English 345.01 SHAKESPEARE Fall 2001

Stephan Flores

Advice on Journal Entries (three total, 250words each) and Critical Responses (the first on Twelfth Night or Measure for Measure, the second on Henry V or Othello or Macbeth, 450-500 words each, titled, single-spaced)

I suggest that you consider some of the problems, premises, and questions posed during our discussions and readings as a guide in helping you to develop a specific focus and issue to address in your journal entry or critical response. You might think of the response as a succinct and sharply focused critical/analytical commentary, one that contains the kernel of a hypothesis and topic that might serve as the focus for a longer essay (see requirements section of course description and refer again to example on the study questions for As You Like It).

It may be helpful for you to quote, summarize, or paraphrase very briefly from the text (especially in the critical response), to help you frame the topic or problem or rhetorical strategy that you want to explore, explain, and comment upon. Assume your audience is familiar with the text, but take care to articulate clearly your understanding and interpretation of the material, especially problems or contradictions that seem difficult to resolve.

Keep in mind that your critical analysis should supplement or build upon our work; in short, don't simply repeat an argument we have already substantially discussed unless you were engaged substantially in that discussion.

Some writers use the first paragraph to describe an interpretative problem that arises in a specific passage or in a character (and the relations of that character to others or to the play's cultural context or to the challenges of performance), or to present a conflict of critical approaches to the work. Here are some more ways to question and to explore the functions and effects of these plays.

In what ways, for example, does one of the plays represent a particular cultural (social, political, economic, class, religion, gender) perspective, problem, or conflict? Does the play advocate a specific response or invite (or undertake) a certain course of action with regard to this problem/issue?

Recent cultural and historical criticism often turns upon debate over whether Shakespeare's plays represent (instantiate, produce?) efforts to subvert or resist dominant ideology, or whether the plays' final effects work to contain, appropriate, or even reproduce such efforts, thus sustaining the power of the dominant order of things (e.g., in terms of class or gender relations, religious or political beliefs, etc.). You might also consider the utility of this opposition between subversion and containment in relation to specific conflicts and contradictions in the work under discussion. Moreover, when does this polarized opposition seem less useful and incisive? Are there ways to negotiate the seeming impasse?

What kinds of solutions does the work offer to the problems it articulates? Why?

To what extent do you agree with a particular essay/theoretical approach to the play and why? Can you extend or further illustrate the critical insights and arguments to other aspects of the work or to another play?

How would you direct a particular scene in a play? What are a director's and an actor's responsibilities/opportunities?

Explore the relation between a play's "style" (its language, structure, diction, figurative language) and what it represents or produces (performs, its effects, its function).

A Series of Related/Additional Questions:

Do characters say one thing and mean (or do) something else? When? How do you account for this? (try to think of certain lines as something a character needs to say, chooses to say, or cannot help saying--in other words, what is the character doing, or trying to do--consider speech as action, and highly rhetorical in motive or effect)

What are the various voices and perspectives (sides) in a scene's conversations? Who remains silent or does not respond to another's speech or action? Are there "secondary" or minor characters who contribute to the meaning and action? Is there a scene that might appear cuttable or insignificant to some and for certain reasons but you want to defend its significance?

What do characters want? What obstacles or challenges lie between a character and the fulfillment of his or her desires?

Go to Stephan Flores' Home Page.