Homework for Monday

due MONDAY: Homework for Monday, Nov. 1:
Post on your blog a few sentences or so explaining the PERFORMANCE CHOICES you have been discussing as you prepare to act out a few lines from Hamlet. Give us a sense of HOW you want to play your character, why you chose to play it that way, what your choice is an alternative to.

Compare two Basketball Poems

p.41 Analyze "Slam, Dunk, & Hook" (Yusef Komunyakaa)
Note: fragments, allusions, vivid imagery, memory of past, sanctuary from 'Trouble'

p.49 Analyze "Fast Break" (Edward Hirsch)
Note: one sentence, one fluid moment, you are there!

Plan an essay comparing and contrasting the two poems: how do the literary devices of each help explore the speakers' attitudes toward the game?

p.52 Organize tex-by-text or element-by-element?
 Note: Latter lets you compare as you go rather than waiting till the end.

p.55 Read Sample student essay and evaluate it.
________________________________________                                 Compare Two Animal Poems

p.57-8 Later, you may be asked to do the same compare/contrast for two poems about dead animals:
  "Traveling through the Dark" (William Stafford)
  "Woodchucks" (Maxine Kumin)

How would you contrast the two?
Prompt: Compare how the language of each poem reveals the relationship between the speakers and the animals.
How would you organize the essay, text-by-text or element-by-element?
Which key elements would you focus on?

You are the director!

In pairs in class, pick a dozen lines to prep and writer actor's notes for. Don't just deliver the lines; do something interesting with them. Find two different ways to deliver the same lines. Look for conflict between two characters. By Wed. or Thur, perform the lines (rehearse a few times first) and then explain the choices you made in delivery.
PERFORM + EXPLAIN on Wed., Thu, or Friday.

Some new resources:
YouTube Directing Shakespeare: see how they get extra meaning out of delivering the lines
MIT Shakespeare Course: See how a college Shakespeare course would be structured
Word count in Hamlet: see which words occur most and interpret that
Remix Shakespeare (video clip): How students can make an audio play of a scene

How can you best prep your scene to get across your acting choices?

Ten Steps to writing your Hamlet essay

      1.       Catchy title: main idea in a few words (write this last)

2.       Introductory paragraph

3.       Working thesis (keep revising)

4.       Outline/Structure

5.       Topic Sentences for each body paragraph (claims, relate to thesis)

a.       TEA = topic, evidence, analysis
b. Closely read key passages to find language that jumps out at you
c. Infer from patterns of language what the char. or Shakespeare is trying to do

6.       Draft body paragraphs

7.       Draft Conclusion (compare to intro)

8.       Reread entire essay: plan for major revisions

9.       Print and proofread

10.   Upload to turnitin.com (by Sun. eve)

Closely read Claudius Praying

CLAUDIUS:

O, my offence is rank it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal eldest curse upon't,
A brother's murder. Pray can I not,
Though inclination be as sharp as will:
My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent; 5
And, like a man to double business bound,
I stand in pause where I shall first begin,
And both neglect. What if this cursed hand
Were thicker than itself with brother's blood,
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens 10
To wash it white as snow? . . .

. . .But, O, what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? 'Forgive me my foul murder'?
That cannot be; since I am still possess'd
Of those effects for which I did the murder,  15
My crown, mine own ambition and my queen.
May one be pardon'd and retain the offence?
In the corrupted currents of this world
Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice,
And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself     20
Buys out the law: but 'tis not so above; 
There is no shuffling, there the action lies
In his true nature; and we ourselves compell'd,
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
To give in evidence. What then? what rests?  25
Try what repentance can: what can it not? 
Yet what can it when one can not repent?
O wretched state! O bosom black as death!
O limed soul, that, struggling to be free,
Art more engaged! Help, angels! Make assay!  30
Bow, stubborn knees; and, heart with strings of steel,
Be soft as sinews of the newborn babe!
All may be well.

                                                            (III.iii.35-72)

Close reading of Polonius' language (for your essay)

Do a close reading of language in Polonius’ exchange with Ophelia on pages 736-7. The proper citation is act.scene.lines: (2.3.90-135). Count how many times he says “you” to Ophelia (11 times). Why? How would an actor use that word in the scene? Does he use “you” with Laertes as much? Why? Trace Polonius’ metaphors and figurative language: ‘green girl’ (101), ‘baby’ (106), ‘pay,’ ‘dearly’ (107-8), ‘fire’ (117-120), ‘brokers’ (126-131). What patterns emerge? How does Polonius manipulate his children with loaded language?

Respond in writing to these ideas

From (Neill, Michael. Hamlet: A Modern Perspective. In Hamlet. Folger Library, Washington Square, 1992)

How readily first Ophelia and then Gertrude allow themselves to become passive instruments of Polonius’s and Claudius’s spying upon the Prince; how easily Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are persuaded to put their friendship with Hamlet at the disposal of the state. Even Laertes’s affectionate relationship with his sister is tainted by a desire to install himself as a kind of censor, a “watchman” to the fortress of her heart (1.3.50). In this he is all too like his father, Polonius, who makes himself an interiorized Big Brother, engraving his cautious precepts on laertes’s memory (1.3.65 ff) and telling Ophelia precisely what she is permitted to think and feel. . .  

Polonius is the perfect inhabitant of this court: busily policing his children’s sexuality, he has no scruple about prostituting his daughter in the interests of state security, for beneath his air of senile wordiness and fatherly anxiousness likes an ingrained cynicism that allows him both to spy on his son’s imagined “drabbing” in Paris and to “loose” his daughter as a sexual decoy to entrap the Prince. (Neill 312)      Respond in writing to these ideas.

Work out more than one way of structuring and organizing your Hamlet essay

   Formulaic Five-Paragraph Essay

1. Thesis map listing barely-connected points 1, 2, and 3

2. π about 1

3. π about 2

4. π about 3

5. Conclusion

   Compare Claudius vs. Hamlet’s speech

π1. Intro + Thesis

π 2. All about Claudius’ speech

π 3. Comparing Claudius’ speech with Hamlet’s speech

π 4. Conclusion

   Compare Claudius vs. Hamlet’s speech B

π1. Intro + Thesis

π 2. Claudius’ convoluted speech reveals his deceptive side

π 3. Hamlet’s convoluted speech reveals his indecisive side

π 4. Two convoluted speakers, two different inner states

π 5. Conclusion

  Point by Point Comparison

π1. Intro + Thesis about words/metaphors and long sentences

π 2. How Claudius and Hamlet use vivid words and metaphors

π 3. How Claudius and Hamlet use long sentences: what it shows about them

π 4. How two different characters can have similar speech, but it comes from different impulses

π 5. Conclusion

  Compare Hamlet’s public vs. private speech

π1. Intro + Thesis

π 2. How Hamlet speaks in public reveals his persona

π 3. How Hamlet speaks in soliloquies reveals his inner turmoil

π 4. Conclusion

  It seems x, but actually y!

While at first it may seem that Claudius and Hamlet speak similarly, using long sentences and many metaphors, a careful analysis reveals that Claudius uses overly authoritarian language to compensate for his illegitimacy while the Hamlet uses eloquent but equivocal language, revealing his extreme self-doubts.

π 2. How Hamlet and Claudius seem to speak alike

π 3. How Hamlet and Claudius have different patterns of speech, revealing important differences in character.

π 4. Conclusion

Analysis of Two Basketball Poems, Then Writing an Essay

Tips on Writing a Close Analysis Essay and a Compare and Contrast Essay

See Jago textbook p. 41-58
p.41-3 Annotate the basketball poem “Slam, Dunk, & Hook” by Yusef Komunyakaa

p.44-48 Respond to the Thesis Statement and Sample Essay on “Slam, Dunk”

p. 49-56 Annotate “Fast Break” and respond to the compare and contrast essay

p.57-58 Annotate two poems about animals, “Traveling through the Dark” and “Woodchucks”

How can you apply these same skills to your essay comparing the way two characters speak differently in Hamlet? How can you organize your essay? How do you include close reading of passages and then move to a larger claim? How can you write a strong thesis?

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Sample Essay: One may be mad and mad and be Hamlet

 In Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, Hamlet pretends to act mad, to deceive people around him, so they do not question his behavior around the palace. Hamlet’s soliloquies show the reader that his speech changes dramatically to suggest he is becoming madder, than he is trying to act. In each of his soliloquies, Hamlet initially blames himself, and contemplates suicide, but then immediately starts to blame others. For example, his anger and resentment towards his mother, when in should only be focused on Claudius. This shows how Hamlet has an inner struggle, which causes him to live in fantasy, act out, and lie to the people who get in the way of his father’s revenge.

Sample Essay: The King and The Prince: Analyzing Their Different Speech Patterns

              In Shakespeare's Hamlet, King Claudius and Hamlet are contrasted through the various ways they speak in public to when they are contemplating their own thoughts. The two men have both a different set of values and different speech patterns. Shakespeare uses the different speech patterns of Hamlet and Claudius in order to differentiate between the two characters and in order to aid the actors in the ability to perform the character, the audience to understand the characters and the different speech patterns show certain themes throughout the play. The different ways an actor recites a character’s line or the way a character’s lines are phrased make a big difference in Hamlet. Each word chosen makes a big difference to the entire meaning of what the character is saying. Hamlet says everything with equivocation, witty and with lots of puns which says that his character is very deep and he is in the midst of making a huge decision and he does not know what to do. On the other hand Claudius’ character says things with an authoritative tone, and is very paradoxical with the things he says. This could be because he wants to confuse his audience and other characters in the play. While King Claudius and Hamlet are both alone they seem to expose their true emotions, when in public Claudius is a deceiving speaker in order to steer away his audience from the truth and takes command of the stage,  and Hamlet "pretends" to act mad when he is around others so they will not see his real emotions.

Homework (click below)

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Essay due Sun. Oct 24