Memorizing Isn't A Walk in the Park

     Here I am trying to memorize my monologue and I realized something. This isn't the first time I've done this and yet it is turning out to be incredibly difficult. I was in an Acting For Non-Majors class my sophomore and we had to memorize a monologue for our first assignment. I picked a monologue from the book The Princess Bride. It took me about three or four days to memorize the passage. It was nearly two pages. It was longer than the passage I have now which is giving me so much grief. I thought, maybe it's because I didn't pick this passage or because I didn't know anything about the passage nor do I like it. It's from All's Well That Ends Well, a play I've never seen nor no nothing about. Then I thought, no it's not that. After all, I had never read The Princess Bride and up until about last year I didn't really care for the movie either. Perhaps it's the language but I dismissed that quickly. I've memorized short passages from Shakespeare and the Bible and even some in French so language wasn't it. Then I figured it was probably because it's the last week of school and I have so much going on around me with quizzes, exams and papers all being turned in that I was simply distracted. I have a lot more to do now that I did my sophomore year. So here's to memorizing while in the back of my mind I am thinking of rocks and maps for upcoming exams!

Turning Comedy into Tragedy

     "Tragedy when the feeling's gone and you can't go on, it's tragedy...when  you lose control and you got no soul it's tragedy!" The words from this song inspired an amazing project idea. As implied by the song, what happens "when the feelings gone"? Why "can't you go on" or "lose control". What happened to your soul? Comedy and tragedy, two ends of the spectrum, so very different from one another and yet so interconnected.  Comedy, generally, is full of humor, banter, lightheartedness, pleasantry, and always with a happy ending. Tragedy is the implied opposite with everything that could possibly go wrong happening and ending in something sad, usually death. So how do you take a light, happy story and turn it into something depressing? 

       The basic outline for a comedy starts with the characters. There is more than one main character, each a likable hero with weaknesses. Take a Midnight Summer's Dream for example. It has many main characters, not just one. For the purposes of this paper, we will focus on Hermia, Lysander, Helena, and Demetrius. Now, each one is likable in their own way with their own weaknesses. To really get a comedy going, at least one of these characters has a disagreement with one of their parents. Hermia fills this role by not wanting to marry the man her father wants her to marry. Her weakness is her lust for Lysander. Let's face it, teenagers wouldn't know love if it slapped them in the face. 

       This weakness is then turned into a petty concern. For Hermia, the simple matter of "Is she going to listen to her father?" is the petty concern. This petty concern leads into a play full of mix ups and nearly broken hearts. Eventually everything is put right and the story has a happy ending with several marriages. So far, a comedy consists of many main characters that are likable heroes with weaknesses, one having a disagreement with a parent, with story that ends in a happy marriage. 

     The next part of a comedy is the theme. The theme for a comedy usually centers on appearance versus reality. In a Midsummer Night's Dream, the four teenagers are running around in a forest at night not sure if what is happening is real or not. When they wake in the morning, they think they all had the same bizarre dream. The same came be said for Bottom and Titania. Appearance becomes reality in a comedy. 

     For the audience, they see everything that happens so they don't feel much of connection to any of the characters on stage. The ridiculousness of it all actually makes the audience feel superior. The audience gets this attitude of "that would never happen to me, I would notice this or that." So the audience laughs at the silliness that these characters could be so dense. They are detached from the happenings. 

     Now, still using A Midsummer Night's Dream, we get to the tragedy of it all. This play ends in marriage but marriage isn't all butterflies and daisies. If Shakespeare had made a sequel he probably would not have made it nearly as happy. Let's say that it's thirty years later, Hermia and Lysander have a couple of kids and perhaps they aren't getting on as well as they used to. In real life, we call this a reality check. 

    This "reality check" starts by isolating a single main character. Let's isolate Hermia. Something has happened in her relationship with Lysander, he's pulling away and she is feeling very vulnerable. To turn her into a tragic hero, she must have a tragic flaw. Perhaps she still doesn't recognize she was in lust and not love with him so she believes that because she is still "in love" she can't leave him. That her leads to wonder about serious, profound concerns. These could be anything from "Is this what love truly feels like?" to "Is this how marriage is supposed to be? Is it worth fighting for?" 

    The theme of a tragedy usually stems from these concerns, typically revenge or honor. More than likely Hermia will not be seeking revenge but will be seeking to save her honor. It would terribly embarrassing to admit that perhaps your father had picked the better man but in your childish rebellion you picked the one person your father couldn't stand. There may be revenge in the background, if say; Demetrius breaks free of the spell placed on him to fall in love with Helena. He may think that Helena was a witch who enchanted him and seek revenge on her. 

   When an audience watches a tragedy they are much more invested in the characters. They sympathize with the main character who has been wronged by all the others. They pity them; maybe even put themselves in their shoes. They fear for that character as they would fear for a real person. The audience feels no superiority and though they know the story won't end well they keep hoping that things will look up for that character so they won't have to suffer anymore. 

   Of course, a tragedy has a sad ending. This is typically a death. Hermia kills herself in her depression over the rift between herself and Lysander. In his guilt, Lysander goes crazy and becomes a "Poor Tom" wandering around in the woods spouting nonsense. Maybe Demetrius kills Helena. 

    While it seems like there is no way to pull a comedy out of a tragedy, it is really simple. The characters will be different simply because we killed the ones we knew. Whoever survives the end of the tragedy become the main characters for the comedy to come. Then the cycle starts over. This is the never ending circle of happy to sad. The ups and downs of real life put into a stage production in parts; the happy part of life becomes the comedy and the bad part of life becomes the tragedy. 

Holy Cow It's April!

     Well, now that school has loosened its grip on me and given me time to blog it's time to play catch up. First, Frederick Turner. I am not a poetry fan at all. Sitting through a poetry reading is like stabbing my eyes out with unsharpened pencils. My sister liked it far more than I did. I do like his accent, I 'll give him that. He did give a very good lecture too. That was far more enjoyable. I have a lot of "nothings" scattered throughout my notes. I liked his comments about profound rituals and symbols. It got me thinking about the profound rituals and symbols I know of or even partake in. He mentioned the American flag. Growing up we always had a flag on our front porch. We took very good care of it. I remember going to boy scouts and listening to my dad tell the scouts why it was so important to fold it up a specific way and to not let it touch the ground. Then I thought about how there are other symbols like that in the world. Take the Olympic Rings for example. There are five rings to symbolize the five continents that participate: North America, South America, Eurasia, Australia, and Africa. The rings are interconnected to show unity. There are also profound symbols in legends. Take Ancient Egypt for example. The pharaoh held a crook and flail, the symbols of the pharaoh, the leader of the nation, the God on earth. The Round Table of King Arthur's tales symbolized equality and brotherhood of the knights. When I thought about myself and what rituals I took part in there were tons of examples. Every Sunday I partake of the sacrament which symbolizes the body and blood of Jesus Christ given to atone for the sins of the world. When I was eight years old I was baptized by immersion to symbolize death and rebirth; leave sin behind and become a disciple of Christ.
       The Tempest. I watched the version starring Helen Mirren. That was quite interesting. I have always thought she was a great actress and she didn't disappoint in my mind. I quite enjoyed it. The setting of this story felt so much different from the others because it was set on an island. I really like all the music written into this play. As a musician myself I get great joy from imagining what the songs sound like.
      Working on my project I came across a list of comedy and tragedy contrasted which was really cool. It definitely will help to show the similarities and differences between comedy and tragedy. It will also help to show how one can become the other. Here's a link for those interested in a sneak peek:
      http://blue.utb.edu/mimosa/Handouts/T&C.htm

Dysfunctional Family

      Today in class one of my classmates (sorry I don't remember who it was) was asked to give a summary on King Lear.  She summed it up as a crazy story about crazy people. I don't disagree but I feel it's more than that. We read King Lear in my Intro to Lit class and it was chosen for very different reasons. So far everything we have read in that class has revolved around extremely dysfunctional families. And King Lear has a very dysfunctional family. First of all, there is no Mrs. Lear. We don't know whether she just has nothing to say or if she died or something else. She just isn't present. This leaves a single father of three daughters. For ten years, my family was my mom, my dad, me and my two sisters. While I love my dad and everything he does for us there are just some things he just can't help us with. A mother is very important for growing daughters. I feel that we see a bit of Lear's insecurity with how to raise his daughters from the scene in the very beginning. He thinks that the only way to find out how much his daughters love him is to basically make it a competition. Now, some girls are very competitive but for the most part girls tend not to be. Clearly, Lear does not understand this. So when Cordelia refuse to play along with her more competitive sisters and tells him she loves him as a father, no more, no less, Lear kind of freaks. He doesn't understand why she wouldn't just follow along and flatter him like her sisters.
       Part of me also feels like he doesn't really know how to raise children in general. We're talking about a time when children were raised by their mothers and, in the case of royalty, probably some servants. More than likely Lear has no idea how to be a parent. First of all, what kind of father makes his children lie to him to make him give them a good portion of land. Why not just divide it evenly and be done with it? Or if that is to much to handle, pick an heir? He might have a nephew or something to leave the kingdom to. And what kind of father banishes his daughter for speaking the truth instead of flattering him with willowy lies? He strikes me as a terrible father.

     Then there's Gloucester's family. He has his legitimate son, Edgar, who's not much of a looker and his bastard son, Edmund, who is basically a hunk. Now Gloucester is a lovable fool really and you'd think that no one could possibly hate him...if you skipped the beginning of the play. He blatantly makes fun of how Edmund came to be saying it "was good sport at hi making" right in front of him! Now I feel like there aren't any hard feelings coming from Edgar until after Edmund screws him but Edmund certainly has many reasons to hate his father. He was hidden from existence until Gloucester decided it wasn't that big a deal if everyone knew he had screwed around behind his (also "missing") wife's back. Then to have his father make fun of him to another noble in front of him? Clearly Gloucester isn't father of the year either.

Tragedy vs. Comedy and a Twist on Hamlet

       You'd think blogging would be easy but it's very difficult to get anything done with science classes. Let me tell you those labs take over your life. I mean I've been working on one lab for three weeks now and I've still only got half done. Shakespeare is a lot more engaging than rocks in thin section staring yourself blind in a microscope. Anyway, enough ranting.
      Over spring break I took a road trip to Salt Lake City. I had been intending to blog while I was there but the WiFi in the hotel was awful and kept shutting off. On the flip side, the long boring drive between Idaho Falls and Pocatello is the perfect time to think. I was thinking about King Lear and what my LIT 201 teacher had said about it. We read it back in January and I couldn't help but wonder...what would King Lear be like if it was a comedy? I thought about what would change in the plot to go from tragic to funny, how the characters would have to change and what would stay the same. Then I thought, what if A Midsummer Night's Dream was A Midsummer Night's Terror? What if Hamlet was more manic than depressive? Or what if Hamlet had simply dreamed the whole play and it wasn't real? (Same could go for Lear and Dream).
       I mentioned this to my friend, Kyle Butler, an English writing major, and he said it was an interesting thought. He even offered to send me the formulas for setting up tragedies and comedies that he had learned recently in class to help if I decided to give it a go.
       That night I had a fun little dream about a "missing scene" from Hamlet. Right after everyone dies and Horatio steps up to the plate the scene abruptly changes and goes something like this:
       [Scene: Hamlet sits upright in bed in a cold sweat, eyes wide, terrified]
       [Enter Horatio]
       HORATIO
            My lord is everything all right? I heard screaming.
       HAMLET
            I have had a dream, a premonition if you will.
       HORATIO
            My lord?
      HAMLET
            A premonition, a vision! My father died and I was summoned home to find that he had been buried and my mother had married my Uncle Claudius. That same day you came to me saying you had seen my father's ghost. I came with you to the ramparts that night and saw for myself. I spoke to him and he told me a terrible tale of the truth of his death, Mine uncle poisoned him as he slept in the garden and it was my duty to avenge him. So many died because of this. I accidentally killed my darling Ophelia's father in rage over my mother's incest and then I was sent to England with Rosencrantz and Gildenstern...but I never made it there. You and I snuck back to find that my darling had drowned and that her brother was out for my blood. We dueled and I uncovered my uncle's foul deeds. Then my mother, my uncle, Laertes and myself all died of poisoning. Oh what a cruel fate to befall us! I shall die at the hands of a Frenchman!"
      HORATIO
           My lord, 'tis nothing to worry about....
      HAMLET
            'Tis a vision, Horatio, I shall perish very soon and all because of my foul uncle.
      HORATIO
             My lord, this is not possible.
      HAMLET
              I have seen it.
      HORATIO
             You do not have an Uncle Claudius.
And this is where I woke up. I actually rather like where it ended. . So much could be interpreted from that last sentence Horatio utters. Perhaps Hamlet doesn't have an uncle named Claudius but he does have an uncle, whether it be a brother to his mother or father. If it is his mother's brother, he could be older or younger and have no reason to fulfill Hamlet's dream. If it is Hamlet Senior's brother, the "dream" could still be possible...unless the uncle's name changes the outcome. The end could also imply that Hamlet doesn't have an uncle at all. Maybe all he has are aunts on one or both sides; perhaps he has none of those either. Maybe one of his grandmother's had had a son named Claudius but he died young. Maybe Hamlet has a cousin or even a little brother named Claudius. If it is a little brother, perhaps he is subconsciously afraid of what his little brother is capable of doing to him.

Mesozoic Flattery

As was requested by Professor Sexton, I have written a sonnet. I don't have a significant other so this goes out to all my friends in Paleontology. Perhaps I will tape a copy to my advisor's office door as well as pick someone to mail it to. On to the sonnet:

Tyrannosaurus rex is the king
Stegosaurus has its four massive spikes
Quetzalcoatylus on giant wing
Permian oceans full of Trilobites.
Velociraptor with its large toe claw
Therizinosaurus huge hands it has
Smilodon has such a powerful maw
And Spinosaurus with a sail tall as
Ankylosaurus with its mighty club
Herrerasaurus oldest dino found
Liopleurodon like a toothy sub
Lambeosaurus makes a funny sound
Each dinosaur and reptile you see
Are special and unique as you to me!

Pronunciation guide and pictures for recognition:

Ankylosaurus

Herrerasaurus

Liopleurodon(pliosaur not dinosaur)

Spinosaurus

Smilodon (yes not a dino or a reptile but still cool)

Trilobite (also not a dino or reptile, more like a giant pill bug in the water)

Therizinosaurus

Not as big as Jurassic Park made them

Quetzalcoatylus (pterosaur not dinosaur)

Lambeosaurus

Stegosaurus (my favorite)

Tyrannosaurus rex

Ket-zal-co-at-ih-lus
Purr-me-un
Try-low-bite
There-ih-zeen-oh-soar-us
Smie (like smile)-low-don
An-kie (like kite)-low-soar-us
Huh-rare-ruh-soar-us
Lie-oh-plur-oh-don
Lamb-bee-oh-soar-us

Hopefully you learned a lot from one little sonnet! On a different note, I was telling my friends about we talked about Pope Benedict puns in class the other day when one of my friends brought up something I had made during a game. The game is called Cards Against Humanity and it's basically like Apples to Apples only much much worse topics. Well, the "green" card we got one round was "What are you giving up for lent?" I played the card "God." So last night when we were talking about the Pope my other friend said that the Pope had given up God for lent this year. Horrible but really funny. Until next post folks, have a fantastic weekend!

Thoughts on Hamlet

 I discovered in class the other day that I must have been the only one who didn't read Hamlet in high school. Apparently both high schools I went to had a different idea of what Shakespeare plays we should read. Anyway, I was asked to give a summary of what Hamlet was. I gave my best go at it and then I was asked where I had gotten my information since I hadn't read the book before. I said my junior high had put on a collaboration of Shakespeare's plays from Romeo and Juliet to Julius Caesar. In it they performed Hamlet both forward incredibly fast and backward incredibly fast. It was very entertaining and creative. I don't think many people can say they've seen one of Shakespeare's plays backwards.
When I read Hamlet I found it very entertaining and intriguing. Hamlet is on a level that none of his peers seem to comprehend. His puns reminded me a great deal of my friend Ammon who is the pun master. If the opportunity arises, Ammon will pun for all it's worth. Hamlet does this too I've noticed and it was incredibly fun to read the conversation between Hamlet and the gravedigger.
Having watched The Royal Shakespeare Company do a fantastic production of King Lear for my other literature class, I decided to look up their production of Hamlet. I knew that one of my favorite actors, David Tennent, was in it. He played Hamlet alongside Sir Patrick Stewart who played both Hamlet senior and Claudius. It was fabulous performance. David Tennent has played many a crazy character in his acting career from the slightly mad Doctor to the completely insane Barty Crouch Jr. (shame on you if you don't know these characters). His theatrics, especially with how dramatic Hamlet gets, were brilliant and Sir Patrick Stewart certainly knows how to command the stage when he is present. Beware, Gertrude has major hair extensions and she pulls them off quite dramatically.
I did not want to hold this back for anyone so here is a link to the play. I hope you enjoy it as much as me!
Hamlet-Royal Shakespeare Company

Just a Quick Thought on Insults

Thought it would be fun to put some insults on here that I will most certainly use on my mom...because she'll use them back.
"Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty to make thy riches pleasant."
"Thou calumnious toad-spotted malcontent!"
"Thy lips rot off!"
"Thou bawdy knotty-pated whey-face!"
"Thou cockered weather-bitten boar-pig!"

This next one has got to be my favorite. I read King Lear in the other literature class I am taking and when I read this insult I burst out laughing. It is spoken my Kent to Oswald when Oswald asks if Kent knows him:
"A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats, a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave, a lily-livered, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, superservicable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service, and art nothing but the composittion of a knave , beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch; one whom I will beat into clamorous whinning if thou deniest the least syllable of thy addition."

I think the best part of that whole insult is that Kent is in disguise so to Oswald, a complete stranger just dished it to him.

Dreams

     As we are reading A Midsummer's Night DREAM, it only makes sense to be talking about dreams. I am one of hose people who tends to remember a good deal of my dreams. I know I dreams quite a bit and many of my dreams are extremely realistic. Sometimes when I wake up I can't tell if I was actually asleep or not. One dream in particular that I had was of a close friend of mine. It was quite terrifying because something incredibly horrible had happened to him and dream me saw him in a hospital, his face smashed up and in critical condition. When I woke from that dream I had to shake myself a few times to say that he was fine and it was just a nightmare. I went about my day as usual, going to work and so on. When I got back from work, I got on Facebook and low and behold there were tons of posts on how this friend I had dreamed about had been hit in the face with a rock while hiking and was in the hospital. Talk about freaky.
       Most of my dreams don't actually come true like that. Last month I had a very vivid dream that I had gone to France with some friends. I remember that we had decided to check out Notre Dame which is on an island in the middle of the Seine River in Paris. Then, a few days ago, I had a similar dream. This time I was in London with my family. It started out with us in line with our luggage getting our passports checked and my sister was being a pain and making everything difficult because for some reason she didn't have a real ID. While I was waiting, my friends Matthew (the one hit by the rock) and Myra showed up and we got to talking. The next thing I know, my family is gone as if they hadn't come with me and Matthew and I were discussing dinosaurs as we walked along the Thames River. Then a London cop came up to us and showed us a picture of Myra asking if we knew her because she was wreaking some serious havoc in downtown London. We promptly told him we didn't and that just because we were American didn't mean we knew every other visiting American in the city. Then I woke up.
       I feel I can say I know exactly how Demetrius, Lysander, Hermia, and Helena felt when they woke up. Sometimes it is really difficult to tell dream from reality especially if there aren't dancing unicorns and such floating in and out of your dreams. I can't say I have had any dreams that weren't realistic. It gets very hard to tell what is dream and what is not unless I ask those who were in my dream if they even recall the events of the dream. I have a friend, Tessa, who has very vivid, very odd dreams. She had one last year where our group of friends was running from a hoard of zombies and that we escaped into a house. I was the last one in and I locked the door...apparently locking out Myra and getting her devoured by zombies.  Now, to me, this is a very unrealistic dream because zombies aren't realistic but for Tessa, it was so real she had to come by Myra's dorm room to make sure she was still alive. Dreams are very exciting, aren't they?

A Midsummer's Night clip

I was originally going to put the 1935 version of Titania and Oberon arguing over the changling boy but Samantha had already posted it and after watching it, I was a bit creeped out. The giggling and the music and the weird way they half sang their lines just didn't cut it for me. It felt like a horror movie not a comedy.
Instead I found a clip I rather enjoyed. It was the same scene plus a little more done by the Cork Arts Theater:

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

I hope everyone else enjoys it too!

My Thoughts on Some Classmates Thoughts

      As I was reading through some of my classmates blogs tonight several thoughts bombarded me. First was Cassidy saying how she wanted to teach Shakespeare at a high school level. I remember how my classmates groaned every time we were told we were going to read a Shakespeare play. I wondered what was so terrible about it. Many of my classmates said it was hard to read, something I had never had trouble doing. I always loved reading Shakespeare. It was a hell of a lot better than any American literature we were giving to read. In fact, when I was in my junior year of high school my English class read Julius Caesar. This play is still one of my favorites, first, because I love the history of ancient Rome and two because my teacher made it fun. She assigned everyone a part (I was Brutus) and we essentially acted it out in class. She even gave us some Halloween knives to stab Julius with. I think that was the first time many of my classmates had enjoyed Shakespeare.
     The second blog post that stood out to me was Tristan's. Tristan explained the importance of books for business, books that weren't text books. Most of our classmates are English majors of some sort. I myself am a Paleontology major as I have stated before. A literature minor is an odd combination with that. In another literature class I am currently in, we talked about a paper explaining the importance of liberal arts majors. The main point involved creativity. I couldn't help but think how effective that would be in the paleontological world. We spend much of our time trying to piece together an extinct world. What better way to be creative in the sciences? I can't help but think how creativity would help in explaining a world we have never seen. An example would be a Midnight Summer's Dream. None of us have been to Fairyland but Shakespeare has given us just a peek at what it might be like. This works with any literature and in my mind particularly well for fantasy and science fiction as most of the settings in those stories were entirely made up.
      The third blog post that caught my interest was Sonja's comment about how physicists don't speak in the "language of commerce" or chaos. I think that's true for a lot of sciences. Paleontologists, like physicists, talk about how the earth and everything on it came to be. I agree with her that there is nothing more exciting and exhilarating than learning something new about the world around you. I feel that was part of Shakespeare's attraction to new words, just as it was for much of the nobility. This brings me to the other blog that caught my eye. I believe it was Jill who wrote this particular blog about how Shakespeare was a master of words and how he made up quite a few. This got me thinking of a conversation we had in my high school French class. My teacher had a poster explaining that the language we speak (English) is far harder to learn than any other. Well no wonder! If people like Shakespeare could just make up words at their own whim it's no wonder our language is so complicated and without much sense! Even today I see words being made up. Look at the internet, tumblr for a really good example. When someone is effected emotionally by something (usually upsetting) they exclaim "Right in the feels!" If a foreigner heard that they would be utterly perplexed. Hell, my mother was perplexed when I used it. 

The History and Language Behind Shakespeare

       I won't lie, I did not find the essays we read for class as engaging as everyone else seems to have. I did however love reading about the history of the time. I love history and both essays gave a little window into the world Shakespeare inhabited. During his lifetime, the world moved from the Dark Ages into the Renaissance. There were all sorts of revolutions going on; religious, scientific, literature, music and so much more. All of these had effects on Shakespeare's and his contemporaries writings.
      Both Shakespeare and Marlowe were a big part of the Renaissance movement. Plays had generally been about the bible or the goings on in the time. These two men introduced the idea of the drama. The drama might not have been as successful in England at this time had it not been for the "violent revolutionary war" (Hughes pg. 6) between the Protestants and the Catholics at the time. The land was strife with religious contention. The Queen had outlawed Catholicism and anyone found practicing it would be killed. Then the Puritans emerged and caused even more contention.
      One thing about the Puritans that stuck out to me was that they disapproved of theater. They managed to close down quite a few theaters putting people like Shakespeare out of business. I knew they were rather stuck up and too strict for anyone's own good but to do away with theater? That's inhuman to me. Try to imagine our world without theater. No drama classes, no television, no movies, no plays, no actors, no film makers, nothing. Life would be dull. It's a good thing Shakespeare and others were able to appeal to the aristocracy. The aristocrats were very much attracted to theater and everything about it. And of course because the aristocrats loved theater many commoners would mimic them and choose to enjoy theater too.
     Thus comes the use of his creativeness. The aristocrats at the time were very much in the want for expanding their vocabulary. Shakespeare obliged. Of course with the introduction of new words, how does he explain it to those (mostly commoners) who did not know the words? Easy, Shakespeare simply created a new way of speaking. We even use this method today though most of us do not know this. An example of his method is : To act her earthy and abhorred commands. Everyone new what earthy meant so when he used abhorred no one would misunderstand what it meant. Using synonyms or words with similar meanings to define another word is a common practice today. Really pay attention to what you say the next time you explain something and see how you use this method.

In the Minority

I have noticed that in our lovely little Shakespeare class that one of my classmates has a friend who is a Snow Science Major (and yes, it is a major not a minor). She had very little interest in Shakespeare and other literary topics. While talking about her I got the impression that the English majors I was surrounded by  thought all science majors felt this way. Here I am to say "NAY!" I am a Paleontology major (and before anyone asks NO IT IS NOT THE SAME THING AS INDIANA JONES. He's an archaeologist who works with boring people. I work with dinosaurs which are far more awesome.) I also like to read...a lot. In fact, I have read quite a bit of Shakespeare and not once did I ever complain to a teacher about how it was boring and I couldn't understand it. I loved every minute of it. I mean, he wrote some of the best insults in the English language!

Our teacher has mentioned time and again that this class will work to "redeem the past from insignificance." What a fantastic concept for someone like me. My whole career is about digging up the past, putting it together and sharing it with the world. It's the same idea with Shakespeare. In my field, it starts with discovering a bone. This is equivalent to picking up a play by Shakespeare either for fun or by taking a class. After the bone is discovered, it needs to be cataloged, mapped and dug out. With Shakespeare, one might try reading up on a bit of his background, what society and culture were like at the time, etc, etc. After the bone is removed it is taken to a museum and cleaned and prepped for the show room. This would be where you read the play. Last, the bone is put on display with the rest of it's skeleton. By this point, you should be able to read and understand most of what the play is about.

I am currently reading King Lear in my LIT 201 class (so that puts me ahead in this one) and I couldn't help but enjoy this passage:
               "A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, superserciveable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of knave, beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch; one whom I will beat into clamorous whining if thou deniest the least syllable of thy addition."
             This is spoken by the Duke of Kent to a servant named Oswald. How would you like to have that thrown in your face?
             There will eventually be thoughts on Hughes and Turner soon! In the meantime, please enjoy this episode of Doctor Who where Shakespeare takes on some witches:
The Shakespeare Code

Hello World!
      This is Jennifer Cozart and I am doing this blog for an awesome Shakespeare class. Now, you may be wondering why I would take an entire class dedicated to every high schooler's worst nightmare. Frankly, his works were my favorite to read. Yes, Romeo and Juliet was basically teenage lust and kind of stupid, but I got to be Brutus in Julius and I actually got to use one of those really cool retractable Halloween knifes on the kid who played Julius Caesar, so yes, Shakespeare can be totally awesome. If you still don't believe me, here's proof:
Doctor Who
And if you still don't believe me, here's one more piece of evidence:
Harry Potter
Hopefully you will enjoy this blog and all it has to offer and hopefully, you will be convinced to read Shakespeare!