Final, Final

I read the blog you had suggested reading the other day about no one having time to read. I hear this all the time in my little realm of the world. It is not out of pleasure that I hear people having to read but as a necessity. Take my boyfriend and my best friend: my boyfriend only reads out of necessity and even then he steers clear. I've been trying to have him read The Giver but without much luck. My best friend on the other hand enjoys reading for pleasure but being in graduate school she has to read out necessity, but she seems to enjoy curling up with her DMV. I enjoy reading and will continue to push past my comfort zone into new genres and new authors.

I would like to finish by thanking Mr. Sexson for the fun filled year and teaching me that Shakespeare will always be around whether it is relating to the origins, the myth, of his writing, songs of rap and Sir Raleigh's pearls, his beautiful language, and even in popular culture. Shakespeare is found through the ages and always will be...

End of the Semester

Finally here...sort of just finals and then summer...so some time in the future a movie about the controversy if Shakespeare wrote the plays or was just someone who took credit...it looks interesting...
Hope everyone's summer is grand...I'm heading down to California for a good two weeks at the end of May

Poems

Found this website with poems connected to Shakespeare...

Click on the highlighted words above to check each of the websites out...

All Well that Ends Well

This play is obnoxious. It seems as if Shakespeare was having a try at feminism by doing the bed trick. Why would you want to be with someone that doesn't love you in return and the only way is if you get my ring and have my child but unlikely you will...In Measure for Measure a bed trick is also performed in a different manner instead of Isabella giving herself she switches places with Miranda. Who in the end begs for his life after he dumped her for breaking it off. It is all about money and that the play is just a bittersweet ending that guess its okay, we can get married since you full filled what I said. Again how obnoxious.

King Lear

James Earl Jones Perform

Click on name above...

Individual Presentations

All the individual presentations were enjoyable, my favorites:

The As You Like It rap song
The use of the Seven Deadly Sins
And that the majority on the first day of presentations were of love...

The Woods

I was thinking about what the woods meant to me coming from Butte, MT. I found that the woods meant two things to me. The first is out past Homestake Lake where a group of friends and me would play paintball. Lots of fun, just shooting the gun even. The second is out past the trestle. It is creepy. The trestle was an old railroad line that was owned by William Clark. There were many odd suicides and deaths over the years. I had went out there and played flashlight tag and walked up the hill to the top of the trestle.
I find that the woods in Shakespeare is a magical place that love seems to transpire. Such as in Midsummer Nights Dream and As You Like It. I was forwarded an email about these woods in Japan called Aokigahara Forest. A lot of suicides have occurred in the forest because of the increase in deaths Japanese workers walk the forest at least once a month. A speculation was made that people were entering and killing themselves based off an old Japanese story were two lovers enter the woods and commit suicide so they will always be together.

Love is Tormenting

Torments of Love

In Memoriam: 27 by Alfred Lord Tennyson, “'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” (phrase). Did I miss something? Why is it better? Love is tormenting. It drives people mad. I’m mad with love. Ted Hughes would call my love the “double vision”: this idea that the person is both your god/goddess and your tormentor. This idea is seen in the series Twilight between Bella and Edward, but there is also another aspect of love that is at play between those two lovers. Love is vast and that respect it will be the macrocosm and in the macrocosm is found the microcosm, the aspects of love. Two of these aspects I will be exploring are infatuation and jealousy.

According to psychology today, infatuation and jealousy are secondary emotions. Infatuation is a state of being completely carried away by unreasoned passion or love. It expresses sexual or libidinal attraction of addictive love. This is usually accompanied with an intense but short-lived passion or admiration for someone (Pine). In Romeo and Juliet the lovers meet in Act 1 Scene 5. In the following lines, Romeo has just seen Juliet for the first time:

O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear;
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!
So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows,
As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows.
The measure done, I'll watch her place of stand,
And, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand.
Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight!
For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.

Two things have happened: first the starting of infatuation and the meeting of the soul. Jill Line writes in Shakespeare and the Fire of Love that the eyes are the window to the soul. This concept has been heard before and it plays off the notion that to see a person’s soul is to know that they are your soul mate. Romeo could not know that Juliet was his soul mate because he has never been in love. In the above mentioned lines Romeo is exhibiting the romanticized ideology of love. The superficial love of beauty, he does not know this girl but yet he has fallen madly in love with her. Juliet is tormented by two things one that she is in love with a Montague and second is her arranged marriage to Paris. The lovers secretly marry and plan to run off, but a miscommunication causes Romeo to act hastily and kill himself. Juliet awakes to find her lover dead and slays herself. It was an intense infatuation and tormenting path of love that ended the lovers’ lives.

As I stated in the opening paragraph this tormented idea of lovers is seen in Twilight between Bella and Edward. They have an intense love between each other. The torment of love between Bella and Edward is found in New Moon. Edward leaves Bella, and for months Bella withdraws from the people around her. Later in the novel Edward believes that Bella is dead and decides to commit suicide. This intense infatuation is also seen in the movie Fatal Attraction. In Fatal Attraction a married man, Michael Douglas, has an affair with a woman, Glen Close, who becomes infatuated or obsessed with him (Abraham). Glen Close’s character becomes unstable. She begins stalking him, boils his child’s bunny, and tries to kill his wife. These mentioned signs relate to jealousy.

Jealousy refers to the negative thoughts and feelings of insecurity, fear, and anxiety over an anticipated loss of something that the person values, particularly in reference to a human connection (Pines). It is seen in Fatal Attraction the outcome of infatuation turned to jealousy. In Othello, Othello and Desdemona have been married and seem to be happy; however, Othello becomes insecure because he believes that Desdemona’s has been unfaithful. In the lines below Iago instructs Othello to hide:

Stand you awhile apart;
Confine yourself but in a patient list.
Whilst you were here o'erwhelmed with your grief--
A passion most unsuiting such a man--
Cassio came hither: I shifted him away,
And laid good 'scuse upon your ecstasy,
Bade him anon return and here speak with me;
The which he promised. Do but encave yourself,
And mark the fleers, the gibes, and notable scorns,
That dwell in every region of his face;
For I will make him tell the tale anew,
Where, how, how oft, how long ago, and when
He hath, and is again to cope your wife:
I say, but mark his gesture. Marry, patience;
Or I shall say you are all in all in spleen,
And nothing of a man.

Othello does and from hearing the conversation between Cassio and Iago he believes fully that his wife has been unfaithful. He kills Desdemona and finds that he was wrong and slays himself. It is the overwhelming emotion of jealousy that leads to Othello’s downfall and Glen Close’s infatuated love to turn sour.

As I stated before infatuation and jealousy is enough to drive any sane person mad. In Romeo and Juliet infatuation united the lovers and ultimately ended their love affair. Othello doth’d the green-eyed monster and killed Desdemona and himself. Love is tormenting. My love is tormenting, but even me being in love does not help me understand it. I still do not know what love is, perhaps this below passage says it best (Corinthains).

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

I would have liked to add more but was recommended not too. I wanted to talk more about Jill Line's research on Christianity-platonic questions and the four and connect that to the main body of my paper, infatuation and jealousy, and the brain science connected with those emotions. Perhaps I will work more on it in the future.

Group Projects

I enjoyed watching the group performances. I loved the Othello western. It was humorous and unique. It worked so well together. I was telling a friend about it because she is a Shakespeare fan herself having acted in multiple plays. She asked how they did a black man in the western version. An Indian she loved it and wished she was able have seen it. She then told me one of her old school drama classes they did a sleepover version of Hamlet...

All the group performances were great. I love learning about Titus and Andronicus. What a gruesome play. I plan on renting the movie version that was recommended. Doing the group performances was fun but hard to get together without issue. But we finally were able to and did a movie. It was fun but felt we could have done a lot more with it.

Great Job everyone on group performances!

Shakespeare the Wizard

I was browsing through Borders during its closing sale. I wanted to buy Nightwatch, but they did not have that particular one; although, they did have the second and the third in the series. While I was looking for the above mentioned book I came across “Shakespeare Undead.” Seemed fun rather reminded me of Abraham Lincoln vampire hunter which is a fun read. I also having just finished Maus 2 was interested in reading some graphic novels for fun and future reference for Eckhart’s class that she had to give up. While pursuing the graphic novel section I found” Kill Shakespeare” where Shakespeare plays a wizard and his power comes from his pen.

Back from the Dead

I also started thinking of the return back from the dead. At church on Easter Sunday the sermon was about Jesus rising from the dead and walking among the living. I am not that familiar with the bible, but as I understand it after the two women run into him on the road he vanishes. I was considering that in some of the plays we read such as Cymbeline and the mother’s return from the dead that it relates in that way to coming back to life. Or in the Tempest when one has to clap and clapping was connected to Tinkerbell from Peter Pan: perhaps Shakespeare’s love of reading/research took the concept of death and turned into a mute point. In Shakespeare’s tragedies people die, but not usually in his comedies. If they do die it seems they are magically brought back to life. Jesus was brought back to life compare that to Tinkerbell’s clapping and you find that perhaps Jesus was brought back to life from his follower’s faith. I know there is more to the story and that he died for peoples’ sins and that he would be resurrected to be seated at the right hand of God. I think anyways…Mostly I’m just rambling about a conversation with a friend and how every year Easter is a different day sometimes a different month and Jesus was resurrected on the “said” day of Easter. I think I need to do more research before I start being called a hieratic which I am not. I just don’t know enough about the bible and history surrounding it.

TV and Movie connections

I watch a lot of movies and have been watching a lot of TV. I enjoy the story arc in TV shows: such as Dexter, the Killing, Eureka, X-files, etc… I was watching season 6 of Bones and the episode had an interesting character. A man dressed as a Shakespeare. In the show the psychologist states he has a dissociative personality. As such he only talks in Shakespearean language. (The word Shakespearean was in the spell check list. It is just that main stream.) I was thinking about how many TV shows or movies I have seen that made a connection to Shakespeare.

The Ghost of Cantervile, I love this movie. How can one not love this movie, Patrick Stewart stars as the agnostic character. The female lead,, connects with him because quote “you are ruining my life with your fake blood act.” Anyways they perform the scene in Hamlet where Hamlet’s dead father returns. Also you find early that he knew Shakespeare personally and helped create some of his fine plays. Anyways love, love this movie.

I can’t think of any other references off the top of my head but there are others.