Month: May 2015

Midterm Self-Reflection for Shakespeare in Community

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I’ve had some profound insights as I reflected on my experiences thus far with Shakespeare, so I thought I would share them here. They are personal to me, but if you are seeking out your own Shakespeare, I encourage you to ask yourself these questions after awhile. It may bring your own abstract ideas into focus.

“Reflect on your own encounters with Shakespeare leading up to and within the first two weeks of this course. What have you learned about Shakespeare? What discoveries have you made?”

I never knew Shakespeare until this course. That is, to say, I’ve read several plays of his, but avoided reading Shakespeare whenever possible because I could not understand the language of the day. I didn’t understand why Shakespeare was read and revered all these centuries later. The first assignment, to write my own words about Shakespeare’s words, was confusing and disconcerting at first. Then, as I thought about it, I began to write, and I began to appreciate the importance of first words, and I began to appreciate Shakespeare. Still, I struggled with the language while attempting to read Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. I was so determined, but I could not see the forest for the trees. I got caught up on deciphering the meaning of every word I didn’t know that I lost sight of what was happening. After considering the guest lecturers’ input that Shakespeare should be spoken aloud and performed, I decided to watch a play on YouTube. There, I was able to see the emotion, the fury, the desperation, the love, the youth – everything I had been missing by concentrating on the words. As I followed the plot and characters with more ease, I noticed that I could appreciate those Shakespearean words for their beauty and eloquence, for which I never could before.

“Write about the work you have done for this course. Include one or more links to examples of your work. You can link to work in the discussion forum or work that you’ve done elsewhere on the web (videos you’ve made, blog posts you’ve written, Tweets, Facebook threads you’ve contributed to, etc.) Reflect briefly on the what, why, and how of the work that you’ve done.”

*Note that even if you are not involved with Coursera or the Shakespeare in Community MOOC (both of which I highly recommend), you can still get involved in discussions on Facebook and Twitter with the hashtag #MOOCspeare and the account @hackshakespeare. You will indeed find lively discussions from others around the world!

I have a literary blog where I post my own writing, reviews, critical analyses, and various musings. I decided to use this outlet to express my thoughts on my experience with Shakespeare. It has worked delightfully well because it is a medium I am comfortable with and can write at any length about any discoveries I have made. My blog, http://www.literaryfaerie.com, also links to my Tumber account, “Rebecca’s Tumblr, Yay!”, my personal facebook page, and my twitter account, @literaryfaerie, thus my audience is expanded beyond my blog. When I first set out to write my ideas on my blog, I introduced the course and invited readers to participate in the various prompts and experience Shakespeare for themselves. I have included #MOOCspeare as a tag for each post. I will continue to post in this manner, but I would also like to try the “twitter essay” and respond in the discussion forum more often, as I have not posted much in the forum as of yet. My work has reflected on my experiences, frustrations, insights, and creativity while discussing Shakespeare. I am a writer at heart, so my blog posts read as stories, I believe. Each post on http://www.literaryfaerie.com regarding this course has Shakespeare in the title, is accessible on the first page, and is tagged with #MOOCspeare. As I said, these posts are also linked to twitter, so you may find them there, as well, although I don’t know how to link specific tweets.

“What are your goals for the second half of this MOOC. What conversations do you hope to have? What do you hope to build, make, write?”

My goals initially were to understand the language of Shakespeare, so I could read his work and be part of the academic world that hails Shakespeare, instead of feeling like a blasphemer for disliking reading his plays. My goals have since changed. I understand Shakespeare to be like a foreign language to me – it will take years of study for the language to become second nature to me, for me not to need to look up nearly every word or phrase. This is not necessary to understand Shakespeare’s plays at their essence, only to dissect and analyze them. First, I need to develop an appreciation for these works. I need to look past the words to the sights, sounds, actions, emotions, and characters of the plays to really FEEL the story. Only then is my mind free to hone in on the lyricism and beauty of the words that are spoken. Plays were meant to be performed. Honestly, every play I’ve ever seen, I enjoyed immensely because of the immersive atmosphere. So, instead of “reading” Shakespeare, I am going to seek out performances of each of the plays we’re studying, and then, if I need a reference, I will look to my books and other resources. I think I’ve found this is the way to My Shakespeare.

I refrained from answering the latter part of that question, mostly because at this point, I don’t know. I’m just excited to have finally found a way to relate to Shakespeare. 🙂

Discovering the Joy of Shakespeare, or For the Love of Romeo and Juliet

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I’ve been studying Romeo and Juliet for some time now. Of course, I know the main plot points – it’s been parodied countless times in countless art forms, and I read the play, with much instruction, during my freshmen year of high school. Yet, as I took up the book again, I found myself stymied by the language. I could not behold the grandeur of the vocabulary, as so many fans of the Bard seem to attest. As someone with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Asperger’s, whenever I read anything – whether intellectual or not, I reread each sentence at least twice, sometimes more. This makes me a slow reader, but an excellent analyst of literature. However, when trying to understand the whole of a Shakespearean work, one cannot just concentrate on the meaning of every single word. Looking at footnotes and dictionaries frequently while attempting to read the play disrupts the natural rhythm of the play.

Sure, for intensive study of Romeo and Juliet, or any other play by any other playwright for that matter, understanding the nuances of the language, the double meanings, or the lost meanings from Elizabethan times to our own, is essential. As I’ve learned in my Shakespeare in Community course, this understanding likely came naturally to the original audiences of Shakespeare’s plays. Language is fluid, though; it changes with each generation. Reading work that may be a hundred years old, or 600 years old, or one thousand years old is like reading a different language. One studies the grammar and syntax of a foreign language, immersing oneself in the culture and spoken words, before one has enough mastery to read a book in that language and understand it as second nature.

As a writer, I was determined that I should read this play, rather than watch the play performed, as if that was somehow cheating. But I was so fixated on every word I didn’t understand, I was getting nowhere fast. Finally, I relented. I watched the 1976 version of Romeo and Juliet. Immediately, I saw and heard things that I just couldn’t pick up by reading. I love literary analysis and enjoy it immensely, but how can I analyze something I don’t fundamentally understand at its core. I only knew this play as if looking through tiny peepholes in a fence, missing the wholeness of the work. Shakespeare is a different language to me: I needed to watch the reactions of the characters, their movements, their facial expressions; I needed to hear the laughter (I never knew there was so much joviality in the first acts! I read those lines as stoic, not recognizing a goodhearted jest between friends) to appreciate the story behind the words. It was as if watching and listening to the action without focusing on understanding every word provided me with subtitles to each scene, allowing me not only to get the gist of what was happening, but also to finally hear those beautiful, passionate, unbridled words. The play came alive! With whispers and shouts and declarations of love, crying vehemently and vows of rage-filled revenge – I couldn’t insert these emotions into my reading because I was hung up on just understanding the vocabulary.

Now, for the first time, I observed Romeo, Juliet, and their family and friends as teenagers. The duels between Mercutio and Tybalt were most likely caused by the hormones coursing through their bodies, coupled with the feud between the two houses that those boys may not have even fully understood. While Mercutio antagonizes, Tybalt remains bull-headed. Blows were bound to be had, but over-zealous teenagers armed with weaponry, and it’s no wonder that disaster struck. I was more drawn in by the injustice and the sadness of young life lost during senseless battles than I was by the love and lust between Juliet and her Romeo that intensified as each act progressed. Only as I watched them kiss passionately before their wedding ceremony did I realize how in love they were. Until then, I only saw Juliet as a child of 14 – naive, willing to do whatever her mother asked of her, sweet and innocent. Romeo and Benvolio tried to keep the peace among the houses, but alas, poor Romeo was bested by circumstances (and Tybalt’s bull-headedness). This is not the play I read as a 14 year old, focused on these weird, outdated words and listening to lectures just to understand what this darn story was about.

Shakespeare was a playwright. His works are meant to be performed in the theatre. I love books in all their glory, but now I will approach plays as plays and not as books. The message seems to get lost in the translation.

Shakespeare: First words

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Here is my first assignment. Feel free to respond or to answer the prompt in your own way, either on my blog or on @hackshakespeare:

“Choose first words from one of the plays we will be discussing, and write about them some of your own first words.”

         Two households, both alike in dignity

~ Romeo and Juliet

Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour / Draws on apace

          ~ A Midsummer Night’s Dream

I learn in this letter

~ Much Ado About Nothing

MASTER Boatswain!
BOATSWAIN Here, master. What cheer?

~ The Tempest

“Don’t fret about whether you’ve read the rest of the play or not. Take the words “at their word,” so to speak. What do they mean to you? What do they make you think of? Do the words create pictures in your mind? Do the words appeal to your senses of smell and touch and taste as well as to sight and sound? If so, which senses are activated in you by these words? Where do they send your imagination? What kind of excitement, trepidation, or confusion do they unfurl in you?”

First words… First words hold unbelievable importance, whether they are the first words of a first chapter, in which you make a snap, almost subconscious, decision to read that book or place it back on the shelf, or whether they are the first words a young child speaks. Such emphasis! So much to live up to. How does the blank page ever become filled when we cannot decide on the perfect first words? Yet, Shakespeare not only conquers this fear – he is renowned for his selection of words, his mastery of language, his ability to manipulate, postulate, confuse, excite… the list goes on and on.

So, for my first words about Shakespeare’s first words, I choose “I learn in this letter”. I confess, I have not yet read Much Ado About Nothing so I have no frame of reference for this quote. Perhaps that is a good thing. I was drawn to this quote because of the word, “letter”. I immediately pictured in my mind’s eye a piece of old parchment with a flowing script that was scratched onto it by a quill dipped in an inkwell. As a writer, how could I not be drawn to these words? The imagery of days past, when we wrote in beautiful calligraphy on golden parchment to communicate great ideas or to simply invite a relative for a stay at our humble abode. Now people write by way of technological resources, which certainly have their place in society, but they are cold, uncaring. The clickety-click of typing on a keyboard is so far removed from writing furiously with pen and paper until your hand begins to cramp because you can’t get your ideas out fast enough. There is magic in paper. Perhaps because, in some small way, we are still connected to nature. After all, that paper once came from a tree. It had a life, even after death, as pulp (I learned to make paper from a craft kit as a child, and I still hold that experience dear), and eventually it came to us, crisp and blank. The blank page can be scary, but it also represents freedom. Anything is possible in that moment. Paper is also fragile. If left out in the sun, the paper yellows. The sign of a good book is a wrinkled, worn spine. Imagine how miraculous it is that any books have survived over centuries of war, strife, fires, rain, or other ruinous events. Some works are simply lost to the ages. Have you ever smelled an old book? Walked the stacks of an enormous library until you became lost among the books? I have. Those experiences are endangered. I don’t need to know right now what is in that letter of Shakespeare’s. I appreciate its existence.

Engaging with William Shakespeare

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I have never sought out Shakespeare’s works intentionally. In fact, I think it’s safe to say I avoid them. I know – as a writer, this is blasphemy! Though I love the time period and frequent the Renaissance Faire every summer, the language of the time has always left me frustrated. How can I appreciate a play if I don’t understand the plot’s intricacies? The nuances? The double meanings that echo throughout all of Shakespeare’s works?

I decided enough was enough. No longer would I shirk from Shakespeare. His works survived centuries for a reason, right? I enrolled in a Coursera free course entitled “Shakespeare in Community”, which can also be found on Facebook and on twitter at @hackshakespeare. I invite you to join the discussions in those forums. Perhaps we can all learn something from the Bard.

Anyway, I’ll be posting my observations here. Most will undoubtedly be in response to prompts given in the short course, but feel free to answer the questions yourself. I am bringing Shakespeare to you by way of UW-Madison’s purposely chaotic Coursera course, which encourages us that this is no one entrance into Shakespeare, and there is no ending to Shakespeare, as we continue to revisit his works and learn new things each time. This is not an attempt to “study” Shakespeare, as we would do in traditional courses, but to “discover” our own Shakespeare.