Week 9 – Shakespeare and the Renaissance

2. Try translating the first exchange between Hal and Falstaff into modern English, substituting modern objects for the things Hal and Falstaff are talking about.

Original:

FALSTAFF

Now, Hal, what time of day is it, lad?

PRINCE HENRY

Thou art so fat-witted, with drinking of old sack, and unbuttoning thee after supper, and sleeping upon benches after noon, that thou hast forgotten to demand that truly which thou wouldst truly know. What a devil hast thou to do with the time of the day? Unless hours were cups of sack, and minutes capons, and clocks the tongues of bawds, and dials the signs of leaping-houses, and the blessed sun himself a fair hot wench in flame-colored taffeta, I see no reason why thou shouldst be so superfluous to demand the time of the day.

FALSTAFF

Indeed, you come near me now, Hal, for we that take purses go by the moon and the seven stars, and not by Phoebus, he,that wand’ring knight so fair. And I prithee, sweet wag, when thou art king, as God save thy Grace—Majesty, I should say, for grace thou wilt have none—

PRINCE HENRY

What, none?

FALSTAFF

No, by my troth, not so much as will serve to be prologue to an egg and butter.

PRINCE HENRY

Well, how then? Come, roundly, roundly.

Translation:

Falstaff

Hal, what is the time?

Prince Henry

You have been drinking too much and you’re smashed. You’ve been loosening your pants after lunch and been sleeping on benches all afternoon that you don’t even remember how to ask for what you really want to know. What the hell does it matter to you what time it is? Unless hours were glasses of wine, minutes were chickens, clocks were whores’ tongues, sundials were whorehouse signs and the sun itself were a hot woman, I don’t see any reason why you would need to know the time.

Falstaff

Now you’re talking. Thieves like us operate at night, by the moon not in the sun. I hope, pretty boy, that when you become king, God save your Grace—or maybe I should just call you “Your Majesty,” since you don’t have any grace—

Prince Henry

None?

Falstaff

Not even enough for some food.

Prince Henry

Get to the point.

Week 8 – Shakespeare and the Renaissance

2. Imagine your father is about to call you into line for the reckless way in which you have failed. Prepare a paragraph justifying yourself, expressing your disenchantment with the way the establishment lead their lives

Father, you have called me here today to reprimand me for some reckless failure which I am supposed to have committed. Am I expected to not act recklessly when I am shut in with the beck and call of every man and dog with high brow humour and the stiff upper lip I am to deliver to all beneath me. You say we should interact with the world around you, yet the world around me is reckless and wild not tamed and straight. No, the world is as mysterious as our minds try to figure what the other is going to say next. If you continue the way you live your life by the set rules with their right ways to do things, who is to say what is right and wrong? maybe my way was the right and yours the wrong, but mine is found wanting because of some man hundreds of years ago decided this is how things must be done. To you I say no, the world cannot be led by the establishment that would have us fall in line and proceed with the “Right” way of life, I would much rather sit in the pub with the wild sociable bunch you would call hooligans because that is where the truth of humanity lies in the jokes made over a beer and the bonds made by men.

Week 10 – Shakespeare and the Renaissance

1/  in a short paragraph describe the character that you are playing in your performance of a segment from Shakespeare

In Elizabethan folklore, Puck (a.k.a. Robin Goodfellow) is a household sprite who, depending on his mood, plays annoying tricks on people or helps them out with their chores. This explains why Shakespeare’s Puck brags to us about all the times he’s been a pest to local villagers by sabotaging vats of ale and ruining the batches of butter that housewives spent all morning churning. Puck loves a good practical joke more than anything else. After transforming Bottom’s head into that of an “ass,” he gleefully declares “My mistress with a monster is in love”. Because of his fun-loving spirit and willingness to prank anyone and everyone, he’s often considered the heart and soul of the play. His antics and his sense of humor inject A Midsummer Night’s Dream with a playful and topsy-turvy spirit that creates much of the play’s fun atmosphere.

He whizzes around the globe to fetch Oberon’s magic love juice, and when he accidentally squeezes it in Lysander’s eyes , he sets in motion all the comical misunderstandings that arise from the young lovers’ chase through the woods. After turning the young lovers’ worlds upside-down, Puck is also the figure who helps restore order and sets things right. By giving the young lovers the antidote (OK, not Demetrius) to the love juice (3.2), Puck removes the obstacles they’ve faced and ensures the play’s happy ending.

Week 5 – Shakespeare and the Renaissance

3/ Briefly summarize what you think Jacques’ (Squeeze a Jay) philosophy of life is?

Jacques wants to render a message through his poem, “The Seven Ages of Man” that men and women are ‘merely players’ in the drama of life. They are termed as ‘merely players’ because no one lives forever but plays his or her part and departs. At birth, they enter a stage and during death, they leave it. Man passes through seven phases of life in accordance with their age. He wants to demonstrate the world where everyone just merely passes through taking on the roles of their age and there is little change from one person to the next, demonstrating a world where the stage is repeated and the play is played again and again just with a different actor taking on the role maybe changing how it is done but ultimately their roles in life are already decided.

Week 4 – Shakespeare and the Renaissance

4/ Write a review of the performance by Bell Shakespeare of As You Like It.  Pay particular attention to the casting of the characters: eg Does John Bell suit perfectly the role of Jacques (squeeze a Jay) as you understand him?
Bell Shakespeare’s As You Like It demonstrated a humorous and interesting take onto the play. Characters were developed to

Rosalind’s character within As You Like It is a most interesting aspect within the play. Everything about her screams reassurance. “It’s okay! She’s female, don’t worry, no hanky panky stuff here, she’s a girl. We’re only pretending.” And so, aside from a change of frock to a pair of pants and a jacket, there is no perceptible difference between Rosalind at usurper Duke Senior’s court and Rosalind on the run with her cousin and best friend Celia. And towards the end it’s underlined even more starkly when Rosalind lets down and shakes out her hair so that her lover can be in no danger of thinking he might be in love with – gasp – a chap. However this aspect within the play can be the element that holds back the play from true hilarity, whilst the feminine elements found in Rosalind’s transformation into her male disguise may prevent a strength behind her words when discussing the fickle state of men in love or to perhaps drive home that element of humour in stereotyping men. Whilst the character of Jaques was interesting his mellow and lack of energy ensures the melancholic view of Jaques to shine into a stronger light, however the melancholic view expressed by Jaques does not come without his playful comments upon the characters nature and reality delivering that humorous element to the play.

Week 3 – Shakespeare and the Renaissance – As you Like it reworking of a Rosalind line

Rosalind: Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as
well a dark house and a whip as madmen do; and the reason why
they are not so punish’d and cured is that the lunacy is so
ordinary that the whippers are in love too.
For lovers, as lovers do, punish their lover for being so in love!
And in turn punish themselves for doing the punishing. So you see!
Madness is love, and love is madness they are two and the same,
to have one is to have the other, as would only suit those madmen in love.
So that maddening love that infests the heart, I profess the cure to be my knowledge.

Week 2- Shakespeare and the Renaissance – Midsummer Nights Dream

3/ Write a brief description, with examples from the text, of what kind of a person Bottom is. You have heard him in class. Now pin him down. Say what he is like and why others in the play react to him as they do.

Bottom a seemingly insignificant character within Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream easily becomes a larger role within the play. Bottom is seen as a; confident, overpowering, loud, arrogant, arse of a man, ironic of his name. Bottom presents the typical arrogant character that assumes he knows better than his friends “That will ask some tears in the true performing of it: if I do it, let the audience look to their eyes; I will move storms, I will condole in some measure. To the rest: yet my chief humour is for a tyrant: I could play Ercles rarely, or a part to tear a cat in, to make all split.”  Bottom is continuously the aggravating idiot many of us can find in our own lives, Bottom has the unfortunate luck of being cast into the fairy world, used as a pawn for a higher game. Bottom then has his soliloquy where in his usual way continues to muddle up his words altering the meaning behind the bible passage he is quoting Methought I was,—and methought I had,—but man is but a patched fool, if he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was.” The quality that is given to Bottom: in this case of arrogance and baseless confidence, underlying this in true Shakespearian style, where Bottom displays his hidden deeper qualities and presents a deeper understanding circumventing the ass that is presented to us (ha ha). To put in to modern terms, Bottom is the one person in the class who always puts his hands up to read aloud but he seems to the class to be illiterate and annoys everyone with his ineptitude, his effort and enthusiasm are to be commended and valued, but at the end of the day, everyone thinks he’s an arse.

Wk 1 Shakespeare and the Renaissance – Short Poem

Love, is the Light.
But she is a fickle friend.
She would have me vow;
And she would have, my knee bend.
She would have me jealous,
And live in spite.
I live, everyday;
Now afraid of the Light.

But a friend such as she;
Winds a most challenging path.
For to be with, is to be without;
And to be without, leaves my wrath.

To have known love, means nothing.
And yet love can mean everything.
Each taste is as addictive as the next,
and it always leaves me wanting.

I spare my jealous words,
and hate broils the heart.
My face is set,
when I’m faced with the Light.
But yet each time;
Her name,
I whisper to the Night.