First blog post

Shakespeare is known to add dark humor in his tragedy plays, especially in Hamlet. We see that in this play, Hamlet is going through so much in his life, with the sudden death of his father, then his mother remarrying with his fathers brother following the death of the King. That, as it is is something very hard to go through already. After he finds out the truth about his father, we see he becomes and acts crazy to get what he wants. He uses comic relief to release the tension of everything he has just found out and is going through.

He allows himself to act crazy and insults people so it may be excused. However, he knows what he is doing and speaks more with the truth; since people think he is crazy they do not give him much importance in what he says. In act II we see more comedy in what Hamlet says, especially in scene two. Me mocks what his mother and uncle have done. He uses this to relieve the tension of what has happened as he also tries to make it seem that it is not truly facing him, when in reality he is acting it out by his actions and words. He himself uses this comic relief to not let him truly effect him.

Reflection

In the beginning of the semester I was really nervous when I learned that we would had two major essays and one big presentation. I always felt that in an English class that was my biggest weaknesses, writing essays and public speaking. However, my writing skills definitely improved throughout of this class, especially with having to write a blog post every week. Another aspect that I learned about in this class is the way to analyze films and look for differences in film adaptations. I also learned so much about Shakespeare and the Renaissance era and really enjoyed reading new plays from Shakespeare. I had only ready Romeo and Juliet in high school. Even though the articles that we were assigned to read were very informative, I found it somewhat difficult to keep up with them and fully understand them. Although, something else that I also bettered at was to come prepared to class and having read everything before class because of the pop quizzes. One thing that I could say I still struggle with and need work on is procrastination, I feel like my essays could have been much better if I did not wait until the last days to work on them.

Overall, I thought this course was very helpful, simply with the time that Ms. Mannan took to give a class over MLA formatting and give us an overview of how to write english papers. Also, one huge thing that I learned was that The Lion King is a film adaptation of Hamlet, I did not know that before this class.

Blog 9: Shakespeare’s Public engagement

So many adaptions of Shakespeare has evolved over the years where so many people have been able to engage more to his plays. Many people, especially students get bored of reading Shakespeare’s plays, simply because the language was pretty difficult to read and understand. When people act it out it is more interesting to watch and learn about Shakespeare’s writings and plays. Over the years it has become more enticing to engage with Shakespeare’s work because of the amount of adaptions there has been. It has been a great opportunity for people to become more interested and keep them wanting to know more and interpret them in different ways.

I believe that it has been a great thing that there has been podcasts, digital archives, radio performances, and film adaptions for people to interpret Shakespeare in unique ways. It may give the work a different meaning and people love finding a way to connect to Shakespeare’s plays in various ways besides just reading it. It also gives different age groups to interpret the plays in their own way. For instance, the film adaption of Hamlet as The Lion King is an amazing example of different age groups of people (children) to engage with Shakespeare’s work.

Blog: 8 Othello

After reading Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare described to the the audience very detailed about the character Shylock the Jew until I read until act III from William Shakespeare’s play “Othello”. I have noticed how so many people throughout the play are so against Othello just because he is a different race from the rest of the people from their town. Shakespeare had not really put any importance to the color and ethnicity to the main character because he wanted people to notice something and to become affiliated it with the fact before anybody else could interpret the play.

The fact that he is a different race and color has caused so much conflict between him and his people. Othello comes out as an insecure person that does not have a lot of confidence towards himself. Many other characters view Othello as an ordinary man which would not be able to achieve any of his goals. However, he turns out to be an extradorinaiy  character like Hamlet, which can turn out to be an anti-hero. The simple fact that Othello is a different skin color in the play, others respect him in a way. Many people throughout the play do not believe his intentions, but they truly seem just to simply love Desdemona.

 

 

Blog 7: Violence in Entertainment

Over the years the topic of violence has evolved in literature and film/tv entertainment. The fact that the play Titus Andronicus was written in 1593, many people were not used to seeing/ hearing/ or reading about so much bloodshed and violence. The audience for this play at the time were not expecting to see so much savageness and gruesome in every act. Some people may have even been traumatized by such a tragedy play because most of the the audience were not previously exposed to so much morbidity. It must have been very overwhelming for them to take all this in at once.

However, now a days the matter of violence and bloodshed has become very appealing to so many people in the world. There are thousands of movies that are very gory and unpleasant to watch, but millions of people still pay a $10 movie ticket to go watch it. Also, how we discussed in class some of the number one most viewed TV shows, such as Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead are very violent and frightful, but people have become more used to it and more captivated by it. People mentality and the culture is the biggest difference between the play and the shows now.

Blog 6: Different Shakespeares

Shakespeare’s plays have been around for hundredths and thousandths of years now. This fact makes it really accessible for anyone to make any adaptation for any of Shakespeare’s plays. In Jyotsna Singh article, “Different Shakespeares: The Bard in Colonial/Postcolonial India” it is said that there are hundredths of film adaptions and how it is differently portrayed in various countries. Shakespeare’s work has been a massive influence in the english literature, which became universal to help teach other children about english literature. Film adaptions have helped children understand Shakespeare’s plays by movies such as The Lion King. These film adaptions makes it easier to understand not only the context of the plays, but also the writing.

I believe that Shakespeare’s plays film adaptions do work as reproductions and give out certain ideals and offer cultural commentary by giving it their own cultural aspects and point of views. For example, how we talked about in class how in the Bengali film adaption of The Merchant of Venice, Shylock the Jew is portrayed as a British man instead of a Jewish man. These different country film adaptions allow themselves to change anything they would like as long as it has the central idea that it relates to Shakespeare’s plays.

Blog 5: The Merchant of Venice

In Shakespeare’s play The Merchant of Venice, starts off with Bossanio asking Antonio for a loan to be able to to ask for Portia’s courtship. In the first scene we see how he was simply interested in Portia’s money. However, later on in the play we can see Bossanios change of interest and knows that he would be a lucky man for becoming Portia’s husband because he sees Portia as a wonderful beautiful woman with good virtues and values. In my opinion he genuinely did end up loving Portia even though he might have started off with the wrong intentions.

On the other hand, it seems like Portia truly genuinely loved Bossanio because of the fact that she started off talking about him like she wanted him to end up picking the correct casket. She was even about to tell him and guide him to the the correct one. In the matter that she would be cheating by giving him hints, by this we see how genuinely she had feelings for him. Especially how she was willing to pay off Antonio’s debt plus more than what they owed. This shows she truly felt something for him and it was not just a little crush.

Kate’s Final Speech

In Taming with the Shrew act V scene II, Kate has her final speech which many people can interpret it in many different ways. Readers clearly see the transformation of Kate throughout the play; in the beginning she has a strong attitude towards everybody, but at the end she becomes more submissive. As we discussed in class, there are more than just one interpretations for her speech. She seems to be a little sarcastic when she says “Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper, thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee, and for thy maintenance commits his body” (Act V scene II).

I interpret this speech as Kate in a way giving in to her marriage with Petruchio, but still being sarcastic about it. She knows what she is giving up and the way she says it may not seem too convincing that she has fully devoted everything to her husband. I definitely believe there was a deeper meaning behind this whole play dealing with sexism. The framing device / play-within-a-play shows how many of the important issues that are being addressed in the way Shakespeare did not want there to be much talk in society about it.

Blog 3: Women in Shakespeare

In history, women have always been portrayed as denigrated that are not able to take serious action of themselves. Women have been for the past years property of men and if they do not do what men ask them, they are worthless.

I feel like men try to overrule women and especially in this time period women were so denigrated to the point where they believed themselves that they were this way and that’s how it would always be. In this play we see how Petrucio treats Katherine which is not the best way. He manipulates her into thinking hat he is in charge of absolutely everything when really that way and Katherine is suoode to be responsible for everything she owns.

In act II scene I, lines 979 “So I to her, and so she yeilds to me; for I am rough, and woo not like a babe” demonstrates how the men in the  plays of Shakespeare show that the men have more power over women and that is how history continues. Pertuchio is showing how Katherine is willing to do whatever he asks for and it will take nothing just because he owns her and everything she owns. In old society this was socially okay for a man to act upon this action.

 

Blog 2: Play-within-a-play

The role of theater in the play of Hamlet seems to be very important because it is the way that Hamlet exposes the truth to the king and queen. Hamlet tries to avoid confrontation with Claudius, simply because he wants to be able to confirm that Claudius certainly was the one that murdered his father. The play-within-a-play is the reenactment of Claudius murdering his brother and the events that followed after that tragedy. It also gave the audience the doubt if the queen, Gertrude was also involved with the murder of the king.

The advice of Hamlet to the actors is very precise and specific. He advised them to act it out just the way it could get to Claudius attention, which it did by his reaction of stopping the play and leaving right after he felt uncomfortable. The guilt of Claudius is very clear in this scene and Hamlet gets exactly what he wanted.

I agree with theater “holds, as twere, a mirror up to nature”, Shakespeare seems to write his plays with the intentions of addressing society issues and his plays in a way portray what is going on in society in form of a hidden meaning message.