• Students are the athletes, words are the ball

• Understanding how playing with words impacts the student's reading and listening experience.

• Tools for playing with sound

  • Shakespeare gives you structure- to help you speak and them hear:

    • Rhythm- fast/slow, smooth/jagged, relaxed/impatient, split lines

      • think beats rather than syllables on the page

      • scanning verse (marking up the stress) helps with scripts and readings

    • Rhyme- does it close down or open up a dialogue?

      • rhyming couplets often used to end a scene (as in the you hang up first, no, you scene in R&J)

    • Phrasing- short or long? Does it allow or deny any intervention? (think politicians during a debate)

    • Sounds- alliteration, assonance, etc.

    • Patterning- repetition, rhetorical devices- hooks to make words memorable. 

    • Tasty Words- new or used in a new way. What feeling do they give? (connotation)

• Five Types of Feet

  • Meter measures the number of feet

  • Iamb

    • ah-one, ah- two, ah-three, ah-four, ah-five

    • understanding the lift and the impact of this when spoken

    • Shall I compare thee to a summer's day

    • to be, behold, hello

  • Trochee

    • dum di

    • stress then lift

    • Trochaic Inversion

      • can be used as a tool to invert the reading

      • come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts...

    • Hi there, double, injure

  • Spondee

    • dum dum

    • heartbreak, love song, get lost

  • Dactyl

    • dum di di

    • like a waltz

    • Carefully, buffalo, step on it

  • Anapest

    • di di dum

    • understand, interrupt, wanna fight

• Ways to break the rhythm

  • weak/feminine endings

    • upspeak

    • ends with an extra weak syllable

    • to be or not to be that is the question

  • enjambment*

    • breaking a thought or sentence mid line

  • caesural pauses*

    • a break in the flow of sound or thought in a line

    • sometimes the break is naturally before a trochee

      • Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be/ What thou art promis'd. Yet do I fear thy nature

    • sometimes a trochaic inversion begins the second half with added urgency

      • to be or not to be that is the question

  • short phrases

  • shared lines

  • overlapping ines

  • short lines 

*both enjambment and caesurae indicate the speaker, though changing track or pausing, has not finished speaking

• reminder that casting in Shakespeare's day would be all men

• The position of women in early modern society

  • God creates Man 'in his own image'

  • the body of the King represents the body of the country 

  • power is God-given and masculine

  • hierarchy was a strong way to control society... in this case, patriarchy.

    • God--> Man--> Woman

      • Eve

        • disobedience

        • succumbing to temptation

        • accessing forbidden knowledge

        • leading Man astray

        • challenging the natural order

        • therefore...women were naturally inferior, yet had power to endanger men. an interesting paradox

    • the more the status quo is emphasized, the more we dear its disruption

• Anti-theatricalism

  • threats to the fixed order

  • people are always counterfeiting, they are not always acting others, not themselves; all the whole action of Plays is nought else but feigning...palpable hypocrysy and dissimulation...therefore it must needs be sinful

  • men taking on effeminiate gender identities is not only a lie, but also a sin.

  • women were publically shamed for "allowing" his woman to break the social hierarchy because women disobeying their husbands indicates potential greater disorder in the country

• Women in the Law

  • a feme covert

  • she has no legal existence of her own, and is passed from the ownership of father to husband

    • "An you be mind, I'll give you to my friend" (Juliet's father)

  • women were property

    • men believe other men

  • rape in marriage made an offense- England, 1991

  • Catherine Hayes burned at the steak for treason for murdering her husband, she defied the power over her

  • exceptions to the rule

    • Queen Elizabeth rejects her femininity in order to reign in power and establish herself of worthy as a ruler

• Love between men and women (the theory)

  • Hero's view

    • Orsino in Twelfth Night II.iv

    • "Then put my tires and mantles on him, whilst I wore his sword Philippan" 

      • Anthony and Cleopatra II v

  • what women should be...

    • a maiden never bold (desdemona's father)

    • soft, gentle, and low (cordelia's father)

  • What women are feared to be...

    • But to the girdle do the gods inheret; beneath is all the fiends (King Leer)

    • When she is sated with his body, she must have change (Iago)

    • the idea is that when women have a taste of sex, their appetite will be more and varied (which is dangerous)

    • Frailty, thy name is woman (Hamlet)

      • commenting on his mother remarrying and shaming her in the choice

  • How can the legally powerless drive the dramatic action?

    • escaping (literally) the patriarchy

      • running away

      • Viola: shippwrecked

      • Rosalind: exiled

      • Portion: left behind

    • transgressive women only permitted within strict confines of plot and genre

      • must cross-dress

        • they have not left the world, just the men

      • comedies begin in trouble and end in peace, tragedies begin in calm and end in tempest

        • the women follow this pattern and somehow are removed from the freedom that they attempt to establish

          • return to female attire and status quo

            • Viola

            • Rosalind

            • Portia

            • Innogen

            • Hermia

          • death

            • Tamora

            • Regan

            • Lady Macbeth

          • collateral damage

            • Juliet

            • Desdemona

  • men playing women

    • 'a nest of boys able to ravish a man'- Father Hubbard's Tales

    • the fear that men watching boys play women would then fall in love with men

    • soothed by the idea that it's all just pretend

    • clothing creates the shape of the body, rather than the other way around. 

      • if you wear female clothing, you will have a female shape and visa versa

      • cross-dressing allows the actors to move more freely on stage when they are not limited by the female clothing

• The problematic plays of yesterday being viewed today

  • Taming of the Shrew, how has it been reframed to be palatable

    • much of it hangs on the performance of the infamous final speech

• Shakespeare can be a great tool to confront social issues by viewing him not as a modern mind, but rather as a body that should be actively contested

• Shakespeare is often viewed as "white property"

  • it can be borrowed, but it needs to be treated carefully and then returned

  • thinking about the number of scholars of color that lead discussions and research about Shakespeare

  • Shakespeare is colonized, we need to de-colonize Shakespeare

    • understanding the language and using the language that serves our environment best

      • "speak easy" school work

      • we are in a revolutionary time, we must do revolutionary work

    • proto-colonial moment during Shakespeare's time

    • England is getting richer and more powerful

• Shakespeare and race

  • race is not a "topic", it is context. it is a condition of his writing and performance, much like the condition of our classrooms

    • Shakespeare's use of race can make the texts feel unaccessible for readers and performers

  • Shakespeare is very aware of race and very aware of the ambitions of the queen re: slaves

  • through his success he becomes "The Great White Bard"

    • he is acknowledged as a native legend in England and a creative genius

    • understanding the difference between "the Bard" of legend and the Shakespeare of the playhouse

  • Playhouse Shakespeare

    • interesting stories

    • exploring race through his writing

  • Example:

    • Juliet's beauty is described in terms of whiteness

      • blackness is used as a foil

      • re: accessibility

        • how do these descriptions change the relationship that Black actors/readers may have with Juliet? Does it change the way students can embrace the text?

        • How can students embrace a text that calls their body ugly? What is our job in that conversation/study?

• Conversation: 

  • What is Antiracism

    • define the term

      • understanding internalized, societal, systemic, and structural racism

    • connotations of antiracism? what is it presumed to mean?

    • what are some "red flag" words that we need to rephrase

      • racist

      • woke- alert to white supremacy

      • antiracism

      • privilege

      • critical race theory (CRT)

  • Race Neutrality

    • "I don't see race", "I treat everyone the same"

  • Identity activity

    • teachers should always participate in these activities as well

    • positionally chart

      • class, citizenship, ability, age, race, sexual orientation, cis/trans, gender

        • two boxes from each identity, two lines from each box

          • feelings, benefits, privileges, struggles, etc.

• What is Dramaturgy

  • Dramaturgy is the theory and practice of the composition of a piece of drama

  • A dramaturg's role in the development process of a piece of theatre is to question, to challenge, to explore, to clarify and to shape.

  • When supporting in the development of a piece of historic theatre for performance, such as a Shakespeare play, a dramaturg will also be responsible for the research of the historical contexts around the play, as well as contexts of previous productions, to inform the creative process.

  • some people refer to a dramaturg's role as similar to that of a midwife- while they do not create work, they help bring it to life

• The student as a dramaturg

  • a dramaturgical approach when looking at dramatic texts is essential to ensuring:

    • a truly personal response

      • that said-- understand that these characters are not YOU and they are not living in your world

    • a response that is rooted in the text as a dramatic construction designed for performance

      • dramatic texts are live documents in a way that books and poems are not

    • a response that is able to look at nuance and uncertainty and beyond 'right' or formulaic answers

      • there is no clear answer, the answer is not the point

      • the important part is knowing there is a question to be asked, this leads to understanding choices that were made

    • a response that is not centered on microscopic language analysis

      • students can write as dramaturgs, this gives us great perspective

        • "It is interesting that Shakespeare doesn't tell the audience how old Romeo is because..."

• Setting up a text

  • the world of the play

    • space, time, climate, mood, music

    • some prompting discussion questions:

      • What type of space are we in? How does this space impact on the movement, speech, and behavior of the classroom?

      • What time of day is the action taking place? How is this time marked? Do events happen in real time?

      • What is the climate in this world? How does that impact on the character' behavior and actions?

      • What sounds echo in this world?

    • example activity

      • give a selections of lines from the play, ask students to give first impressions of them

        • understanding the rules of the world

          • example: Macbeth- violence is bad in our world, but rewarded in Macbeth's. His violence makes him a GOOD person, not a bad person. However, there is a difference between legitimate violence and illegitimate violence. This impacts his choices and our perception of them as the audience. 

  • The social world of the play

    • public/private, social class, social patterns/groupings, clothing, interactions, language usage

    • some prompting discussion questions:

      • Are the characters in private, or public? Or both? How does this affect their behavior?

      • What social class do the characters belong to? Are they social equals? How is power distributed between them?

      • How do people congregate in this play? In pairs, in larger groups, or are they isolated?

      • What language do the character use in private and in public? What kind of thoughts do they express- is it a language of emotion, or thought, of action?

  • What changes?

    • once you are anchored in the world of the play, ensure you are alert to how things change

    • what happens to time, space, climate, mood, social relationships, and language as we move throughout the play?

    • What do these changes reveal?

    • discuss your ideas with a partner- can you think of one good example of changes for all 6 categories?

  • Private and public space

    • as we progress through the play, what spaces do we find ourselves spending more, or less time in?

    • What new spaces are we given access to?

    • what effect does this have on the action of the play?

    • what effect foes it have on our responses to the characters?

  • What about me?

    • don't forget your role

    • plays are designed to have audiences, just as novels are designed to have readers

    • ignoring the role of the audience- the ways in which the plays is communicating to them, the hows and whys, the feelings it is trying to evoke- is the death knell to a meaningful analysis of a dramatic text

• Characters

  • notice that in the world of the dramaturg, the characters are the last thing to consider

  • in order to really be able to understand who the characters are and why they behave as they do, a thorough knowledge, understanding and consideration of the world in which the characters are living is essential

• Understanding Shakesiety

  • students walk into the room with anxiety about Shakespeare, how can we combat these feelings and empower students?

  • dont be afraid to sit with the uncertainties and confusions inherent in Shakespeare's work

  • when a character behaves in a way that is unexpected, or unusual- when something doesn't make sense- even if you cant find definitive meaning, just interrogating the presence of the puzzle is enough!

• You cant always relate everything but that doesn't mean you can't understand it

• You can teach context without teaching history

• games can be connected ahead of the text analysis

• assessment ideas

  • oral assessments

  • SocSem

  • choice

  • pick from a hat essays

    • mad lib for question creation