Homework

Today we listened to Emma Smith's lecture:
http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/antony-and-cleopatra-audio

What I'd like is for you to get a detailed essay plan together using anything you gained from her lecture, plus ideas from the A03/4 pages on this site. You might want to listen to the lecture again. The essay question uses a quote by A.C.Bradley and is really asking you both about your personal response to the play (is it 'painful?'; remember too that for some critics its 'painful' quality is its length or unstageability!) and questions of genre (Emma Smith talks about how it has elements of satire/farce but also discusses how it's been viewed as a comedy/history play/problem play/romance):

   ‘For a tragedy it is not painful.’ By considering the dramatic effects of Antony and Cleopatra, evaluate this view.

Homework

Thanks for yesterday everyone - and thanks to Joshua, even though Skype sabotaged us.

Don't have too much chilling out this holiday (see below). Here's the home work which you must do for the first lesson back:

 1.   List the 5 most important ideas you gained from our reading yesterday of Acts 4 and 5.

 2.   (IMPORTANT!!) Re-read the play: even if you just skim through what you’ve underlined in class, this is better than nothing. We will be working on what you’ve gained from re-reading the play on the first lesson back!

 3. Place the following statements on what the play’s about in rank order; then write a detailed post on the statement you agree with most:

a. The play has no moral value whatever.
b. The play is about the most magnificent love affair the world has ever known.
c. ‘Antony and Cleopatra is at last not about tawdry middle-aged lovers but about the power of imagination to place an Egyptian puppet and a drunken Antony on stage and, by poetry, to make the audience forget their smaller-than-life reality.
d. The play isn’t so much a love story: it’s about power.
e. The play dramatizes mythical encounter between Venus (the principle of love) and Mars (the god of war).
f. The play dramatizes the encounter between the pleasure principle and the desire for order, duty and boundaries.

Word search

Okay - here's a very interesting site for you:

http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/concordance/

Here's what to do:
1. Choose the first letter of the word(s) you are following: e.g. 'm' for 'melt'. Click on it.
2. Find the word from the new list and click again - this will reveal a list of the plays in which Shakespeare uses the word most. For example, 'melt' is used more in Antony and Cleopatra than any other play.
3. Look at all the examples of the word in our play and let me know if you find any interesting patterns or variations in its use? Why does Shakespeare use it so much in this play? What message or theme is he trying to illuminate through its use?
4. Now, for fun, check out a couple of examples of how he uses it in his other plays e.g. Hamlet's first soliloquy uses the word 'melt' in a very interesting way. Does Shakespeare  uese the word in a similar way? Does this reveal anything about his dramatic concerns overall?

Here's Botticelli's 'Venus and Mars' from 1483:

It's unlikely that Shakespeare ever saw this picture, though some biographers believe he might well have visited Renaissance Italy, but the themes and symbolism in this picture make a great link to what we're going to read in Act 3...

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/sandro-botticelli-venus-and-mars

I'm especially keen to hear from the art students on this one!

Here's some questions on the barge speech...
1. How does Shakespeare's version differ from Plutarch's?
2. What does this tell us about Shakespeare's Cleopatra - and Antony?
3. Does it make any difference that Enobarbus is talking?
4. Does this description match our experience of Cleopatra on stage?
5. Do we learn anything from Norman Holland's article comparing the two versions?

I await your answers...

Trevor Nunn's 1972 film version

Here's the link to the youtube pages showing this TV version of the Royal Shakespeare Company production we watched today - it will definitely be a useful revision tool, but also (for AO3) you can comment on it in your essays - for example how Janet Suzman's Cleopatra shows genuine grief on hearing about Antony's marriage, whereas other productions play the scene more for laughts:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-VWNul82w0&list=PL2C18E2DEA60C00D0


Here's what Janet Suzman, who played Cleopatra, said about what interested her most about the role:
 “That Cleopatra is given a head on her. The sex bomb aspect was developed by Octavius Caesar as spin to downgrade her into a trollop. But she was highly educated and spoke eight or nine languages. When I played her, I tried to give the impression that she was more politically aware. I believe this is the greatest female part Shakespeare wrote.”

Good websites #1

Confused about what's happening in the play?

Try http://public.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/shakespeare/a&c1.html - it has scene by scene summaries and key quotes to follow too.
By the next time I see you - please read through the summary of the scenes up to where we've reached as a class!

Revision Tip: start compiling a key quotes list!
Task: Post your 3 most important quotes from the play so far below - if possible tell us why you chose them! Divide yourselves between the Egyptians and the Roman's and then add a 4th quote from the word you are tracing in the play!