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Index of Themes

#GirlPower (1)

#Gender roles (2)

#Social Structures (1)

#Punishment (1)

#Maturity (1)

#Morals (1)

#Religion (1)

#Plot Twist (1)

#Play on Words (1)

#Lawyer Speak (1)

#Appearance (1)

#Identity (1)

#Intimacy (1)

#Superficiality (1)

#Nature (2)

#Ecocentrism (1)

#Good and Evil (1)

#Human Nature (1)

#Aristotle (2)

#Philosophy (1)

#Endogamy (1)

#Eternity (1)

#Human animal interaction (1)

#Mother earth (1)

#Children of earth (1)

#Fire and water (1)

#Drowning (1)

#Oceanic Language (1)

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Overall Assessment

The commonplace book, along with the prop and character analysis papers this semester have allowed me to choose passages I can latch onto and delve into to find thematic value in each word. Some of the plays we read were more difficult for me to write about because they were completely outside of any knowledge I have about Shakespeare’s intentions, but I would rather answer questions in my posts than propose them, and this assignment forced me to sit with passages I was intrigued by until I realized what it was about them that drew me in. To me, that is extremely valuable because it proves that language is always effective for a reason, and if you look at it long enough, you’re prone to figure it out!

Cheers to an awesome semester!!

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Blog #10: Henry IV Part I

Lady Percy: O, my good lord, why are you thus alone? For what offence have I this fortnight been A banish'd woman from my Harry's bed? Tell me, sweet lord, what is't that takes from thee Thy stomach, pleasure and thy golden sleep? Why dost thou bend thine eyes upon the earth, And start so often when thou sit'st alone? Why hast thou lost the fresh blood in thy cheeks; And given my treasures and my rights of thee To thick-eyed musing and cursed melancholy? In thy faint slumbers I by thee have watch'd, And heard thee murmur tales of iron wars; Speak terms of manage to thy bounding steed; Cry 'Courage! to the field!' And thou hast talk'd Of sallies and retires, of trenches, tents, Of palisadoes, frontiers, parapets, Of basilisks, of cannon, culverin, Of prisoners' ransom and of soldiers slain, And all the currents of a heady fight. Thy spirit within thee hath been so at war And thus hath so bestirr'd thee in thy sleep, That beads of sweat have stood upon thy brow Like bubbles in a late-disturbed stream; And in thy face strange motions have appear'd, Such as we see when men restrain their breath On some great sudden hest. O, what portents are these? Some heavy business hath my lord in hand, And I must know it, else he loves me not.

Act 2, Scene 5, Lines 32-59

When Lady Percy approaches the end of this monologue and speaks about the droplets of sweat on Hotspur’s brow and the way he holds his breath, it makes me think of the feeling of drowning. The monologue overwhelms Hotspur and the audience with demand after demand of him to reveal what he is hiding and there are very few full-stops in the language--I have personally delivered this monologue before, and finding a place to breath was a major difficulty. This moment stirs up an image of drowning in deep, dark water, just as one’s dreams or nightmares may be hard to escape from, even if you know it is not reality. Hotspur is aptly named because he is fiery (I imagine him looking something like Heat Miser), but words like “currents” and “bestirr’d” are particularly effective in cooling him down and revealing his inner vulnerability. I had not necessarily noticed a watery or fluid theme throughout the play, but seeing it here makes me wonder if it is present elsewhere. 

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Blog #9: Henry IV Part I

King Henry: So shaken as we are, so wan with care, Find we a time for frighted peace to pant, And breathe short-winded accents of new broils To be commenced in strands afar remote. No more the thirsty entrance of this soil Shall daub her lips with her own children's blood; Nor more shall trenching war channel her fields, Nor bruise her flowerets with the armed hoofs Of hostile paces: those opposed eyes, Which, like the meteors of a troubled heaven, All of one nature, of one substance bred, Did lately meet in the intestine shock And furious close of civil butchery...

Act I, Scene I, Lines I-12

King Henry is the first to speak onstage, but his opening speech introduces the first character, earth, a woman. On one hand, King Henry’s speech is not as heroic as it seems on the surface; he claims that the earth cannot withstand the power of war and must remain submissive while being plowed over by soliders’ boots and war horses. In this metaphor, the earth is also namely a mother figure, an “intestine” for all people. However, he also enforces the idea that earth has bravely sustained all of the injury done to her and given signs of her immense rage to the men destroying her. He also does not refer to soldiers or war as something belonging solely to men at any point in his first monologue. After initially reading this passage, I assumed King Henry was drawing a division between man as violent and woman as docile, but this is not necessarily true, though it can be inferred that the “children” he is speaking of are men.

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Blog #8: Tis’ Pity She’s a Whore

Annabella: Thou, precious Time, that swiftly rid’st in post Over the world, to finish up the race Of my last fate, here stay thy restless course, And bear to ages that are yet unborn A wretched, woeful woman’s tragedy. My conscience now stands up against my lust, With depositions character’d in guilt,

Enter Friar, [below]

And tells me I am lost: now I confess; Beauty that clothes the outside of the face, Is cursed if it be not cloth’d with grace. Here like a turtle, (mew’d up in a cage,) Unmated, I converse with air and walls...

Act 5, Scene 1, Lines 5-16

There is, fittingly, an entire world of natural imagery here to dissect. I was initially drawn to this passage because of the metaphor of the turtle, since it implies Annabella wishes she were a “cold-blooded” creature, lacking the lust she feels got her into this situation. From here, I thought about reptiles and the way they give birth by laying eggs, rather than a live birth. Annabella describes the specific feeling of being a turtle in a cage, rather than in the wild, much like an unborn turtle might be stuck inside of an egg, struggling to eject itself into the outside world. The final line is like the unborn turtle: unmated, surrounded by only air and walls in its egg. Furthermore, the woes of losing an unborn child before getting the chance to see the child connects with a longing to be able to give birth to something, even if it is unborn. 

Relatedly, the beginning of this passage stresses how quickly time is passing and presents a dichotomy against Annabella’s embodiment of a turtle, a slow animal. To me, Annabella laments how the world is spinning so quickly that she is frozen in time, forced to come to terms with her sins for what feels like eternity.

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Blog #7: Tis’ Pity She’s a Whore

Giovanni: And chiefly, in that love, her love to me: If her’s to me, then so is mine to her; Since in like causes are effects alike.

Act 2, Scene 5, Lines 25-27

Like Doctor Faustus, these lines are equally interesting through an Aristotelian lens because they make faulty Giovanni’s claims about likeness. As siblings, Giovanni and Anna are physically alike, yet Aristotle says that the composition of one’s body can be faked easily and should not be trusted as an indication of the truth. His argument uses the example of makeup as a false art because it feigns the physical health attained with the hard work of exercise and fitness. The horrific results of Giovanni’s argument serve as proof of Aristotle’s logic--had Giovanni seen through the artificiality of comparing their initial likeness and love to similar outcomes in the future, Anna would not have died.

The idea of superficiality in this moment is also amusing because it is unlikely the actors would have actually looked alike onstage unless they were brothers, and the actor playing Anna would be disguised as a healthy woman through makeup and costuming. 

Below:  I found this gif searching for images about “disguise.” When I saw this one, I felt it perfectly depicted the evils of superficial assumptions about likeness in ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore.

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Blog #6: Doctor Faustus

Mephistopheles: Within the bowels of these elements,  Where we are tortur’d and remain for ever:  Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscrib’d  In one self-place; but where we are is hell,  And where hell is, there must we ever be:  And, to conclude, when all the world dissolves And every creature shall be purified All places shall be hell that is not heaven.

Act 2, Scene 1, Lines 115-123

This declaration is made more sinister and twisted in thinking of the parchment contract as a physical emblem of hell. If the parchment represents skin, Faustus symbolizes ripping away his outer layer to reveal his insides and sign them away. Mephistopheles’s use of the word “bowels” appears thoughtfully chosen with this in mind, because he signals that one’s own hell lives within them. Releasing the contents of your soul into the world does not extinguish evil, but allows it to thrive and surround your entire life. 

There is also a sense of irony in what he says if it is analyzed through a thinker like Aristotle; Aristotle argues that only work which requires one’s soul is genuine in nature because the physical body can hide and lie about the truth. The parchment, or skin of the body, has been totally hidden beneath Faustus’s blood, the work of his soul. Thus, Aristotle would say that the contract represents truth and goodness because it stems from within, yet Mephistopheles claims that what comes from within is evil.

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Blog #5: As You Like It

Adam: Take that, and He that doth the ravens feed, Yea, providently caters for the sparrow, Be comfort to my age. Here is the gold. All this I give you.

Act 2, Scene 2, Lines 44-47

Whereas other characters, like Orlando, feel that Arden and the outside world is theirs to use and own, Adam expresses that it is nature which has control over humanity. In his old age, he finds comfort in knowing that he can give back to his environment and be food for birds after death. He place little value on his gold, something with arbitrary worth, and instead looks for ways to assert the value of his physical body and prove that he is not useless, even if he cannot walk or work as hard as a younger man. 

This is a very cool way to think about the role of disguise and superficiality in the play because a person may use the fact that they have money to hide less desirable qualities. By arguing that humans are simply one small piece of the earth and should think of themselves as something to be consumed by nature, Adam proves himself as a symbol of purity and grace, who values truthfulness and humbleness, not flashy disguises.

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Imagined Audience in As You Like It

ROSALIND: I am not furnished like a beggar; therefore to beg will not become me. My way is to conjure you...

Epilogue

The word “conjure” evokes entrancement, and the sense that Rosalind wants to stir up strong feelings about the play that the audience can hold with them. It evokes the reality that is created onstage, while simultaneously proposing that the audience take the forested world given to them in As You Like It and recreate it outside of the bounds of the theatre, on the streets of the “wooden” city of London. “Conjure” sits directly in the center of the epilogue, signifying a transition from the imagined world of the play and the real world. The actor breaks character in saying “if I were a woman,” which ends the play on a slightly erotic note, validating all types of “love” and suggesting that As You Like It is a play for everyone; once the play ends, it should be shared intimately like the environment of the theatre space, but across boundaries, and between all people in London.

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Entry #4: As You Like It

ROSALIND (AS GANYMEDE): A lean cheek, which you have not; a blue eye and sunken, which you have not; an unquestionable spirit, which you have not; a beard neglected, which you have not—but I pardon you for that, for simply your having in beard is a younger brother’s revenue. 

Act 3, Scene 2, Lines 337-341

Rosalind uses the appearances of others to protect her own identity, which is ingenious on the surface. However, it tends to bring people closer to her instead of pushing them away, which is detrimental if they discover who Ganymede truly is. In this instance, Ganymede draws attention to everything Orlando lacks as a lover, pointing attention to his own facial features, which convinces Orlando to seek intimate guidance from Ganymede. Rosalind also uses this tactic with Phoebe, which fails horribly because Phoebe is attracted to the cruelty and insults and falls in love with Ganymede. Ultimately, that Rosalind’s facade is never discovered (save for Phoebe’s subtle discovery that Ganymede was Rosalind upon Rosalind’s entrance before her wedding) speaks to the success of her strategy because she does not ask those around her to think too closely about who Ganymede is, but the unintentional relationships that she finds herself in contribute to the folly of the play and present added risk and excitement.

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Entry #3: The Merchant of Venice

SHYLOCK: fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge.

Act 3, Scene 1, Lines 51-60

Shylock is quite clever in his argument for revenge because he structures it in such a way that it seems to be the only natural response. Just as a Jew bleeds automatically if another man injures him, he will revenge automatically if another man disgraces him. By the same token, a Christian will bleed if pricked, so it can be argued he will also seek revenge if he is wronged, thus he should understand the Jews’ dilemma. Shylock also subtly implicates Christian values as the ironic cause for the “evil” ways of the Jews; he frames Jews as victims of a world beyond their control by using a passive voice, saying they are “fed with the same food, healed by” an outside source, rather than as individuals with the power to steer their own fates, eat their food, or cure their illness. By empowering Christianity, Shylock is simultaneously demonizing it to make himself look vulnerable and shape himself as simply a product of his surroundings. I think it could be valuable to research the larger effect of making those rhetorical strategies which are normally only reserved for lawyers, like in the courtroom scene, the norm in The Merchant of Venice. Is it damaging in relationships to use that sort of complex argumentative reasoning, even if one achieves their goal and wins?

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Entry #2: The Merchant of Venice

BASSANIO:  In my school-days, when I had lost one shaft, I shot his fellow of the self-same flight The self-same way with more advised watch, To find the other forth, and by adventuring both I oft found both: I urge this childhood proof, Because what follows is pure innocence. I owe you much, and, like a wilful youth, That which I owe is lost; but if you please To shoot another arrow that self way Which you did shoot the first, I do not doubt, As I will watch the aim, or to find both Or bring your latter hazard back again And thankfully rest debtor for the first.

Act 1, Scene 1, Lines 140-152

I have a variety of questions for Bassanio: If he knew which direction the first arrow went in, why does he need a second arrow to find it? Why does he use the example of a young, careless child to appeal to Antonio’s good graces and ask for more money? On the surface, his logic is sensical, but deeper inspection reveals that he truly tricking Antonio into helping him and putting him at risk of losing everything. Bassanio’s moral compass is certainly confused, if not completely corrupt. However, it is frustrating to analyze him because his immaturity makes him blissfully ignorant of the consequences of his actions, and in comparison to Shylock, who knows the effects of his words, Bassanio is seemingly more likable. Even the act of giving away Portia’s precious ring only results in a slap on the wrist, whereas Shylock’s mere attempt to win a pound of human flesh costs him everything.

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Entry #1: Romeo and Juliet

CAPULET:  Content thee, gentle coz, let him alone; He bears him like a portly gentleman; And, to say truth, Verona brags of him To be a virtuous and well-govern'd youth: I would not for the wealth of all the town Here in my house do him disparagement: Therefore be patient, take no note of him: It is my will, the which if thou respect, Show a fair presence and put off these frowns, And ill-beseeming semblance for a feast. 

Act 1, Scene 5, Lines 63-71

Capulet refers to himself later as a “housewife,” and his overall passivity toward Romeo in this moment is a fascinating disruption of gender stereotypes and expectations of masculinity (4.2.43). Considering Juliet’s power to drive all of the actions of the play by simply existing as a woman, Capulet’s identity seems to supplement and empower the theme of femininity throughout the play. On the other hand, Capulet’s conventionally feminine behaviors oppress him as well; Tybalt undermines his power and does not back down from the prospect of fighting Romeo and the ball until Capulet has reasserted himself multiple times. Additionally, Juliet does not immediately obey him and marry Paris without a fight. This scene could be uniquely explored through an all-female casting of the Capulet family because Capulet’s subtle femininity would be highlighted.