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Blog Post 10: ENGL 350

Romeo and Juliet is one of my favorite Shakespeare plays, but its performance at the Globe Theatre disappointed me to say the least.

This rendition of Romeo and Juliet had a western theme to it, though that directorial choice did not make sense at all with the script. The difference between the two houses wasn’t clearly executed through the theme or through any costume, props, etc. I don’t know too much about the traits of western media, but the theme didn’t add anything to the story of the play. Additionally, I was expecting American country accents for authentic western representation, but that didn’t happen.

As for the acting, I also left feeling disappointed. I wasn’t expecting the Globe Theatre to not mic their performers, so every actor had to shout-act their lines, which I thought hurt their performance. Juliet’s actress did a good job playing a younger role, but her character came across as more stern and less lovesick. I also thought that Romeo and Juliet had zero chemistry, with Romeo’s actor pulling more of the weight in terms of affection and love.

On a more positive note, I really enjoyed being at the Globe. I loved its architecture and seeing the sun go down as the play went on. Though I hated standing for the entirity of the play, I’m glad I experienced doing that once. Romeo and Juliet also wasn’t entirely awful. Mercutio and the Nurse really stole the show in my opinion. I also thought the choice to make the murdered characters come back to life as a ghost to speak their final lines or to die with Romeo at the play’s end was a very interesting choice. It acted as a reminder of the secondary characters who have also suffered because of the quarrel between the two houses, especially amidst an attempt to unite them.

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Blog Post 9: ENGL 350

My first impression of the National Gallery was that it seemed to be 70% religious paintings/imagery and 30% anything else, with the majority of the religious artworks revolving around Christianity. This makes sense, as the paintings in this gallery were created around the fifteenth-seventeenth century and Christianity had become the predominant religion in Europe. These paintings were most likely created to express and influence faith in God at the time, as well as to visualize the people in the Bible and what their actions and emotions would look like. I love religious imagery, especially surrounding Mary, Jesus, or cherubs, so I found so many paintings in this gallery to be truly beautiful and emotional. But, there was a pattern in depicting Christ that intrigued me.

^ These two paintings in the gallery really struck me because they both depict the infant Jesus and Mother Mary as white and blonde. Obviously, I know that in contemporary society, we still depict the Holy family as white with Eurocentric features. I think it was just shocking to me that they also used to be depicted as blonde. This could have been the intention of the painters to make Christianity more palatable or relatable to Europeans, as depicting the Holy family with Middle Eastern features wouldn’t be attractive during this period of extreme racism. It could have also been done to depict the Holy family, and especially Jesus, as utterly pure (hence the pale white skin and light hair color), though I believe the former possibility holds more weight to it. This had to have been a collective effort or mindset for all of these sixteenth century painters to depict them in that way, as all of the religious paintings include a white Mary or Jesus.

^ Aside from the religious imagery, this is one of my favorite paintings that I saw at the National Gallery. It was created around 1896 by Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas and depicts a young girl holding her head and leaning back from the strain of the maid combing her hair. I love this painting because it reminds me so much of my childhood and how my mom would comb and style my hair every day. The maid in the painting seems to find this act to be tranquil, and the girl, though in pain, doesn’t seem to hate it either. This scene conveys the intimacy and bond between the two female figures, much like a mother combing her daughter’s hair. There were many times where I too was holding my head in pain and leaning back to ease the tension of the hairstyles my mom would give me, but those are now times that I wish I could return to. This painting made me feel nostalgic for a time when starting my day included the help of my mom and wasn’t a solo act.

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Blog Post 8: ENGL 350

I went to Camden Market expecting to find a street filled with punk rock clothing and people. What I actually saw was a market overrun by mass-produced tourist crap. Needless to say, I was disappointed.

Before travelling to Camden Market, I was told that it was the home of the punk rock scene. Dina said that this was the place you would go to if you wanted an edgy, futuristic, and/or goth piece of clothing. There were a couple stores you could find these types of clothing at, such as Cyberdog, Psylo, or Burleska. But these shops are truly hidden gems amongst the highly repetitive booths filled with London paraphernalia and mass-produced items. Stepping out into the street from the Tube station, these booths are the only thing you can see. It takes a good five-ten minute walk (if you aren’t searching through the booths hoping to find what you really came there for) to even get to the heart of Camden Market.

^ Cyberdog: One of the only shops worth going to in Camden Market.

When I say “mass-produced tourist crap”, I’m talking about the London souvenir shops that infiltrate every street corner in the city. Every single one of them sells the same items, and what’s worse is that sometimes they sell certain items for a higher price than their sister stores. If they’re not selling London merchandise, then they’re selling a suspiciously large assortment of rings and other jewelry. Some of which I have seen before on Amazon or AliExpress, which leads me to believe I paid seven pounds for a ring that probably costed them five cents. Even more infuriating than this is the number of counterfeit items I have come across. I wanted to buy a soccer jersey while I was there, but did a double take and realized that many of these booths were selling fake Adidas jerseys. One shop sold fake Marc Jacobs, Gucci, and other designer handbags. Another shop (the most offensive one of all in my opinion) appeared to be a vintage shop, but upon entrance it was obvious that all of the clothing and accessories they were selling were hideous, confusing wastes of fabric. One shirt in that shop had the Harry Potter symbol on it, but the image and quote also on that shirt had nothing to do with Harry Potter. And this shop was full of things of that nature, with piles of clothes on the floor and shirts covering every inch of the walls.

^ Left: One shop selling fake Diesel, Marc Jacobs, and Gucci handbags. Right: Souvenir shops in pretty much every other building you pass by.

I became so tired rummaging through the garbage in Camden Market that I couldn’t even enjoy the actual punk stores. I made it to a few, but ended up cutting my shopping trip short because it didn’t feel worth it. Overall, Camden Market might have been the worst market I’ve shopped at in London during my trip.

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Blog Post 7: ENGL 350

A unique aspect of London culture that I have experienced and witnessed throughout the trip revolves around the city’s fashion culture. Sure, the outfits we see people wear on the street may not look too different from what we’re used to, but certain attitudes towards clothing differ between England and the US.

One of the first things I noted about the fashion culture in London is that they seem to prefer slow fashion over fast fashion. This means that most of the Gen-Z fashionistas are shopping at vintage retailers for their clothing rather than big brand stores. Brick Lane is especially comprised of vintage shops and each shop encounters hundreds of young adults on the hunt to find a rare gem. Within the past five years, thrifting has been a hobby that exploded in popularity, though Providence, let alone Rhode Island, hasn’t got nearly as many charity (thrift) shops as London does. Thrifting in RI takes place mainly at the big brand thrift stores like Goodwill or Savers, whereas there is a plethora of small charity shops in London that are curated for specific styles (Y2K, 90s grunge) and/or groups of people (Gen-Z women, etc). I think this is interesting because in the last few years I have noticed my generation (in the US and in RI) heavily leaning more towards fast fashion for their everyday outfits as opposed to thrifting. Whether this means buying fast fashion from the mall or on Shein, convenience is favored highly in the US as opposed to shopping slower.

^ Some vintage charity shops, built around certain aesthetics.

Athletic clothes have become part of the custom, appropriate everyday outfit for Americans, but it is the opposite in London. I have barely seen anyone wearing something as simple as leggings on the streets of the city. To Londoners, athletic clothes belong in the gym and not on the streets. But, to my surprise, many small retailers I came across on Camden Market, Brick Lane, or Spitalfields reworked athletic clothing into corset tops or miniskirts. I have never seen anything like this before and am curious as to how this started or where this idea came from. I’m guessing it might have stemmed from Japanese fashion culture, though I am not 100% sure. This choice is so strange to me because I don’t know who their intended consumer is for this product. I haven’t seen anyone on the streets wearing these upcycled styles, nor have I seen this style in US stores. It’s interesting to me how athletic clothes are inappropriate or abnormal to wear on a day-to-day basis, so much so that they have to be “cutesy” or made “girlified” to be considered fashion.

^ Track jackets turned into corset tops and Nike/Adidas pants turned into miniskirts with bows.

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Blog Post 6: ENGL 350

For my summary/review of a historical site, I would like to express my thoughts on Westminster Abbey. Admittedly, I knew close to nothing about this site before visiting it. I only knew that it was a place used by the Royal family for special events. I was not expecting it to be a huge indoor graveyard. Seeing it in person made me wonder why anyone would want to have their wedding here amongst all the tombstones. I assume this is tradition, though it would feel a bit eerie to me.

There are over 3,000 people buried in Westminster Abbey. Of course, I didn’t know everyone who was buried here, but I understood that most of these were wealthy, high status white people. Glamorous tombstones of kings, queens, dukes, duchesses, and more of the like could be found in each room of the site. The kings and queens had the most luxurious tombstones with sculptures of themselves lying down, with their head under a pillow, in their royal garb, and holding up praying hands. Some of these tombstones even included smaller sculptures of their family members kneeling and praying over them. I honestly found this to be quite beautiful. I know this was done out of wealth and to make these royal figures seem holy or objectively good, but I could still admire the beauty of the tombstones and felt the sculptures of these people looked at peace.

There were a few names on the tombstones that I recognized, such as Charles Dickens, Issac Newton, and Stephen Hawking. Their graves, in addition to many others, were scattered across the floors of Westminster Abbey.

Some graves seem to have been preserved and upkept (perhaps with a bouquet or floral wreath in memoriam), though other graves have lost their carvings due to the millions of people who have walked over them throughout the years. You might even mistake these for regular floor tiles, though they look exactly like the other graves just without any sign of whom they belong to. There is something heartbreaking about this. Westminster Abbey is supposed to be a memorial for all the important people housed there, yet those under the blank graves don’t get to be remembered. No name, no birth date, no death date. All erased for the public’s indulgence and convenience. I couldn’t help but wonder who these people were under the graves or why the employees at Westminster Abbey didn’t try harder to preserve them.

^ The large black tiles are actually blank graves.

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Gotta do what you gotta do!

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Blog Post 5: ENGL 350

On 6/13, I visited Buckingham Palace and arrived right on time to see the Changing of the Guards. I didn’t realize that it was happening when I got there but heard rumblings from people commenting on the crowds being larger than usual. As a frequent concertgoer, I naturally pushed my way to the fence where the guards were supposed to be changing. In order to get the best view, I stuck my arm through the fence and recorded the guards in front of the palace. Luckily, I didn’t drop my phone!

People of many cultures, nations, and ages gathered onto the palace grounds to see the Changing of the Guards. I noted very few people with British accents amongst the crowd. Instead, I heard a variety of languages and dialects. This area was filled with tourists trying to catch a glimpse of what goes on in the royal palace. Though it was cool to witness this event once, I wasn’t too impressed. Maybe it is because I have a sister in the Army band in RI, so seeing a military marching band isn’t very exciting for me. But I could have also felt this way because my view was obstructed, it was eighty degrees, and it was a lot of waiting around for the guards to pass by. Probably the latter.

I enjoyed the scenery at Buckingham Palace overall. Most of the sights we have seen in England have been utterly beautiful to me, and this one is definitely up there! As I was waiting for the Changing of the Guards, I had time to observe the architecture that separated the palace from the public. The fences each included a large, gold UK Coat of Arms and cherubs holding crowns were sculpted into the stone pillars. Though I couldn’t get close to it, the Victoria Memorial was breath-taking even from a distance. The gold detailing on the sculptures/fences and the red flowers surrounding the memorial added a pop of color to the off-white stone of the palace walls.

Buckingham Palace once felt like a place I could only ever dream of seeing in person. I've seen it multiple times before on TV when events surrounding the Royal family took place, but it always felt so distant to me. As with many of our other historical sites, I loved knowing that I was standing where a princess or a queen had stood, walking the same grounds that they had walked before. Instead of being an unattainable attraction, visiting Buckingham Palace will now be a distant, yet fond, memory of mine.

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Blog Post 4: ENGL 350

With Titus Andronicus being one of Shakespeare’s earlier works, it is reasonable to believe that he would write a play with similar elements to Marlowe’s famous plays. As a rival playwright, Titus Andronicus could absolutely be a parody of Marlowe’s plays, with its violence and over-reaching characters, or it could be an attempt to appeal to a larger audience (playing to the trends of the time). Perhaps both could be true. Though above all else, it seems to be a social commentary on revenge and how audiences react (or don’t react) to the vengeful violence that takes place right before their eyes.

At the start of the play, we see Titus and his sons coldly sacrifice Tamora’s son Alarbus by dismembering him and setting his limbs on fire. Of course, Tamora is distraught over this and seeks revenge against the Andronici family. Titus and Tamora serve as foils for each other, as Titus saw his sons’ deaths as noble whereas Tamora felt deep grief over her son’s death. The revenge plots against one another escalate quickly, resulting in devastating acts of violence. But as the revenge escalates, Titus and Tamora, still as foils of each other, become complete opposites of what they once were. This change comes when Lavinia threatens to expose Tamora and Aaron’s relationship, as Tamora develops a cold-heartedness towards her, encouraging her sons to rape and kill her. Even as Lavinia pleads to her womanhood, Tamora allows her rape and mutilation to happen because she is so hungry for revenge. On the other hand, it is Titus who falls into deep grief at the sight of his changed daughter, which only makes his hunger for revenge more intense. By representing these characters as foils, Shakespeare could be commenting on the hunt for revenge. While it may feel justified, the anger and desire for another person’s pain will never dissipate, especially if the cycle of revenge keeps spiraling. Both characters go too far in their ploys because their hunger is never satisfied. And while on the hunt for revenge, they become completely different people who commit acts that they otherwise would never have thought they would commit.

Titus Andronicus could also be a commentary on how audiences react to violence. In the Elizabethan period, there were undoubtedly public acts of violence that were allowed and normalized in England. This leads to the desensitization of violence that most likely occurred during this time. With Marlowe being such a celebrated playwright, it is evident that violence was also seen as entertaining. I found the final scene in Titus the movie so striking because the audience’s faces in the Colosseum were all blank. There was no reaction to the murder scene before them, which symbolizes our society’s desensitization and even attraction to violent media. Because the violence in the play and the movie is not real, the audience experiences very little reaction to it besides the occasional cringe or disgust. The events in this play could be Shakespeare’s way of asking audiences, “This is the kind of thing that entertains you?”. He may be critiquing society’s view of violence as impersonal, dramatic entertainment, at least within the theater.

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Blog Post 3: ENGL 350

When describing A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a “queer” play, one does not only refer to the subversion of sexual/gender norms. Labeling something as “queer” can also mean that it subverts any social conventions or norms.

Lysander and Hermia’s relationship has elements of queerness in it, since their marriage is forbidden by Hermia’s father and can be punishable by death. But it is the swiftness in which Lysander seemingly moves from infatuation with Hermia to seduction by Helena that is a subversion of the norm and of reality. Due to Robin applying the magic potion on Lysander’s eyelids and not Demetrius’, Lysander was cursed to fall in love with the first person he saw: Helena. The fact that Lysander and Demetrius were drugged by the magic potion was unbeknownst to all of the humans, making the phenomenon seem extraordinary and bizarre to the women, as neither of the male characters showed any affection towards Helena before.

Of course, Lysander falls victim to this potion after saying to Hermia “And then end life when I end loyalty” (2.2.69), hoping that his life will end if he doesn’t remain loyal to her. This line makes the love-interest-switch even more dramatic as he not only disregards Hermia once he wakes but ends up falling madly in love with her best friend Helena, who contrasts Hermia because she was so unlucky in love before. This occurrence is queer in and of itself because Helena suddenly ends up receiving male affection from Lysander and Demetrius when it was once only afforded to Hermia. Upon seeing Helena’s face, Lysander states, “Transparent Helena, nature shows art, / That through thy bosom makes me see thy heart” (2.2.110-11). Lysander claims that nature’s magic ability to allow him to really see Helena is the source of his deep love for her. This mention of nature adds to the queer elements ruminating in this scene because, as we discussed in class, nature and the woods were representative of the erotic and of queer relationships at the time. It is fitting that the love triangle (or square, rather) in this play begins in the forest as it is the setting of which a very queer (in the sense of a subversion of reality) relationship dynamic forms.

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Blog Post 2: ENGL 350

Shakespeare’s personhood was momentarily revivified in the children’s show Gravity Falls on the Disney Channel. In season one episode three, the main characters, Dipper and Mabel, discover a hidden closet in their uncle’s house filled with wax figures of famous people/characters such as Sherlock Holmes, Larry King, and Shakespeare himself. The wax figures come alive and try to kill the two kids, but Dipper and Mabel end up winning. This is an episode I distinctly remember watching when I was younger, and I specifically remember Shakespeare’s inclusion in this episode.

Though Shakespeare’s character only has a few lines in this episode, I think that the representation of his personhood encapsulates how the real Shakespeare wrote historical figures in his plays. Towards the end of the episode, Mabel finishes off destroying the wax figures by throwing them into a fireplace and we get a moment between her and Shakespeare’s talking head. In verse he says, “Though our group be cleft in twain / man of wax shall rise again!”. In modern translation, he is saying how another wax figure uprising will take place even though the original group has been defeated. Right after this remark, Mabel throws his head into the fire.

This moment before wax Shakespeare’s death reminds me of how Shakespeare wrote the deaths of (most of) his historical figures, but also of his characters in general. Usually as one of his characters is actively dying, Shakespeare allows that character a monologue or a few lines for any last wishes, expressions of love, or lamentations. He often does this with his own historical characters, such as Julius Caesar having just been stabbed and expressing his shock when he finds out Brutus was a traitor. Another example lies in Antony’s death in Antony and Cleopatra, where he reflects on his own greatness as a soldier and a Roman while he is dying from a self-inflicted stab wound. It is important to reiterate that these death speeches happen as they are dying and not before they receive the fatal blow, like in Richard’s case in Richard III. In this episode, Shakespeare is decapitated and is allowed one final verse before his death. Like the death speeches Shakespeare gave to these historical characters, the writers of Gravity Falls gave to him before his character’s demise.

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Blog Post 1: ENGL 350

In "Some Accounts of the Life and Writings of William Shakespeare", Nicholas Rowe explains what events in Shakespeare's life led him into the entertainment sphere.

Shakespeare came from a large family with a good reputation, as Rowe states that "His family... were of good figure and fashion there, and are mentioned as gentlemen". Though Shakespeare's behavior, at the age of eighteen, did not align with this image of his family. Rowe states that Shakespeare had "fallen into ill company", with whom he had committed theft multiple times and was prosecuted for his actions. By hanging around the wrong crowd, Shakespeare was not acting in accordance with his family's good reputation, though it is important to remember that he is eighteen during these events. He had already married Anne Hathaway at this point, but he is not yet mature. It is evident from this account of Shakespeare's younger years that he is rebellious and outspoken, as he spoke a ballad to Sir Thomas Lucy of Cherlecote under prosecution that was "so very bitter" that he had to leave his family and business behind to shelter himself in London.

It was after these events that led Shakespeare to a play-house where he became an actor and a writer. He was placed at a "very mean rank" in society because of his crimes, though the play-house accepted him as an actor. Rowe touches on the wider cultural narrative that acting was a lowly job, though Shakespeare's unique talent and personality allowed him to thrive in that space. It is interesting to me how Shakespeare was associated with the lowly career of theatrical entertainment and perpetuated it, yet he was so highly regarded for his plays. It's as if he was the exception, or the one who "made it big" despite the circumstances he was under. Overall, Rowe's text reveals the fall and rise of Shakespeare, from rock bottom to stardom, as his criminal past is what ultimately led him to his purpose.