Much Ado about having to memorize 50 lines on top of writing a paper

Like a few others, I'm performing Act 2, Scene 3 (and 4) from Much Ado About Nothing. I'll play Claudio and Beatrice. We haven't cut our lines down to approximately 50 each, but my lines will be from the following sets:

CLAUDIO

Yea, my good lord. How still the evening is,
As hush'd on purpose to grace harmony!

CLAUDIO

O, very well, my lord: the music ended,
We'll fit the kid-fox with a pennyworth.

CLAUDIO

O, ay: stalk on. stalk on; the fowl sits. I did
never think that lady would have loved any man.

CLAUDIO

Faith, like enough.

CLAUDIO

Bait the hook well; this fish will bite.

CLAUDIO

She did, indeed.

CLAUDIO

He hath ta'en the infection: hold it up.

CLAUDIO

'Tis true, indeed; so your daughter says: 'Shall
I,' says she, 'that have so oft encountered him
with scorn, write to him that I love him?'

CLAUDIO

Now you talk of a sheet of paper, I remember a
pretty jest your daughter told us of.

CLAUDIO

That.

CLAUDIO

Then down upon her knees she falls, weeps, sobs,
beats her heart, tears her hair, prays, curses; 'O
sweet Benedick! God give me patience!'

CLAUDIO

To what end? He would make but a sport of it and
torment the poor lady worse.

CLAUDIO

And she is exceeding wise.

CLAUDIO

Hero thinks surely she will die; for she says she
will die, if he love her not, and she will die, ere
she make her love known, and she will die, if he woo
her, rather than she will bate one breath of her
accustomed crossness.

CLAUDIO

He is a very proper man.

CLAUDIO

Before God! and, in my mind, very wise.

CLAUDIO

And I take him to be valiant.

CLAUDIO

Never tell him, my lord: let her wear it out with
good counsel.

CLAUDIO

If he do not dote on her upon this, I will never
trust my expectation.

BEATRICE

Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner.

BEATRICE

I took no more pains for those thanks than you take
pains to thank me: if it had been painful, I would
not have come.

BEATRICE

Yea, just so much as you may take upon a knife's
point and choke a daw withal. You have no stomach,
signior: fare you well.

Performance

We touched briefly on the idea of performance in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I mentioned in class that the fact that there is a play within a play is indicative of the performances that we put on in our daily lives—regardless to whether we realize that or not. In the last act of Midsummer, the royals watch in mirth as the rude mechanicals perform for them. As was pointed out, their play is basically just Romeo and Juliet, but comedic because Pyramus and Thisbe, as well as the rest of the company, are not actors. Two aspects of this are interesting. First, that Shakespeare chose to include a play at all—was he simply including a spectacle for the sake of it, or was there a deeper meaning to this decision? I choose to think the latter—that Shakespeare purposefully placed the play right at the end to point out to us, in the most meta of ways, that we are simply players, as is stated in “As You Like It”. We are not people going about life, simply existing. We are beings of design, meant to perform for the world, each one of us on our personal stage. The second piece of this is also extremely meta. The play, “Pyramus and Thisbe” is not just a story. It’s the plot of Romeo and Juliet. So Shakespeare chose to make fun of one of his most famous plays by making a shenanigan out of it. He basically acknowledged his own plays while writing Midsummer. Was this a commentary theater as an art form, or simply a meta-nudge to his other works? This becomes more interesting when the plays are actually performed because in Shakespeare the fourth wall is somewhat nonexistent. Who was Shakespeare really highlighting here? The actors, the writers, the theater-people who perform for a living? Or the watchers, the audience, the theater-goers who live to perform?

What Goes Around Comes Around

Seeing Richard II performed allowed me to pay attention to the interactions between the characters rather than just the words they speak; it put the characters in context of their relationships with one another. The two interactions that stood out to me the most were those between Richard and Mowbray at the beginning of the play, and Richard and Bolingbroke near the end. Richard, who has turned a blind eye to Gloucester’s murder (if not requested it), is forced to banish Mowbray in order to maintain a facade of justice. Mowbray, who acted under royal condonation, now faces condemnation that he cannot argue against without committing treason— merely suggesting that the king okayed the murder is a crime greater than killing a duke. If he claimed that Richard turned on him by banishing him, Mowbray would die— not only from admitting guilt, but from accusing Richard of plotting with him. So he is backed into a corner, banished by his inability to refute his sentence. As the play progresses, Bolingbroke is added to the list of Richard’s victims when his inheritance is usurped by the throne.

Richard’s final interaction with Bolingbroke parallels his interactions with Mowbray in the first act. When Richard’s title is stripped from him, he becomes powerless to speak out against the crown, just as Mowbray is, because doing so is treason. Richard’s land and goods are usurped while his back is turned, just as he stripped Bolingbroke from his inheritance. He is then covertly murdered in prison, with the intent of ridding the new king of a political threat, just as he had allowed Gloucester to die. Depicting Richard’s sins being visited upon his head in like kind shows that though he was king with a supposed divine authority backing his kingship, he is not exempt from divine punishment.

Leah Anderson: A Midsummer Night’s Dream: A Teacher’s Solution to Disinterest and Society’s Solution to Anti-Literacy

A Midsummer Night’s Dream:

A Teacher’s Solution to Disinterest and Society’s Solution to Anti-Literacy

Shakespeare has made his way from the heart of commonplace Globe attendants, through the minds of scholarly experts and into the adolescent classroom. As an icon in the history of written English literature, Shakespeare has influenced writers for centuries. Now, thousands of ninth grade students study Romeo and Juliet and other plays each year. The universal themes promoted by Shakespeare’s myriad of publications as well as his stylistic prowess in make his work a popular part of high school English syllabi. However, arguments about the psychological and academic impact of these plays on today’s youth present a contrary argument. This paper will show how teachers can be wise in selecting a Shakespeare text for their classroom and the best methods to teach this material in a way that will engage, motivate, and educate their students.

Missing piece for Kara?

Kara, you said you were waiting for a quote about how the director cut the text for a children's audience? This article talks about that from a teacher/director/enthusiast's point of view a little bit! Maybe it will be helpful! :)

Shakespeare Troupe: An Adventure in Words, Fluid Text, and Comedy

Susan C. Biondo-Hench

Pick Your Poison: Potential Topics

So this Shakespeare and video games idea has blown up way bigger than my original musings. I know it can be awesome and I want it to be awesome, but I know for that to happen I need to pick a focused topic within all the huge ideas that have been floating around. So, in a nutshell, here are my possible approaches:

1. If Shakespeare were alive today, he would be a video game designer

2. Video Games can be art, and Shakespeare is the key to opening this new medium

3. The Tempest is a video game, and either should be produced in the style of video games or made into a video game

4. Video games probably share more in common with theatre than any other art form, and Shakespeare is the key to bridging this gap and improving both mediums

Of the four (and there's more, possibly), the first catches attention the fastest and I probably have the most evidence for it/would do the best job arguing it. I care a lot about the other topics, though, and could potentially put them into the work, but probably couldn't give them the attention I wanted.

And there's another problem when I find stuff like this:

embedded from http://media.salon.com/2011/08/ive_gotten_to_the_secret_level_in_macbeth-460x307.jpg

What you see here is a performance of Macbeth called Sleep No More that's been running in NYC since 2011. No one speaks. The guys in masks are the audience, not the actors. Old warehouses have been turned into a fake five-story hotel and audience members are let loose to explore while the story of Macbeth plays out throughout the hotel as the night goes on--all stylized in the tradition of film noir and the early 20th century. If you want it to make sense, you have to follow a single character around the hotel all night--unless, of course, they run so fast you can't find them, or they just lock a door behind them, as they just might do.

To find the whole story, though, you have to play the game. Meaning, you have to find clues, collaborate on the internet, decode a website, and even find clues hidden in real-world NYC locations, which can lead to real-world encounters with actors outside of the hotel, but still in their roles. It's a performance. It's a game. It's mind-blowing.

You see what I mean?

As You Like It (It does live up to it's name!)

I also watched As You Like It: Live from Shakespeare's Globe.

Having been to the Globe this summer, it was very enjoyable for me to watch another production from a different angle this time. This previous experience with the venue helped  me understand what it would have been like to watch this production in particular.

Although the overall tone of the play was quite comedic and light, there were quite a few parts of the play that seemed to come across as somewhat somber and heartfelt. For example, the "Seven ages of man" speech that Jacques gives was delivered with a sincerity that seemed almost uncharacteristic of his usually comic character. These sections, rather than seeming disconnected with the play, made it seem more genuine and interesting than an all-out comedic play would have.

Like both Jessica and Katherine, I enjoyed seeing the interaction the actors had with the audience. Having been a groundling myself, I know that when the actors interact with you, you get all the more excited about being there and you feel like you are a part of Shakespeare. For example, it was entertaining to see Orlando throwing out the poems to the crowd and Jacques pointing to the young boys as he was giving his "Seven ages of man" speech. Those connections with the audience aren't something that can be as readily felt in a filmed version of the play, but the general playful nature of the production still comes across as you see this interaction.

I admired the ability of the actors to transition between a variety of settings with almost no props. The props were unnecessary because the actors were entertainment enough. I think this production by the Globe was close to the way in which Shakespeare would want it to be performed--unassuming, funny, and full of witty entertainment.