L41500 / L52501: Major plays of Shakespeare

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ENGL 41500

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The course grade will be determined by a rough averaging together of your  paper, two exams, and five shorter assignments, each worth 25 pts per category.  I  reserve the right to take into additional factors into account; improvement, class participation, and, of course, attendance. Grades are not negotiable, personal, or subject to the influence of extracurricular academic factors. 

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"Assume a virtue if you have it not," says Hamlet to his mother (Ham. 3.4.160). He means to be rude. Also, if it were possible for Shakespeare's characters to come to life and speak to each other, it is something he would never say to Rosalind or Viola.  However, what are their virtues, specifically, based on words and phrases you can glean from the plays as evidence? How are their virtues similar? How are they different? Do they possess elements of personality that could not be described  as virtues?

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Paragraphs should be focused on a single topic, with topic sentences, evidence, and analysis. They should not consist of a series of broad, unrelated statements.

Late papers = 0

4 pp.

DUE FRIDAY, 4 October,  11.59 P.M.  VIA BRIGHTSPACE

stapletm@pfw.edu

Microsoft Word only. 

Please keep in mind that you may revise this paper as often as you like, as long as you meet with me to discuss it after you have turned it in the first time. Revisions are due on or before the due date for the second exam.

Our first three works, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, and the Sonnets, might not seem to have much in common at first glance. As thinking people, however, you know that this would be a superficial observation.  Find two somewhat brief (i.e., not enormous) passages from each play that have something significant in common. Find one of the Sonnets that would bear on your discussion, perhaps one concerning sex, gender, the nature of women, fidelity, truth, falsehood, or any other topic you think important. 

As for the plays, you might find good material in Viola's interactions with Orsino and Olivia, Malvolio's bizarre but predictable misreading of Maria's counterfeit letter, and, of course, Rosalind's "lessons" for Orlando and Celia's reactions to them, and Rosalind's criticism of Phebe.

Paragraphs should be focused on a single topic, with topic sentences, evidence, and analysis. They should not consist of a series of broad, unrelated statements.

Late papers = 0

4 pp.

DUE FRIDAY, 11 OCTOBER,  11.59 p.m. VIA BRIGHTSPACE

stapletm@pfw.edu

Microsoft Word only. 

Please keep in mind that you may revise this paper as often as you like, as long as you meet with me to discuss it after you have turned it in the first time. Revisions are due on or before the due date for the second exam. 

"The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together."

Let's take this splendid observation and apply it to Hamlet and King Lear.

Paragraphs should be focused on a single topic, with topic sentences, evidence, and analysis. They should not consist of a series of broad, unrelated statements. 

DUE WEDNESDAY, 18 DECEMBER, 11.59 p.m. VIA BRIGHTSPACE

Late papers = 0

4 pp.

stapletm@pfw.edu

Microsoft Word only.

At the midpoint of AYL, Rosalind says to Phebe:

  mistress, know yourself: down on your knees,
And thank heaven, fasting, for a good man's love:
For I must tell you friendly in your ear,
Sell when you can: you are not for all markets:
Cry the man mercy; love him; take his offer:
Foul is most foul, being foul to be a scoffer.  (3.5.57-62)

How do these lines reverberate throughout the play? Do they seem characteristic (typical) of the speaker?

Twelfth Night

In the middle of Twelfth Night, Viola utters the enigmatic line, "I am not what I am" (3.1.141).  Obviously, her primary meaning is her secret. She's not the youth Cesario, but a woman like Olivia with her own agenda and problems. However, the statement could be the keynote of the play. How does it apply to everyone else in Twelfth Night?  Why does it matter?

Hamlet

Hamlet's line "there is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so" (Ham. 2.2.231) seems to have a broader application in the play. One might even says that it "plays."  What would be your response to this observation? Are there any parts of Hamlet that embody it and prove it true--or false?

King Lear 

is a fairy tale from hell in two versions, quarto and folio. Its lessons are brutal.  Lear receives a number of them, some from the Fool.  What is the point of the interpolated material from the quarto at 1.4.127 (+1-15)?

King Lear

has a very famous line in the last act made up of one word repeated five times: "Never, never, never, never, never" (5.3.284).  Your friend says it's the dumbest thing she's ever heard. You know better, and explain how it reverberates throughout the play, and, perhaps, life.