English 432 Shakespeare

Marjorie Garber's chapter about As You Like It is a brilliant journey into Arden, or is it Arcadia, or Ardenne, or maybe Mary Arden--Will's mother? Possibly, as a melding of two past places, "the classic Arcadia and Eden." Garber swells these small paragraphs on page 440 of her book, "Shakespeare After All" with so much information about the mainfestation of this "golden world", or as Frye puts it, "Green World". Orlando's father--Sir Rowland De Boys, which in the french translation--du bois means "of the woods". Shakespeare is surely playing with the old convention of Pastoral. Everyone in Arden is a poet.
"Find tongues in trees, books in running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything." Duke Senior, act 2.1

Garber talks about the psychology of a place like Arden, and that gets back to what we were talking about in class on Monday, that in Shakespeare, even in the crazyness of it all, when all order is thought to be lost, people find "themselves". Either in the reflection of a casket or in the reflection of a pond. Arden is a convention, but it is each character's individual convention, creation. It is "As [they] Like It". As we want it to be, or wish it could be.

I've been reading some of Bloom's--Shakespeare the Invention of the Human. When I say reading I mean, underlining. Bloom is so thick and dense with peripheral material it can be a bit much, but I love it anyway. What has struck me, just from the introduction called "Shakespeare's Universalism" is how much Bloom loves both Hamlet and Falstaff. Both of whom I only know in the context of either Mel Gibson, or I don't know? I look forward to actually reading Hamlet, which will be a first for me, besides seeing Gibson's movie. Bloom does have a way with words, that is to say, a way of imbuing things that make sense to me for instance: "You can bring absolutely anything to Shakespeare and the plays with light it up, far more than what you bring will illuminate the plays." Bloom is sniping at what he calls the resenters, critics that read Shakespeare with an agenda already in mind, such as Marxist readings, or New Historicists readings. Which I thought Bloom was one of the latter. Who knows. In this intro material, besides recalling Hamlet and Falstaff at every turn, he suggests "personality" as supremely a Shakespearian invention. I gotta say, I don't know, but it sounds awefully good. I realize that there are colleagues of mine in class that have been exposed to the Bard for years and years. I am in much envy of this since I am a relative novice, but that is not to minimize my hunger for learning. The Bard is an enigma, a secular God, as Bloom puts it, and he has created characters that themselves could be considered gods. "Why Shakespeare?", "Why not?" These aren't my words, their Bloom's, but I agree and look forward to reading more about this Poet.

Greetings Bardolitors...here's the joint:

1) Anagnorisis--means recognition, also the word Aristotle uses in "Poetics" to convey this change for a character.
2) Bondage--figurative or metaphorical--also see Gretchen's lecture on MOV Bonds.
3) Bias--lawn bowling, or the natural curviture of the Earth, also a character's POV.
4) Shylock's aversions--music, et al.
5) Shylock's--"my daughter, my ducats..."
6) "RING"--the last word in MOV
7) Green World--Who is responsible for this theme? Frye. What happens when characters emerge from this world? Baptismal.
8) "THREES" in MOV
9) Senex--the blocking figures--see FRYE p.317
10) Heteronormative--Shakespeare playing with gender conventions.
11) Genre?--exists due to expectations of type. "A man walks into a bar..."
12) 4 Humours of the body--Blood, Phlegm, Yellow Bile, Black Bile.
13) Pound of Flesh
14) Possession in MOV.
15) Blazon--means cataloguing women's features, usually in a possessive manner, i.e. Petrarch's sonnet conventions
16) Prefatory material from MOV and 12th.
17) Study Guest Lecturers Presentations
18) Mythic Realm vs. Reality
19) 12th Night refers to what? 12 days after Christmas festival--epipham?
20) Definitions of Sonnets--problem/resolution, Iambic Pentameter, Types, Rhyme Scheme
abab, cdcd, efef, GG.

This is all the material from the chalk board. Keep in mind regonition scenes, key stuff I'm guessing.
"Break a Leg" everyone. See ya there.

The Green World vs. The Real World. It may be safe to say that in 12th, Illyira is all Green World, but in something like M.O.V. it would be Venice vs. Belmont. And maybe this isn't totally fair to Frye, because his categorization of G.W.(not George W.) is the maternal world, the forest of fertility, the forest of the imagination. The G.W. is best illustrated in Midsummer's..., where the forested world of fairies reigns.
Dr. Sexson talked about "communion" in seasonal plays, "Baptisimal" episodes of Will's plays that find the characters emerging from the G.W. into the real world with a new sense of purpose. Remember, "eating the bear is like eating the god." This G.W. is reminiscent of the Garden chapter in Frye's, "Words with Power". The world of possibility and sacred moments only exists in the world without time. Where time is in the now, in dance, in music. Sorry if I'm rambling, I'm watching the Olympics right now too. Well, all for now.
Remember from 12th Night, "a natural perspective that is and is not."

Cheers!

This one is definately in the Green World, he's my boy, and he has no idea what's in store.

Surely, a treat to be honored with such a dramatic presentation as this lecturer's. What I was thinking is how Shakespeare's language, though poetic, can sometimes be lost on the page. Often I've found, as I'm sure most of us have, that reading aloud helps flesh out, (flesh and blood), the intent of each word. This guy was a true dramaturgist, he knew his stuff and he knew every beat of the play, also lost sometimes in translation. I'm no Shakespeare expert, but I always enjoy a good reading of a play.
He brought up some great questions to think about, probably for the entire semester, and those two things which are universal in critical analysis of any piece of literature are--Genre and Gender. Or as he put it Jander. What is Will trying to expose when he dresses boys as girls pretending to be boys? And more importantly, how does this effect our expectations of genre: comedy/romance/tragedy? Is Shakespeare still a revolutionary, after 400 years, I think so, definately. Our lecturer also briefly left us with the theoretical question, what is gender, if nothing than a convention, a trope, a performance.
I'm reminded of Judith Butler, theorist and critic, who wrote about gender as performance, as a kind of mask that reveals at the same time our social determinations of gender. The way men are 'supposed to act' and likewise women. Are these gender roles just characters performed for the stability of mainsteam society? Or rather--Hetero-normative roles?