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Egg zactly! You know the Jesuits are behind all the funny goings on in the world, but then the Church of LDS is behind the Jesuits. And don't get me started about the [fill in the blank] ... On a different topic, I hear that Mel Gibson's new film is going to be a Yiddish-language version of the Protocols. Piffle!
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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OOOOOOOOOOO-khranka where the wind comes sweeping down the plain...
formerly known as etaoin...
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"OK, it's a far cop, but society's to blame."
"Right. We'll be arresting them later."
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Er, perhaps you should SEE "Shakespeare in Love" before screening it for a bunch of ninth-graders. WW works in a rural area of Virginia, and my guess is she'd be the subject of Gibson;s next movie, the Passion of the English Teacher.
While I consider the love-making scenes to be very tasteful, and while I think Gwynneth Paltrow is very nicely shaped, I doubt very much that WW is going to want to show it to her kids.
Speaking of Shakespeare, though, I just read a fascinating book of short stories, edited by Anne Perry, entitled Much Ado About Murder. It's a collection of short murder mystery stories with the common theme of Shakespeare and his plays. The most fascinating one is entitled The Serpent's Tooth (warning: DO NOT read the following if you intend to read the book, since it gives away one of the stories."
The author concludes that Shakespeare was poisoned by his daughter and son-in-law, and that he knew this was happening, so he wrote his epitaph to accuse them of the crime; his epitaph anagrams to:
Susanna and John Hall murdered me, Good Shakespeare. Curst be ye to rest my bones. For Best be ye to digg the stones.
TEd
Ted
TEd
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Pooh-Bah
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I'd forgotten that scene. I suppose it was necessary. You're right; it would have to be an expurgated version since the sight of the nekkid female body seems to send most USns into a feeding frenzy of moral indigation ...
Come to think of it, it's a wonder that anybody there has kids.
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I surprised that they allow Romeo and Juliette to be read in American high schools. After all, there's gang violence, underage sex (they're what? 14, 15?), and suicide. Or are they using Bowdler's versions of WS' plays again?
My fave line in R&J: "The bawdy hand of the dial is now upon the prick of noon." Look that up in your Funk and Wagnall's.
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He wrote both comedies and tradegies, as well as histories.
He used a lot of plays on words. In particular, he was really great at using irony (think Marc Antony's speech at Caesar's funeral).
(Ask a historian, but I think his history is a little suspect.)
Just in general: here we have one of the most famous people who ever lived - in fact, whose fame has easily transcended "western culture" - and there are still a lot of things about him that are not known with certainty.
He liked to use the soliloquy. He may have acquired this technique, as he acquired much of the inspiration for his stories, from his familiarity with greek and latin.
He wrote over 150 sonnets.
Sonnets have 14 lines and most of the sonnets use iambic pentameter.
The rhyme scheme for a sonnet is abab cdcd efef gg.
Worth memorizing:
Sonnet XXIX
First part of ANTONY's speech in JC, Act III
"Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar."
Last part of Polonius' advice to Laertes
(bearing in mind that this, too, is irony -
because of Polonius' character)
"This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."
First part of the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet
"But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun."
From Hamlet's soliloquy
"To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing, end them."
To get the effect of these, one might give a synopsis of the story or of the character involved, recite the entire passage and discuss it's meaning and import, and then commit these very few parts to memory.
I don't know how much time you will spend on this unit, but hopefully you will have sufficient time to go through at least one play in its entirety. (I've always been partial to JC.)
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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My fave line in R&J: "The bawdy hand of the dial is now upon the prick of noon." Look that up in your Funk and Wagnall's.
Yep, I did R&J at school and that line caused a lot of hormone-driven teenage male mirth. It's another example of Mr Shakespeare pandering to his audience's baser instincts. The interesting thing is that if he had reason to expect most of his audience to understand the analogy, those baser instincts were backed up by a quite interesting level of worldly, not to say carnal, knowledge!
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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"Polonius was stabbed in the arras."
"Oooh, I bet that smarted!"
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
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Thanks for your input here.
Chesterfield County isn't a rural county, but one of ever-expanding suburbs.
Yes, we will read R&J all the way through. I'm going to introduce the play with Zefferelli's interpretation, which is my favorite. I think the street brawls, murders, suicides, hostilities and hot young passion will be immediately understandable to my kids. Fights in the halls are not necessarily uncommon these days--thank God kids don't carry around swords anymore and weapons of any kind are completely illegal at school.
If you have any other favorite lines from 'R & J', please note them here.
Oh, this unit will most likely be my students first encounter with William S.
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