Reading Prompts
Stage Beauty
The Tragedy of Mariam
- Read the Introduction (135-139) and the Argument (144-145). Think about what it means that this play is a "closet drama."
- For Monday: Pay special attention to the long speeches of Mariam, Alexandra and Salome in Act I, scenes i-iv.
- For Wednesday: Pay specil attention to Act III, scene ii, Herod's speeches in Act IV, scenes i and iv and Mariam's speech in Act IV, scene viii.
The Lion King
- As you watch The Lion King, think about what characters, scenes, etc. can be 'matched' with their counterparts in Hamlet. How do the intersections between these two texts affect your reading of both texts?
- Use McCloud's discussion of the 'icon' in Understanding Comics to examine the character portrayals in The Lion King.
- The Lion King is the first musical that we have examined in this class. What does the juxtaposition of song and spoken dialogue do to its narrative? Do song and spoken word deliver different kinds of information?
Hamlet
- Pay special attention to how different kinds of media are used within Hamlet. How important are letters? Plays? Poetry?
- Examine your Longman edition as a cultural artifact. What kind of book is it? How does it encourage you to navigate Shakespeare's play? What does it prioritize?
Much Ado About Nothing (manga)
- Read the Much Ado About Nothing manga and chapters 4-6 of Understanding Comics. Come prepared on Monday to discuss these readings in relation to one another.
Much Ado About Nothing (film)
- How does humor work in this film? Is the movie "funnier" than the playscript?
- What do you think of the casting decisions made for this movie?
- What elements of this film could not be reporoduced in a staged play version of Much Ado?
Much Ado About Nothing
- How does this compare to the other two Shakespeare plays we have read thus far?
- How can you imagine this script being adapted into a play, a comic book, a movie?
- All three of the plays we have looked at so far are classified as 'comedies'. What does this classification tell you about the formulation of genre?
- On a related note: How does humor work in Much Ado?
Reading Prompts
"A Midsummer Night's Dream" (comic) by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess
- How does this compare to the Rackham illustrated edition of A Midsummer Night's Dream? Is there any overlap in terms of structure? Art style?
- How does having read the first three chapters of McCloud's Understanding Comics affect your reading of this comic?
- Look at how speech is presented in the comic. What is the impact of the placement and design of the word 'balloons'?
- Look through the comic again, this time paying special attention to page design and the placement of panels. Does anything stand out? What kinds of patterns do you notice?
Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream
Illustrated by Arthur Rackham
- How do you find yourself reading an illustrated copy of one of Shakespeare's plays? When you come to a page or a two-page spread that has both text and images on it, do you find yourself 'reading' the images first? The text first? How do the illustrations affect the pace of the play?
- What do you make of Rackham's choices as an illustrator? If you were illustrating this play, would you have selected the same scenes to draw? Do characters and settings look as you imagine them?
- How do the illustrations here affect the tone of the play?
- How do the images here relate to the text? Do they reflect it? Enhance it? Detract from it? Do they focus on some elements to the exclusion of others?
10 Things I Hate About You
- What does it do to translate the setting of The Taming of the Shrew to a 'modern-day' high school? What are the advantages of this move? The disadvantages?
- How does Kat's "10 Things I Hate About You" poem relate to Katherine's famous speech at the ending of the play? To the sonnet they are consciously adapting in the movie?
- How does diegetic and non-diegetic music work in this movie? Are there any instances when a 'non-diegetic' song (which is not part of the film's internal world) becomes diegetic (part of the internal reality of the movie)?
- How does costuming work in this film? How does costuming in this film relate to costuming in the movie version of The Taming of the Shrew we watched last week?
The Woman's Prize, or The Tamer Tamed, Monday January 23
- Both The Woman's Prize and The Taming of the Shrew are Renaissance dramas, and therefore share certain formal similarities. How, then, do they differ in form? In structure?
- How do gender roles in Fletcher's play compare with gender roles in Shakespeare's?
- How are elements (themes, characters, situations, etc.) from The Taming of the Shrew echoed in The Woman's Prize?
- You have now seen one filmic example of The Taming of the Shrew. What do you think a film version of The Woman's Prize would look like? Sound like?
Taming of the Shrew (film), Friday January 20
For our Friday, January 20 discussion of the film The Taming of the Shrew, please come to class prepared to discuss (at least one of) the following topics:
- What elements or parts of the film surprised you? How does the film's presentation of The Taming of te Shrew differ from what you imagined when reading the play?
- What aspects of Franco Zeffirelli's picture are particularly filmic in nature? How does cinemetography affect the story's presentation?
- What do you make of Petrucchio and Katherine in this picture? Think not only of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor's performances, but of their costumes, the ways they are shot, etc.
- There is no frame narrative (Christopher Sly and company) in this movie adaptation. Why do you think that is?
To help you develop a vocabulary with which to speak about film, you may want to skim through one or more of the following glossaries, all available online:
Taming of the Shrew, Friday January 13
For our Friday, January 13 discussion of The Taming of the Shrew, please come to class prepared to discuss (at least one of) the following topics:
- Christopher Sly and the frame story
- doubling and role-reversal
- costumes and disguises
- how language relates to gender and/or sexuality
- the influence of the medium (in this case, a playscript) upon the story, or your reception to it. How does your knowledge that this play was meant for on-stage performance affect your reading?