becomes her (associated with theatre going) -meta-theatrical line, "Now Iras..." -hyper-sexualized also

-tetrologies of plays: richard 2, 1 henry 4, 2 henry 4, henry 5 -unlike star wars, the prequels are the good ones -Richard 2 begins in media res, Rick having expensive taste for foreign wars, has someone killed and is hinting about it -Henry Bolingbroke, the 4th, banished, Rick takes his stuff to pay for himself -everyone is upset by this social gaffe -Richard's body as prison, kind of wants to give in to Henry -2 bodies of the king: corporeal and the Royal Body -body corrupted and body politik -who has the right to rule? the king represents god, so going against the king is heresy AND treason -Rick deposed, maybe a meritocracy? -Henry compares Hal to hotspur unfavourably, to rule a kingdom you must rule yourself -Hotspur denies hostages, gives excuse -changeling: i wis my son was actually hotspur, percy (because Hal sucks) -however, henry the 5th was one of the longest and most peaceful reigns of England -we first meet the prince, very funny -Falstaff is notorious, he had to get a play of his own (Merry wives of Windsor), because Queen Liz requested it -Orson elles loves Falstaff -BFF of the Prince, but in part 2 he rebukes him -he's defined by rage, madness, and no respect for softies -nature, Hotspur to Glendower, I'm not afraid of you, liar, this earthquake is more of a fart, calls glendower a fart of the earth -henry says that hal might even join percy/hotspur, he's THAT BAD -religious baptism parodied by hal, blood washing away his lack of virtue (Hotspurs blood) -Pilate washed the blood from his hands -ceremonial conversion into someone fit to rule

-2nd most published in quatos before 1st folio, other than richard 3 -falstaff immediately becomes iconic in popular culture -it is earlier than Antony and Cleopatra -exploring his genre -series of history plays -lower classes having a voice, unlike richard 2 (just aristocrats) -richard 2 is only play written entirely in verse -henry is vile, dick jokes, fart jokes (his name is falstaff), and fart jokes -takes history genre into comedy

-non-linear unfolding, takes place in many locations, simultaneous -rebels in wales, westminster, tavern with mrs. quickly

-henry 4 is titular character, but we see him infrequently -he's a boring old man, guilty, wants to go on crusade -has everyone dress as him in battle, weak and cowardly -not a nice dad, wishes his son was a changeling -not the hero of his own play -north / wales / scotland is wilder, not integrated into elizabethan society -northern rebellion, try to replace liz with mary queen of scots -hating on the welsh and irish -hotspur was really older than hal, shakespeare makes them the same age -"the civil wars" by samuel daniel also did that agewise -hotspur as an emblem of chivalric honour -associated with gelndower who thinks there was an earthquake at his birth -chivalric qualities

-commercial district in London -not a medieval tavern, its Shakespeare's contemporary world (temporal tie-dye) -hals journey from wild youth to reformed good prince, REAL -Mrs. Quickly is made up -not sure if Falstaff is modelled after real person, Newcastle? Fastolph?

-loveable and disgusting -hal turns from him in the next lay -amalgam of stock theatre figures, and more -vice figure, allegorical figures of lust in Renaissance, gluttony: he's called Reverend Vice -also called "that abominable misleader of youth", since he misleads Hal -a liar, Poins and Hal plan a robbery so that they can hear Falstaff tell lies, make up how he lost the money he stole (robbing the robber) -silliness, buffoonery, not your usual history play -Falstaff sad to have lost the money, makes some stuff up, Hal calls him out on it -says king is a lion, Hal is a lion's whelp, Falstaff substitutes himself as a father figure -but sometimes they switch roles, lets Hal practice being father and king

-falstaff's language depends on religious imagery, misuses bible quotes -zounds (christ's wounds), from praying to purse-taking -"let every man go with his vocation", Corinthians, Protestant work ethic -Puritans are mocked onstage as hypocrites, big talkers who like to drink, like Falstaff -compares Falstaff to St. paul's cathedral, fat, but also holy -speaks of frail flesh, you picked my pocket, manipulative logic, hypocrite

-mardi gras, inversion of social order before lent, fast, abstain from sex, prep for easter -hal does conversion fro party boy to disciplined soldier, awaiting easter feast and parade -keep the fast so you can have the feast, part of christian thinking, here political -king henry, how he came to the throne. "I did pluck allegiance from kings hearts" -language to parallel feasting and fasting -melees glorious, from classical lit, cowardly knight figure -his fear, art thou not afeard? of percy and glendower -talks about how he has gotten his recruits, calls them "food for powder", his view of human life -gone to cowards, had them buy out their duty to go into the army -lets them supply farmhands etc., forced servants must go where masters send them -reasoned rejection of honour, doesn't care for lives of soldiers, but Falstaff shows that life = honour can't bring back death, or heal a wound etc. -honour is air, just a word, "and so ends my catechism" -fear and playful reasoning, actually sounds reasonable -opposite of honour, hotspur (die all! die, merrily! to his men) -who will hal choose to emulate?

-some of falstaff's desire to value human life over a constructed ideal

-associated with idleness and theatricality like cleopatra -hal checks his identity against falstaff as a father figure AND as a fool -lots of name-calling, fat/skinny jokes -name calling asserts your identity against someone else's -hal plays part of hotspur with falstaff, puts on his accent, practice to take on his rival -also gets to play his own father -hal's story as teleogical story, prodigal son, good and noble prince -fasts and feasts, life is cyclical, we always fall and rise

-metaphorical construction of politics in geeral, body made of eligible voters -elections are the body making a decision -president / king has executive power to make hasty decisions -richard is god's representative on earth -king can make decisions and everyone must follow -anthony and cleo: if the king is corrupt he must be removed because he can corrupt the nation -rome was a meritocracy -2 leaders / heads instad of one can lead to disintegration of leadership -sexual relationship between 2 leaders can lead to political chaos, especially if they break up (divorcing catherine of aragorn causes 80 year rift between spain and england) -rampant sexism, Anthony is emasculated because his girlfriend prevents him from taking part in triumvirate

-"unyoked humour of your idleness", implies oxen and livestock -then puns on sun and son, "will i imitate the sun" -prodigal son, not being what his father wants -when covered by clouds, sun is still there -eastcheap, falstaff, idleness, act as clouds, covering his glory with dirtiness -vapours and mists, suggests medieval medicine and illness -pleasure becomes tedious if it comes every day, scarcity makes you value it more, fasting and feasting compliment each other

-common Renaissance metaphor mastering a horse is mastering the self -good horseman is good leader, can control a wild body under him -hotSPUR, his horse is out of control -so hotheaded you can lead into suicide -hotspur clearly has never read Sun Tzu, he goes all in when he's got a weak hand -hal learns the best of both, when to act and when to deliberate -a new, more modern politician -vernon looks at hal, pulled himself together -then hotspur gives intimate hate speech, we'll fuse into one being until one of us is dead

-precursor to soliloquies Shakespeare goes on to perfect (in Hamlet) -"unyoked humour of your idleness" -when i start acting well, everyone will be SO impressed, I've been mediocre for so long -we've just seen him with friends in tavern, now he addresses audience, tell us internal plan that no one in the play knows -acting a soliloquy: as if your audience is yourself -hal's psyche here is politically conniving, using his friends to look good in comparison -prodigal son loved more for BEING bad

-pursues in action for soliloquy about feelings and the human condition -"to be or not to be" doesn't say I or me, shows process of thought

-probably written around 1600, midpoint in his career -worldwide audience favourite, mounted more than any other play -you've made it as an actor if you play hamlet -uncertainty about date, no good original source text -found in first folio, 1623, good text version -but 2 earlier quarto versions, 2nd one is Good Quarto merged with folio version -1st quarto sucks, called The Bad Quarto, shorter, some bd poetry ("To be or not to be, aye, there's the point!") -1st is 1603, next is 1604 -pinnacle of Shakespeare's art, how many new words he's using -really inventive with language, a LOT in OED, Shakespeare is the earliest published instance -neologisms, makes up new words, but expands his lexicon in early modern language around him -learning new vocabulary words all the time, makes use of the most of them in Hamlet -phrases from the play have permeated our culture, "get thee to a nunnery", "to thine own self be true", "to be or not to be", "dreams are but shadows", "neither a borrower nor a lender be", "thought beyond the reach of our souls", "there are more things on heaven and earth, Horatio..." -IMAGE of a guy holding a skull, momento mori, contemplation of mortality

-recycling old stories -source: Danish legend Amleft recounted in 12th century Danish history by Saxo the Grammarian -Saxo is also adapted by Francois de Belforest, a guy named Feng as Claudius, brother Horwendel -Horwendel married to Gerutha, Feng kills H and marries G -Amleft, the young son, surrounded by henchmen of Feng, no way to avenge his father -so he feigns madness, shames his mother into helping him -kills uncle, uncle's mom, proclaimed king of Denmark -no ghost here, and no doubt, everyone knows Feng killed his brother -pre-christian denamark holds revenge as pretty chill -but in hamlet, it is revenge vs. christianity, mercy and forgiveness to complicate

-ghost who says "revenge, hamlet!" -we know little else about it -no idea who wrote it, probably not shakespeare -"or" means original -possibly written by thomas kydde -revenge play genre like titus (more mature thought) -spanish tragedy by kidde is also a model, revenge ghost, secret crime and doubtful hero -includes strategy of feigning madness / possible real madness (also in Titus) -spanish play has woman driven mad by grief, kills self, final bloodbath -shakespeare complicates all this so we question conventions

-revenge: personal response to an intolerable wrong or insult -public insult, though means everyone knows, but here no one knows, not even hamlet (the ghost knows) -titus had no socially acceptable revenge because saturninus was king -hamlet too can't go to the king -revenge plot need plannning, hamlet is a good planner with bad follow through -thinks a lot about ethical issues, what IS murder, lengthy process -less vicious plotter than Titus, not sure if he wants Claudius to die -combo of thinking and feeling, metaphysical poetry is all about it -Horatio means "reason", speak to it! -presence of a scientific skeptic means confirmation that ghost exists -convention revenge: revenger is in grip of inner compulsions -hamlet has less of this, he's conflicted -revengers usually need their victims to know what is happening and why (Titus: you're eating your kids l m a o) -hamlet dies without getting to tell his story, goodnight sweet prince -horatio is left to tell the tale, people who witness it all don't know claudius killed hamlet sr. so they think hamlet is treasonous and mad, killed polonius etc. -hamlet as revenger never gets his vaunt -convention: revenge as higher purpise than any moral system, Titus -hamlet: is revenge/murder the right course of action? -is suicide justifiable? god says in 10 commandments, thou shalt not kill, so what gives? -should Ophelia get a Christian burial?

-create doubt and uncertainty -destabilize most of our assumptions -asking questions, who's there? what art thou? -play is all existential questioning -unreliable ghost, he definitely exists, certainly scary (introduced on a cold dark night) -called "it" not "he", "this thing", "this dreaded sight", "this apparition" -it is the figure of the king, not the king himself -Horatio afraid, we should be too -he looks like the king, confirmed, but he is NOT THE KING -2 streams of ghost ideas: one is folk, Catholic (return from purgatory), the other is Protestant (no such thing as ghosts, only an evil spirit trying to tempt us to sin) -ghosts are big in early modern England -Shakespeare probably read up on current folklore -ghosts either good or bad, bring comfort to the living, see their loved ones -can be ugly or pleasing, King Hamlet still handsome -evil spirits often tell the truth, so we don't know about this one -contemporary folklore advises to avoid ghosts -theological perspective too -Renaissance Catholics believe you can yo to hell, heaven and purgatory -some people die not having confessed everything and end up in purgatory -Dante sees it as constant activity to make up for sins in purgatory -King Hamlet can't tell us about the afterlife, but he can assure us that it is awful -King asks to be revenged for his murder most foul -this is a Catholic perspective, ghosts coming back from purgatory -spirits are allowed to come from hell for a time, says folklore books, there is no purgatory

-Horatio asks "what art thou?" -does not presume that it is dead king hamlet -Protestants don't believe in ghosts or purgatory, it is a Catholic construct -so if you see a spirit, it's either an angel or a devil -Horatio takes this Protestant perspective, calls ghost "it" -Hamlet also confused about it, goes from "it" to "my father's spirit" -going against Protestantism here, play never really resolves whether it's a protestant or catholic ghost

-most interested play in developing inner life of characters not causally related to outer life -protestantism existed in england before henry viii, like falstaff inspired by oldcastle the lollard -book of common prayer, so much of english speech comes from here -changes liturgy to make english protestant under edward -then edward dies, bloody mary comes up and kills protestants -people change their religion back and forth -elizabeth in 1553, restores conservative protestantism, switch back -how can you trust what is inside a person if their faith shifts so much? -god is the only one who knows what is on the inside, probed in this play -anglican theology allows for liberal personal ambiguity, question dogma -shakespeare complicates dogma, e.g. suicide and ophelia's ambiguous death

-"I stand in pause where I should first begin" -how great is God's mercy? it is supposed to be infinite, will rain from heaven and wash the blood from my hands? -revenge as a game of one-upmanship, hamlet can't decide how to get him back well enough -he can't kill Claudius in church because he may well have repented, and gone to heaven -theatre involved in dynamic between outward personality and inward essence -how to present a speech -makes fun of groundlings to their faces

-"character", internal and external / performative -what you can show vs. who you really are -central in the play -"give thy thoughts no tongue" (shut up), if you're not going to think it out, don't do it, don't be reactive -be thou familiar but by no means vulgar, greet people but be coldish, not TOO familiar, don't be common -"grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel..." -"do not dull thy palm with entertainment", keep them close but not too close, all about striking a balance -enjambment, next line adds meaning -don't be familiar with "unfledged" friends, who you don't know that well yet -Laertes as a spy -don't fight, but if you ARE in a fight, scare everyone off, "give every man thine ear but few thy voice" -take criticism but withhold your own judgement -"make costly your habit", make your clothes expensive but not showing off, not like you know it -"the apparel oft proclaims the man" -external characters, clothes, the way you carry yourself, create your own outer persona -the way you act on the outside is the only access other people have to who they think you are -"neither a lender nor a borrower be" -pare away all unnecessary expenditure -then, "to thine own self be true", fake? -contradictory, mixed signals -Polonius confounds external / internal actions, all his advice, though good, is fraught with contradiction -good advice but hard to take it seriously coming from Polonius -"be yourself" is very common parental advice, many ways to interpret the line -MODERATION is good advice, but then paradox: what IS an own self? -don't forget who you really are while you're playing this part, balance between yor true identity and what you project outwardly -hamlet is inventing modernity: not knowing what the self IS vs. external

-Gertrude asks why seems it so -Hamlet says, "seems?" no, it is. -"customary" seeming -mom, why are you so seeming sad? Hamlet, I AM sad. -if it comes from internal self, it isn't acting -a play about spy culture -spy culture linked to religious factions in england, the spy is invented in order for different factions to get info on each other -early modern england called one of the first surveillance cultures

-religious uncertainty and tension characteristic because of catholic/protestant issues -national religious tumult causes a lot of enmity and distrust, mary clearly disliked by protestants, henry shakes things up by taking healthcare from the church to the gentry (economic issue) -little people shuffle back and forth between religions, but higher up the stakes are higher -by 1569, elizabeth had formed a network of spies, being careful about her enemies like mary stuart the queen of scots -mary QoC flees south and seeks help from liz, many english catholics considered mary the rightful heir to the throne -mary kept various houses for 18 and a half years, hidden away, liz waffled on whether to execute her, had no evidence that mary was trying to depose her -sir francis walsingham was the "first james bond", spymaster, in charge of torture and espionage -"without torture we won't prevail", has many catholic priests burned, drawn-and-quartered etc. -walsingham gathers evidence against mary QoC, intercepts letters with his network -there is some question of their authenticity, some historians think walsingham at least doctored the letters if not faked them outright -finally kill mary -stopping the gunpowder plot, wherein a catholic guy fawkes attempted to blow up the english house of commons (failed) in 1603, 2 years after death of liz -protestants write the rhyme "rememeber, remember, the fifth of november" image of pope choking on cheese and being burned -often burn the pope in effigy on guy fawkes day -christopher marlowe and aphra behn both worked as spies

-dr. faustus etc. -a member of walsingham's network, a spy for the queen -rough and tumble guy, dies 1593 in tavern, stabbed thru the eye by a cousin of walsingham -some say he was silenced because he was too involved in the network -others say because he was a heretic, found with catholic materials in his home -official sources say he was killed over an unpaid tavern bill

-restoration, under charles 2 -espionage effects playwrights in london -by 1600, maybe 300.000 in london -new issue of espionage touched peoples lives, created rumours

-one of first references to espionage found in the iconologia by cesare ripa, a dictionary of symbolic emblems to be used by artists / writers -ripa describes "the spy" as man with noble habit, see the slide -archetypal image of the spy, he can descend into the criminal ranks and sniff out crime etc.

-fundamental theme of espionage reflects culture of surveillance in which it was written, comments on that culture -understanding truth of alleged plot of claudius to overthrow and murder his brother king hamlet, reminiscent of mary stuart -shakespeare plays with historical plot that would be fresh in the people's mind -claudius's ongoing action in the play is one of surveillance, look in on hamlet's state of mind -claudius, like the rainbow liz, has eyes and ears everywhere, master of espionage -polonius can be read as having historical antecdent in walsingham, he is a failed walsingham -rosencrantz and guildenstern are marlowe and some other guy -these figures loomed large in public imagination in that time, these are the intrigues of the day being tapped into and explored by the drama -first 3 acts comprised in overwhelming amount of surveillance -in act one, claudius wants hamlet to remain in denmark, "in the cheer and comfort of our eye", to keep an eye on him

-polonius has renaldo spy on his son laertes while he's in france, more observation, make sure he is not drinking gambling and sleeping around -be discreet, find the truth in such a way that no one evr suspects that you wanted to learn it -may have even consulted ripa, quick tongue of laertes -joke: polonius is no good at using his own tongue -makes a fool of himself talking in circles to Gertrude, Claudius, very incompetent Walsingham, tragic figure, too innocent to make it work -not wily enough to be an effective spy -Polonius also fails to be a spy because he does not hear things he should -laertes introduces healing, tells ophelia she should not believe all she hears from hamlet about his love for her -ghost says in opening act, the whole ear of denmark is rankly abused after king hamlet's murdr, the ear of the people has been poisoned -mousetrap play: person being poisoned through the ear is actually really effective, but shakespeare chose it for a symbolic register, how it plays with metaphor of the play -a good spy knows what he hears may not be true but polonius takes what he hears at face value -your inner self can be penetrated through hearing -r and c are asked to ascertain the cause of hamlet's erratic behaviour, the revelation of their reason for visiting undercuts hamlets trust of them in act 3 -they are meant to act as eyes and ears for claudius too -hamlet as successful Walsingham intercepts letters and doctors them to suit his purposes -Shakespeare definitely had heard the rumours about Marlowe's death, how much did he want to comment on it? -they also have a connection with theatre like Marlowe did, did this inspire Shakespeare in his creation of these 2 wacky guys? -point: espionage kind of pointless, only leads to the death of innocents -poetic justice that claudius corrupts the ear and pays for it dearly, misunderstands everything he hears -in act 3, claudius and polonius spy on encounter between hamlet and ophelia to detemine if a broken heart is the cause of this behaviour, and mistakenly concludes it is

-hamlet effective, evades all their spying tactics -why? his performance: theme of performance links to that of espionage -hamlet feigns madness, claudius feigns innocence -both characters are trying to discover each others inner lives, the designs of the people around them -brings up the idea of false face, you can put one on and don't really feel -this is a new development in character theory and drama in the era -the material body may reveal the inner soul or mask it through performance -as shakespeare writers in macbeth, the "false face hide what the false heart doth know", "look like the innocent flower, but be the flower under't" -shakespeare is one of the first writers to make use of complex character psychology and the concept of being fake -this comes out of the culture of espionage, interest in human falsity, the masks that one can wear -we always knew people could deceive us but now it has become an obsession in early modern drama -disparity between seems and is -when hamlet talks about this disjunction between seeming and reality, whe his mother gertrude says he's grieving so much, so why does he seem so sad? -takes issue with use of the word seems -disjunct between inside and out makes problems for surveillance, inner life not easily penetrated, how do you look inside someone? -hamlet says it's an art and reactions to art, borrowed thesis from philip sidney who said art / poetry could move us in a way history / philosophy could nit -this is what hamlet does when he puts on mousetrap play, pluck the conscience of king claudius -reactions to art is deeply human thing, and watch the responses of others to art also is

-humors, black bile leads to melancholy -"solid" has pun of "sullied" -everything sucks, wishes he could kill himself but doesn't want to go to hell -what's the point? angst, or actually depressed? -"unweeded garden that grows to seed" -garden is man-made, not natural, also visceral description of Gertrude's sexuality (which has gone unweeded) -things rank and gross in nature possess it merely, incestuous against nature (in Catholic ideology) -2 months is not enough but its also not even 2 -only occurrence of satyr in Shakespeare, he's a god to a goat-man -"gypsy's curse", her insatiable hunger grows, the more she dotes on him the more Gertrude's appetite grows -dashes could be stage directions, let me not think on it, "frailty, thy name is woman", turn all women into Gertrude (turning particulars into universals) -mocks the Goddess of grief -"a beast that wants discourse of reason would have mourned longer", pretty rough -back then there was NO sympathy for animals, you're supposed to subjugate animals, this is a NASTY insult -"no more like my father than I to Hercules", puts father on pedestal, debases self, compares self to Claudius -Hercules acts without thinking, hamlet waits around and then thinks through his options

-seems vs. is -to be: genuine (question of identity), sense of self -distinction between to die and to be, he's talking about death, but doesn't say "should I die" but "should I be" -bathetic hard fall, "that is the question", beautiful question -THE question, central question of humanity -distinction between living and dying, but also acting and not acting -'tis nobler in the mind' constructed value -is it nobler in the mind to suffer or to die? -death is ultimate martyrdom but not if you kill self (Christian philosophy: suffering makes you a better person) -tis a consummation, Death pretty final, teleologically dust to dust as opposed to a destination, no going back -what if the afterlife is bad? what dreams may come? -lists greatest sufferings the laws delay and having to deal with stupid people -his fathers ghost is not allowed to tell him what it is like on the other side

-who is he? what's inside? -you can't sound me: yet literary critics always sounding Hamlet -Goethe and others think Hamlet was the soul of a poet, delicate, sensitive and complex, so he can't deal -20th c Freud, people see an Oedipus complex, failure to live out his dream, desires frustrated so he goes insane -true: he IS poetic and he IS disturbed by his mothers sexuality -political speculation: Marxists see Hamlet as a revolutionary, spirit of rebellion and political resistance -queer theory: Hamlet is just a whiny emo teenager, impotent and unattractive, a young misfit -plucking out the heart of Hamlet, mystery just like Polonius (he says its lovesickness, byt Claudius says not likely) -R and G say his problem is ambition, "tis too narrow for your mind", no room to grow to full potential -Hamlet says no, I need no space to grow, but I do have bad dreams -Claudius says there's something in Hamlet's soul on which he broods (the murder of his father mayhaps??) -always considering mortality, holding Yoricks skull, what happens when we die? -Gertrude gets to the root, "his fathers death and our hasty marriage", life turned upside down -hamlet is melancholy before ghost, supernatural doubt, disturbance of his mothers sexuality, facing mortality and grief -Ophelia describes this, he's always being observed, he used to be a pinnacle of humanity but now brought low -memory of old perspective combined with grief stricken barren perspective with which he now sees he world -"my lord, we were sent for"

-humanist magician -gave orations, believed in the greatness of the human being -reimagines creation story to describe our great potential -hierarchy of being, we can rise like angels or descend like Caliban -interpreter of nature, like Prospero -human soul as eternal soul, many perspectives on time, move linearly in time and yet endlessness, we experience both eternity and time -Miranda means wonder -man was created to look at nature and wonder, Hamlet wonders at man itself -humanists think thru problems like creation story, it's good to think it through even if you don't solve the problem -John Donne defends suicide as a Christian death -gives classical examples, Lucrece did it and SHE was virtuous -then goes through saints who chose death over conversion, willingly became martyrs (what's the difference) -radically proclaims that God commits suicide, Jesus has capacity not to die but chooses to sacrifice himself -Donne believes in thinking through problems in life

-why is she singing? -folk songs sort of related to what she's going through, music can draw you in / move you, but can also make you alone -here it separates her from people around her who speak in prose, she can only communicate her grief for Polonius through song -makes us more sympathetic to her -coroner has decided she can be buried in hallowed ground -they question whether she drowned herself by accident or on purpose -Gertrude wasn't there but she gets to set the tone for what Ophelia's death looked like, uses her influence to back up what Ophelia did by telling a beautiful story

-first play in the folio, so we used to think it was his first -but now we know it was his last that he wrote alone, dated to 1610-11, but no idea how popular -information from a letter circulated in manuscript -performed 1611 at court of James I at Hallowmass Night, All Saints Day -unlike other plays, there isn't one main source for the plot -Stephen Greenblatt calls Tempest "an echo chamber of Shakespearean motifs", Shakespeare as source for himself

-categorized by later critic as romance, but called comedy in the first folio -romance is not a genre Shakespeare himself would have thought of -making new genres out of combined old ones, most lamentable tragical comedie -indeed it borrows themes from tragedy

-revenge / vengeance and forgiveness -tension between justice and mercy -issue of nature of authority and power, where to spend it and where to keep it -Boatswain says nature cares not for human hierarchies -possibilities of reconciliation and regeneration, seen in tragedies -Fortinbras in Hamlet represented hope for new generation -troubled theme in Titus, since maybe there was no possible peace in the aftermath of the revenge -Shakespeare repeating himself, plays with old ideas in new ways -king lear letting go of his daughter, Prospero saying goodbye to Miranda -betrayal of good ruler by traitor (macbeth, julius caesar, hamlet, richard 2) -hatred between brothers / sisters (claudius in hamlet, as you like it, king lear) -passage from court society into the wilderness and back again (midsummer nights dream) -wilderness as out of control place, entered after court disbanded -as you like it, pastoral comedy, has this too -titus has it to, but not much of coming back, only rape and murder in the woods, things don't get sorted out there, it is a savage place -romance topos: wooing a young heiress who doesn't know her place, seen in Miranda -theme of nature vs. nurture, taken up in other romances: young noblewoman gets displaced into a bad situation, virtuous personality shines through -common trope of virtuous person becoming a sex worker who turns bad men virtuous with her pure nature -Caliban is also a child raised and educated well by Prospero, but Caliban doesn't turn out, despite his equal education, you have something in you that determines what you will become -but the play invites simple allegorical readings -play has many ways of complicating our reading too -treatment of radical loss of identity (richard 2, king lear), how do you live in the world with unsuitable role? -midsummer nights dream: you lose your identity when you fall in love -Prospero loses identity before play begins, he was the duke of milan -losing his identity as a father figure -Prospero says he will break his staff and burn his books, give up as a magician and retire, every third thought will be of the grave -harnessing magical powers, midsummer, macbeth have magic -questioning of possibilities of changing / converting others thru art, Prospero sees his magic as art, Lucrece comforted by painting -meta-theatre, play within a play, to reveal truth, Hamlet, Midsummer, 1 Henry 4 (Hal practicing conversations with his dad), masque in Titus (Tamora pretends to be Revenge) -work / labour (Falstaff) -Ferdinand, Miranda, "makes my labours pleasures", "I forget", MEMORY -memory, retelling stories, history is important theme in play -Miranda has no cultural context, doesn't know as a woman she shouldn't do manual labour -art as work AND play, joys and pains of labour

-Tempest is Shakespeare's swan song, last great farewell -many farewells, Prospero's epilogue aligns with biographical reading -talks directly to the audience -asks for a prayer from the audience to release him from this world -asks indulgence, allusion to religious transaction asking for salvation -most contemporary critics don't like simple autobiographical readings, since Shakespeare had 2 collaborations after this -but Prospero talks of his art, his magic, and retirement -Prospero helps us think about theatricality -betrothal mask for daughter, vanity of mine art -Calibam to Stephano and Trinculo: how to kill Prospero -burn his books, tempt traitors with beauty of Miranda to a revolutionary action -calls source of Prospero's power HIS BOOKS

-botticelli, adoration of the magi -wonder and amazement at figure of Magus -Renaissance fascinated with learned ascetic magus -Prospero uses his magic through diligence and discipline, ascetic and studious -different from dark magic, witches -Prospero to distance self from witches like sycorax, sex with devil, makes brood of satan caliban -"cunning man", also use magic -magus, cunning man and witches are all christian -john dee, magician contemporary with Shakespeare, advisor to Elizabeth 1, astronomer and mathematician -garners respect and fear for his powers -nervousness around this figure, once John Dee went out and his books and all his books burnt -Prospero talks of his magical art, speech from Medea from Ovid -indication of Prospero's darker side (Medea is a witch) that he would not admit -and yet any good humanist WOULD quote Ovid

-specific time and place, short -Stephano and Trinculo: for comic relief -Caliban with them, foreigners he believes them to be gods because their alcohol has magic power over him -dramatizing first contact, new world just found -introducing new products ends up being more harmful -Sycorax is from algiers, Caliban is this plays version of indigenous person (refers to Ind) -appeals to colonial lifestyle, makes colonists feel comfortable, why not colonize Caliban? -but Trinculo and Stephano are not at all ideal colonists -dialectical, comes from multiple angles to create third different angle -Prospero: ideal conqueror, noble (a king but also noble personality)

-she's a witch from algeria (non-christian) -ariel trapped in a tree by her for 12 years and prospero threatens to do it again -what's the difference between them? -their kids as extensions of themselves: miranda is a great gal, Caliban is begotten of the devil... -gender / religious difference, one is a man and a christian -other than that, the good / bad distinction is pretty arbitrary -magic is always feminized and de-Christianized -evil magic destroyed by Christian iconography -presence of books makes Prospero's magic more legitimate -good magician makes out of nature, bad magician bastardizes nature -creating a storm, natural phenomena -interest in alchemy -works within Christian context of the world -Miranda is natural, Caliban is unnatural devil child who should not exist

-on which Miranda expostulates near the end of the play -this play draws heavily on account of a shipwreck in 1609, letter coming to England in 1610 and circulating in manuscript -Virginia Company, founded 1606, incorporated 1607 and 1609 -joint stock company founded under james i, founds jamestown -send a fleet, 400 settlers to jamestown, but big tempest blows governors ship offcourse -end up marooned near Bermuda -they winter comfortably, but must labour side-by-side, gentry and peasants -when asked to go to jamestown, by governor thomas gates, they mutiny -gates kills mutineer, they continue to jamestown, which is wracked with illness and conflict, unlike utopian and egalitarian winter on their island -hole in the ship, everyone has to bail, egalitarian valuing of human life -sailors all get naked, easier to work -everyone talks about clothing a lot in the account and in the play -miranda helps prospero disrobe, prospero says gonzalo once gave them rich garments -discussion on sustaining garments not a blemish, as if by magic, in the seawater -antonio and sebastian discuss treachery, garments fit me well -antonio, super into clothes, reveals that he has no conscience -trinculo and stephano play dressup with ariels costumes (a trap, they look like fools), trumpery, frippery -caliban recognizes that clothes are not important -ariel singing about the promise of his freedom, helps attire prospero -Robert Johnson wrote music for this play -helps Prospero dress in his court clothes for reconciliation, not magician clothes

-nature doesn't care for hierarchy -puts lower class boatswain in power, he gives orders, skilled labourers -Tempest has turned everything upside down, he now has authority -mutiny echoes -Gonzalo calls out boatswain's impudence, suggests he will be hanged, but not drowned -characters reveal themselves during the storm, Antonio and Gonzalo being jerks -good guy characters get down and pray -fate and providence, prospero has faith -storm raises questions of authority in nature and ends up ironic -nature DOES answer to a human power, Prospero (no one on the boat)

-go from dramatic with thunder machines -now it's a father and daughter talking on an empty stage -Prospero talks for EVER, necessary exposition -keeps asking her if she is listening, she keeps confirming -or is he checking if audience listens? Miranda as our proxy, teaches us how we're meant to react to the suffering of others -he's educating her (father and teacher), makes sure she pays attention -"well demanded, wench", approves of her interlocutor -history, memory, storytelling -reminds Caliban, ariel of their histories -he puts her to sleep, joke on how long-winded the story is -neoclassical unities: one of few plays where Shakespeare sticks with it -all takes place in one afternoon, so you NEED all this exposition -Miranda reacts to shipwreck with compassion -Gonzalo reacts badly, idleness having to do with theatricality -he makes jokes about sex workers -Caliban: anagram for cannibal pretty much, he's very bad -he's not even human, says Prospero (nature / nurture)