Washburn Shakespeare (Spring 2019)

The class is required to attend and write about an event from the WU-mester thing Washburn University has going on throughout the semester. Through a somewhat crazy series of events I ended up attending Washburn University’s Third Annual Step Show. (This is good because most of the events and/or talks I have wanted to attend are all scheduled during my classes.) Now going into this I have to admit that I didn’t really know what stepping was. Well, actually let’s back that up. I had heard of it before because one of my friends in high school tried to start up a step group at the high school. At first it was allowed, and they even performed at one of our pep rallies, but then some people in administration shut the group down. But that’s another story. Point being here: I thought it was just something that he and his friends wanted to do. I didn’t realize that it was, to some, an important aspect of African-American culture. To be fair, he may well have explained all this to me, but I d...

The following is taken from  Long Way Down  by Jason Reynolds: THE RULES: NO. 1: CRYING Don't. No matter what. Don't. NO. 2: SNITCHING Don't. No matter what. Don't. NO. 3: REVENGE If someone you love gets killed, find the person who killed them and kill them.  (Reynolds, 31-33) Written in verse, Long Way Down  tells of a young boy, Will, who wrestles with the decision of whether or not to seek revenge for the murder of his older brother. In a series of ingeniously crafted staccato-style poems, Reynolds tackles a scenario many young people in violent neighborhoods find themselves in and starts an important conversation about the dangers of revenge. When faced with a situation like Will's, most of the adolescents in these communities stick to The Rules, even though they don't know who wrote them or when they were written or where they came from; they only know to follow them like everyone els...

O ne of the aspects of story-telling that’s never failed to capture my attention is that of a villain. Specifically, the progression from normal person to antagonist, and especially that of an unwilling sort. We see such progressions in characters such as Elphaba from Wicked , Ja’far of Starkid’s Twisted , and even some implications in The Son from the third season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars . In each situation, the role of evil is seemingly forced upon these characters, mostly of circumstances either outside of their control or simply a part of who they are. And while one wouldn’t necessarily say Shylock is a villain in this day and age, he most certainly was considered one by the majority of the other characters in The Merchant of Venice. Some of those assigned the role of villainy try to fight off this apparent destiny. Many, eventually, succumb to their supposed fate, some even acknowledging that the role of villain is more assigned to them by others than properly adopte...

Is Shylock a villain or a victim? In Shakespeare's play, The Merchant of Venice , readers can easily see Shylock as a villainous character as he wants to kill Antonio, who is another character in the play. However, when readers discover the reason that Shylock despises Antonio, it shows that Shylock seems to be enacting revenge out of anger and resentment. A deeper analysis of Shakespeare's play shows the harsh treatment that Antonio gives Shylock and begins presenting Shylock as a sympathetic character. Undoubtedly the treatment of Shylock does not atone for his actions, but it presents the audience with an interesting dilemma. Is Shylock's rage towards Antonio understandable or is Shylock a character that is more villainous than sympathetic? In regards to villainy, Shylock seems to fit the persona quite well. He seems very similar to Scrooge, a character created by Charles Dickens, as he seems to only care about money. However, Scrooge was embittered and Shylock...

The Merchant of Venice uncovers many difficult truths throughout the play. Why are people afraid to perform this play? It's full of racism and racial remarks, right? But how is that any different from the world we live in today? Don't get me wrong. I am not at all, in any form, racist to other people or religions. But the society and world we live in is. It's a difficult truth, but this play isn't much different than things people in the world experience today. It's difficult for most of us to sit and read racial and religious slurs. It's disgusting most times, but there's truth in this play. This is how our history was like. The Jews were treated like trash again and again, and by the Christians during this time. Did you know the United States has the LARGEST Christian population in the world?! Crazy. The Moors have been treated wrong for so long, and African-Americans are still treated poorly today at times. This world was racist and is racist, a...

In reading Merchant of Venice , I can’t help but question the degree of helpfulness Salerio and Solanio offer.   What do they really do for the play?   What is their purpose?   They are present throughout the whole play, but do they really add anything?   These are some questions I thought about when analyzing the characters of Salerio and Solanio, and what made them so annoying to me.   To me, these characters seem unnecessary to the plot line.   What they offer is very little, but they are there a lot of the time.   It reminded me of when Amy Farrah Fowler from The Big Bang Theory concluded Indiana Jones was not necessary to the story line of Raiders of the Lost Ark, which clip I have put down below.   It is not necessary to watch in order to understand my post, but I included it because I think it gives another example of the argument I am trying to make.    (My apologies if this ruins the movie for you, and also for the s...

One of the big question s  we discussed about Henry V is whether Henry is a good king. It  depends on how to define a “ good king ” . In my opinion, a good king is the one who bring s  welfare to his people. However, the play barely shows his domestic policies , s o there might not be a clear answer in this dimension. The only hint I ’ ve got is from the chorus in the end, who says that the next king would lose France and make his England bleed. Perhaps it ’ s the unexpected consequence of Henry ’ s expedition which had probably exhausted English people and made the m  vulnerable to the conflicts afterwards. So I think, according to the text, Henry is mostly a successful military leader but not really a good king. If he is dealing with a over-populated country suffering from famine s , then his expedition might be a wisely political conduct to remove the crisis. In this way, his “ good ”  is only for England but not  for its neighbors. As an politically...

Time and time again I see myself reading for this class and struggling to understand his language. I’m sure I say “What the hell am I reading” more than once every time I pick up my textbook. For someone that is reading Shakespeare for the first time, I have found that I struggle with his language specifically.  While most of the words we still use today, it is the way that it is worded that can cause issues for students. Reading Shakespeare, in my opinion, is more than just reading a textbook. Analyzing the text is necessary in order to fully understand. Allie Macb stated in an article, ”There are, of course, many words in Shakespeare that a modern reader will not recognize instantly. Language is a living, breathing entity and over 400 years there have been significant changes in the way we write and speak English. Getting to grips with the archaic language is one of the keys to success in understanding Shakespeare”(Macb). She goes on to explain how the more that you read...

One thing movies can take advantage of is the lighting. With it, they can easily manipulate the mood. There are some moments during that movie that I felt really need to be highlighted because of how they used the lighting to enhance the characters and the moods. First off, Henry V's introduction scene. The doors open and we see Henry V's silhouette, being lit from behind. I think this really portrays how important of a figure everyone saw Henry V, even how important he saw himself. There is also not a lot of sunshine in this movie. Of course, that region is known for its rather cloudy days, but for these kinds of movies they use that to their advantage. During the battles it was either night or cloudy and raining. These are things that help the mood of the play. Dire times, dire lighting. Another scene I want to highlight is the one where Catherine is learning English. The lighting gets a bit lighter and lighter as the mood lightens. She goofs around as she points out di...

As an English education major who doesn't necessarily enjoy reading Shakespeare herself, I often question how and what I will teach my future students. In school, I read a couple of Shakespeare's plays, Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth. Being an avid reader, I didn't mind reading these plays and I was able to understand them with the help of my teachers. Times are changing and there is so much literature out there. Having to incorporate Shakespeare into our curriculum as secondary teachers can often times be very difficult. Students aren't interested in the classics or even play writing. I know I wasn't. Shakespeare can teach many lessons and give insight to the history of the time, though. It's being able to decide which plays to teach the students that is the most important part of being an English teacher. There are difficult lessons to be learned throughout many of Shakespeare's plays, but our students live difficult lives every single day. My point is Shake...

If you read my first blogpost, this may not come as a shock to you. I made my thoughts on our favorite king very clear. He doesn't suit my taste in protagonists, his "wooing" of Catherine is borderline painful, I wouldn't unabashedly support a leader like that as a 21st century woman, yada yada. But seeing the 1989 Henry V film tipped me over into thinking, "Wow, this guy is absolutely pyscho." I plan to get more in-depth with this in my film review, but Bragnagh's portrayal of Henry's character really didn't mesh well with my interpretation of the character or of the play as a whole. I saw Henry as someone who was almost haughty. He's the type of guy to look down on people who betray him with a smile, even while knowing he's totally going to execute them; he's just gonna toy with them first. He's the type of guy who threatens rape and pillage, but I imagined him being calm and matter-of-fact about it, assured of his victory ov...

Back at it again with my anime-related blog posts. (Sorry. Shakespeare references just keep popping up when I'm actively not thinking about him.) This time, I wanna talk to you guys a bit about a little show called  Jojo’s Bizzare Adventure: Golden Wind.  It’s the fifth part of a series that’s been running since 2012. Each part takes place in a different time and setting, and  Golden Wind  just so happens to take place in Italy.   One of the titular bizarre adventures takes our protagonist and his group of gangsters to Venice. Now, I watched the episode where they got to Venice two weeks before we started reading  The Merchant of Venice  in class, so the play wasn’t on my mind at all. The protagonists were running from a fairly psycho antagonist – who shares a voice actor with  My Hero Academia ’s Katsuki Bakugou, so it was kind of fitting – and the man st...

One of the big questions within Henry V, which has already been brought up in class, is whether or not England is fighing a "just" war. From the very beginning, Henry questions if  there is a law that "should or should not bar us from our claim", before he "awakes the sleeping sword of war" ( Act 1.2), referring to his claim to the throne of France.  After being assured by the Archbishop of Canterbury (who really just wants to distract Henry from cutting church funds), Henry feels justified in going to war. It really wasn't a hard sell. But how convinced is Henry really? and how strong is his conviction that France belongs rightfully under English rule? It seems like a convenient excuse, or cover for Henry's hurt pride. Perhaps Henry is trying to prove his competency and maturity as a King in reaction to the Dauphin's provocation... Maybe he even goes so far as to convince himself that he is justified, unaware himself of his underlying motives:...

Honestly, I struggled when reading Henry V. The militaristic plot has never grasped my attention, so it took a little bit to actually get into the plot. Out of the entire play, though, Act 5, Scene 2 was by far my favorite scene both in the play as well as in the movies produced of it. Maybe it because of how many times I read over it, maybe it was because it was something different in the militaristic plot, either way, I enjoyed it more than the last. It might just be because I am a hopeless romantic, still not sure, but the list goes on and on, but I whole-heartedly loved this scene. I always had one question though, in the day and age of arranged marriage, how was Henry so smooth while wooing Katherine? What surprised me the most about this scene, though, was how charming Henry was. One of Kate’s most famous responses of “I do not know wat is like me” after Harry asked if she liked him or not. The best part of all of this was how Henry so gracefully reacted with the response ex...