Although I have yet to post reflections on Much Ado About Nothing and The Tempest because I am still digesting the material and swirling it around in my brain, I have completed the “End of Course Self-Reflection” for Shakespeare in Community, which offers prompts to consider about the learning experience thus far. I’ve included these thoughts here, but check back for reflections and assignments specific to the last two plays of the course.

(Sneak peek: I shall write a passionately positive, biased, review on Joss Whedon’s version of Much Ado About Nothing starring Amy Acker as Beatrice and Alexis Denisof as Benedick… It is biased because I’ve held the director and actors in high regard for years, so I went into the film expecting greatness, and even my expectations were exceeded!)

Without further delay, I present my “End of Course Self-Reflection”:

“Reflect on your own encounters with Shakespeare during the second two weeks of this course. What new things have you learned about Shakespeare? What discoveries have you made? Consider also the challenges you’ve faced and how you worked to overcome them?”

The more I delve into Shakespeare, in this course and in the film and play adaptations, the more I come to appreciate, and dare I say, love it. The videos in the course and the posts for each play have been immensely useful to help me wrap my head around complicated plots, themes, and characters. Before, when I would seek out a production of Shakespeare, I would look for something that would be as similar to what I would see in Shakespeare’s time. That has its own value, of course, hence my enjoyment at watching random plays at Renaissance Faires, which are in true form to the 16th century (i.e. VERY interactive with the audience). However, it was my viewing of Much Ado About Nothing that completely swept me away. I was determined to see Joss Whedon’s version because of the director and the cast, particularly Alexis Denisof and Amy Acker. I knew, on that alone, I would enjoy the film. However, I was surprised that the adaptation was quite modern – I can’t even place it… 1920’s, perhaps? The modern adaptation and the decision to film in black and white took nothing away from Shakespeare’s original work, as I always suspected such adaptations would. I even related more to the characters, immersed myself in the plot, and troubled much less over the words. I shall not judge new versions of Shakespeare on their closeness to his original writing, as there are many versions of the “originals” as well, as I have learned in this course. My eyes have been opened to a whole new literary world!

“Write about the work you’ve done for this course. Include one or more links to examples of your work. (You can link to the work itself, if you shared it on the web, or to a Forum post or Facebook thread where you talk about the work.) Discuss the evolution of your work from the first half of the course to the second half. How were your encounters with the first two plays different from your encounters with the second two? Did your own work and responses to the plays also evolve? Link to a discussion forum (or one of your own posts) that felt especially rich to you. Feel free to cut and paste specific sentences, if there are lines you wrote that you’re especially proud of.

Consider your work on the final project. How did you tackle or adapt the assignment? How do you feel about your own accomplishment? Link to it here, if possible, or just talk about the choices you made.”

I feel, with each new assignment and reflection that I post on my blog, http://www.literaryfaerie.com, I come to understand Shakespeare a little better; I see past the words to the story, yet I appreciate the words on their own terms. For example, I found that I understand the whole of the work by watching it as a play or a film, which has helped me get beyond the words I struggle with. Yet, the assignments force me to look at the words and dissect them, study them, and see what jumps out at me. When I wrote a poem based on “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, which I posted to my blog, I first printed out many verses that stood out to me for certain words or their content, in general. I was more attracted to the phrasing of words than to some of the words themselves, so I played around with them. I used the phrasing, but out of context or said by different characters, to change their meaning, yet keep the lyricism. It was fun and quite the experiment. I’ve enjoyed looking at Shakespeare with fresh eyes, rather than just critically analyzing the literature, which I’ve also written on my blog for each play we’ve sampled and have done so in every study of Shakespeare throughout my schooling. I have been more excited for each activity and reflection as we have progressed into the course. The activities truly are experimental, which is what I strive to do in my blog – to travel outside my comfort zone to experience something new, for myself and for my readers. I have yet to tackle the final project. I am a bit intimidated because it is a video reproduction of one of our plays in some form, but I am also enthusiastic at the prospect. I know it will enrich my creativity even more so than this course already has. I will undoubtedly post it on my blog, http://www.literaryfaerie.com, as well as to my twitter account, @literaryfaerie. There are also links to my various assignments and thoughts on twitter, as well – some I’ve reshared with @hackshakespeare and/or #moocspeare, as a kind of quote from my blog tweet, but I have written original content on that twitter account, as well, so I can share my insights as they occur to me. This has been the most interactive course I’ve taken through Coursera, despite the lack of tests or required assignments and peer assessments. The freedom of expression for exploring Shakespeare is in stark contrast to the dreary study of it often found in traditional classrooms. I could not speak higher of my regard for this course.

“Finally, the questions that began the film series made for the course: Why do we need Shakespeare? What is Shakespeare for?

And the questions from the final film: Why do we need the humanities? What are the humanities for?”

As a student of the humanities, I find the second question easier to answer than the first, but I’ll give it a shot. We need Shakespeare like we need all great artists, whether they share with us the written word, an aesthetic for the eyes, or the sounds of a musician. Shakespeare commented on his everyday life, but he also wrote with themes that transcend time, characters that we can relate with to this day, and he wrote with beautiful prose, verse, and lyricism, which, albeit, may be hard to understand today because the language has changed as it always does, but it is worth the effort to hear the beauty in his words. There is more magic in those words than reading them on a page, and as a writer, I didn’t think I would ever admit that. The past few years, I have given more credit to other mediums than in the past. As a child, I valued the “book” over anything else. I still collect books of all kinds. Yet, plays have interaction — you are literally “there” with the actors — and films can provide special effects and scenery that we may not have even been able to imagine for ourselves. Films can transport us to other worlds because they are created by others — we see into the mind’s eye of our fellow human beings, more so than what our minds can conjure on their own. Everyone sees and observes something different in their surroundings because no one person’s perspective is the same, which is why literature and art can be interpreted in numerous ways. We interpret the world with the power of our past and the scope of our imaginations. We put our mark on this world in many formats, and there are infinite possibilities if we are willing to share our vulnerabilities and have courage. Shakespeare is an integral part of the humanities for his genius and his wit, no more or less so than Chaucer or Oscar Wilde or Sophocles or J.K. Rowling. They all add to our cultural understanding, our pure enjoyment, and our appreciation for life itself. We step outside our own little pedestrian world and follow some grand adventure, get our adrenaline running, and imagine what couldn’t be imagined. The humanities, and the arts in particular, have, in many ways, inspired science (think of all the advances made on account of science fiction), and science has brought us into a future, undoubtedly unbelievable to those of Shakespeare’s time. Yet, his themes ring true many centuries later, as I hope, artists of today can inspire future generations.