Othello Fine

I am happy to say that this week is finally the end of the torturous Othello play production. I do not know what can possibly be done to improve this project for future classes. However, I will recommend that if you do continue having your students perform plays that you either allow more class periods for students to prepare their plays, allow students to use scripts during the performance if you do not allow more class periods for the play production, or allow students to perform their final production only in the class and not in front of the whole school so that students do not need to focus on having a perfect production. What I have noticed from working with my own play group is that students have conflicting schedules and personal issues that make it near impossible to meet outside of class and sometimes make it difficult to accomplish anything during class because of continual absences. If the standard of the production is brought down a little, I believe students will not be as worried about such a play production project and the project itself may improve dramatically.

Macbeth Act I

Let me begin by saying how much I love this play. One can never go wrong when there are witches involved. I particularly found the discussion on whether the witches are malicious or not rather interesting. I never gave the concept much thought because of my own personally reaction to them. Namely, I always viewed the witches as tricksters who were trying to entertain themselves by causing conflict because the witches cannot really benefit from Macbeth's downfall. That is why the class discussion was crucial for me in order to let me see the possibility of a different viewpoint because it never crossed my mind whether the witches were just stating facts like prophets. The movie predominantly allowed me to see how this interpretation can be possible. I also found the discussion of gender interesting as well. If one views the witches from solely a female perspective of the time period, one would expect Shakespeare is simply encouraging the stereotypical view that women are evil troublemakers. However, if one notes how the witches have male characters that make them hideous unisex abnormalities one can see how such characteristics can either encourage trust on Macbeth's part due to their masculinity, or mistrust due to such inhuman deformities. As a result, one can either interpret these witches as trustworthy or mischievous depending on one's opinion.

King Lear + Judeo Christian Beliefs

I believe our class discussion comparing the text to the movie was exceedingly helpful for me because I was not a big fan of this play when I first read it a year ago. I particularly was intrigued by the comments on how Shakespeare's play had a Judeo-Christian element to it. Like I stated before, I have a difficult time analyzing Shakespeare from a world viewpoint, so the class discussion really enlightened me to Shakespeare's key focus on the material world. It would have taken me longer to determine such an analysis namely because of my own personal reaction toward the text. However, when we broke up into small groups to discuss this particular issue thoroughly I found that many of the elements of King Lear can be considered Biblical. I for one am not religious, so I do not have the necessary background to make such a Christian analysis of Shakespeare. Even though I have always meant to read the Bible in order to become a better critic, I believe such personal effort on my part may not be possible. As a result, I am grateful for the aid my peers gave me with their interpretation of the text. I, unfortunately, will most likely analyze Shakespeare from a Marxian perspective in the future. Even though Marx is not a Biblical analysis I believe it provides a similar interpretation to the material world. Plus, I know Marx. I don't think I will ever know the Bible.