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Shakespeare!
Friends, Romans, Countrymen… lend me your eyes and ears! The time has
come upon us to join in revelry with the Bard, the Myth, the Legend, William
Shakespeare.
Love him or hate him, the man’s works have survived 400 years, and are apt
to survive at least another century in the popular imagination.
In class this year, we’re going to explore the different meanings of
Shakespeare: the man, the myth, the poet, the playwright, the
businessman, the philosopher… and so on.
Shakespeare’s plays didn’t survive because they were “great”; they survived
because people had fun reading and performing them. So above all else,
we’re going to have fun with our challenges: the analysis and performance
of his plays and poems.
Of course, the most ambitious of journeys can only be done in small steps.
Continuously, throughout the semester, we’ll be taking these steps together
to ensure that you succeed in your final project and paper. These steps will
be done in your Journal, which I expect you to bring to class every day.
Presentation - 15%
Students will do one of the following:
1) Present their research in a 10 minute powerpoint presentation (Rubric
provided)
2) Create a 10 minute lesson for students (to be done in teams) on a
Shakespearean play other than Hamlet
3) Act out (alone or with others) a scene from a Shakespearean play other
than Hamlet - one page reflection
So that’s the big chunk, the big 55%. The rest is outlined below:
Quizzes - 10%
Mostly unstructured, made up on the spot. This allows me the flexibility to
adapt what they do. I want them to be ready for College--
reading, lecture, note-taking, and discussion. That's the bulk of it.
Teamwork - 20%
This has two categories:
1) How well you work with me
2) How well you work with your classmates
Syllabus – Semester I
Curious Incident
Week 0 - Shakespeare the man, the myth, the legend.
Weeks 1: Curious Incident - Reading Quiz. Review of literary terms we'll
need to know this year.
Hamlet
Week 4: Start College Essay. Shakespeare's world.
Week 5: Plots of Popular Shakespeare plays
Week 6: Start of Research Paper
Week 7: Begin Hamlet - plot and basics. Start of College Essay Writing -
Hamlet returns from college, we apply to it!
Week 8: The Elizabethan World View: the Body Politic and the Great Chain of
Being
Week 9: The ambiguity of boundaries in Hamlet. Ways to understand family
- why Hamlet is so popular.
Week 10: Consciousness - Hamlet confronts consciousness
Week 11-12: Continue our study of consciousness. Sonnets that explore
states of mind and quality of feeling.