https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZndDTG0ckQ<br /> Harold Bloom Lectures on Shakespeare's Major Tragedies

Iago has fully vowed himself to this plot that he has created, perhaps even if it means it will destroy him. Why? What is his motive? Does simply the creation of an entertaining story constitute the meaning of life?

Describing how Iago's act was very little, but turned dramatic due to to perhaps everyone's love for drama

He plays both sides, the suspicion and the "no it couldn't be", showing that it is Othello that chooses the suspicion.

IAGO QUITE LITERALLY IS HONEST WITH OTHELLO! He warns him that these suspicions, these inner thoughts are all a delusion, and yet Othello's insecurity and stubbornness refuses to believe it

even he states, what has he seriously done, but to carry words here and there, to incite what's already there?

Touches on innocence, free will and lack of constraint, lack of morality, lack of humanity == Blake's innocence == protection from Iago

Yet again stating the intentions of everyone in just wariness of their reputation and pride

Again example why he is a creator: Free will.

Iago is directly stating, or singing, while all are under his curse, that it is pride that pulls each down -- and he is merely showing its effects. Kind of 4th wall

He speaks as if he is playing a strategic game of chess. He is the gamemaster, Shakespeare himself, the comedic clown that turns everything upside down.

https://www.waggish.org/critical-editions-of-shakespeare/

This is not the only porcupine to appear in Levi’s writing. In The Truce, we learn that Levi’s companion Cesare, disappointed after a misadventure on the black market, spent two days ‘huddled on his bed, bristling like a porcupine’ (CW I, 338). In The Wrench, Faussone identifies a clearing in which ‘a porcupine was advancing cautiously, with brief stops and starts’ (CW II, 1025). These English translations suggest a possible connection to SQ that is less obvious in the original Italian, where the text refers not to an ‘istrice’ but rather to a ‘porcospino’. In La tregua, Cesare is described as ‘ispido come un porcospino’ (OC I, 417), and in La chiave a stella, Faussone points out that ‘un porcospino avanzava cauto, con brevi arresti e riprese’ (OC I, 1099).

The terms ‘istrice’ and ‘porcospino’ refer to animals of the same family, Hystricidae, and identify the same species, Hystrix cristata, the crested porcupine, which is native to Italy. In the Grande dizionario italiano dell’uso, ‘porcospino’ is listed as a synonym of ‘istrice’, which is defined scientifically as a ‘piccolo mammifero con il corpo coperto di aculei appuntiti ed erettili’, with a second figurative meaning as a ‘persona intrattabile, scontrosa’ (805).

Despite their similarity, there is a notable difference between the two synonyms with regard to their literary resonances. As the Tesoro della lingua Italiana delle Origini demonstrates, ‘istrice’ was the preferred term for medieval philosophers, historians, and poets, including Boccaccio, who used it in his Caccia di Diana and Ameto, where the husband’s beard is described as being ‘né più né meno pugnente che le penne d’uno istrice’ (Tutte le opera di Giovanni Boccaccio, 774). The Grande dizionario della lingua italiana attests subsequent citations from Parini, D’Annunzio, De Amicis, and Foscolo, with the latter two adopting the term metaphorically to refer to a person who is taciturn and cagey (615).

I suspect that Levi had another literary reference in mind when he opted for ‘istrice’ rather than ‘porcospino’ in SQ. Here are the words with which the Ghost in Shakespeare’s Hamlet reveals both his identity and the infernal torments he suffers in the afterlife:

I am thy father’s spirit,

Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night,

And for the day confined to fast in fires,

Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature

Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid

To tell the secrets of my prison-house,

I could a tale unfold whose lightest word

Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,

Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,

Thy knotted and combined locks to part

And each particular hair to stand on end,

Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:

But this eternal blazon must not be

To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list! (Hamlet, Act I, Scene 5, vv. 14-28)

In standard Italian translations dating back at least to the early nineteenth century, Shakepeare’s ‘fretful porpentine’ is rendered as a ‘pauroso istrice’ (Amleto, 59). This word, and these lines, would seem to resonate remarkably well with Levi’s description of the hell of Auschwitz, which is the context for his invocation of ‘la difesa dell’istrice’.

After all, Hamlet’s Ghost is compelled to speak quickly, in the brief interval he has been granted in his eternal suffering:

My hour is almost come,

When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames

Must render up myself (Hamlet, Act I, Scene 5, vv. 5-7)

Cannot Levi and Jean say the same thing? The ‘lungo giro’ that Jean has arranged buys them a brief respite, but this precious time has begun to disappear as soon as it arrives: ‘quest’ora già non è più un’ora’. Cannot Hamlet’s Ghost say the same thing?

The moment of connection and communication at the heart of ‘Il canto di Ulisse’ can be said to have begun with Jean’s clever strategy to curry favour with cruel Alex, the Kapo Levi describes as ‘un bestione violento e infido’, who is won over by Jean’s ‘opera lenta cauta e sottile’, finally ceding to him the coveted role of Pikolo. It is this victory that Levi describes as penetrating ‘the porcupine’s defence’. And it is this victory that frees Jean to choose Levi for the task of fetching the daily soup ration, enabling the disquisition on Dante that gives the chapter its title.

If I am correct that the reference to ‘la difesa dell’istrice’ is thus evidence that Levi and Jean’s Dantean voyage begins under the sign of Hamlet, this would be a particularly elegant literary manoeuvre, since the voyage concludes under the very same sign. As their hour runs out once they have reached the kitchen, Levi finds himself unable to say all that needs to be said and is forced to concede that ‘il resto è silenzio’, an unmistakable echo of Hamlet’s final words: ‘the rest is silence’ (Hamlet, Act V, Scene 2, v. 395).

If further evidence for a Shakespearean source text is warranted, I would note that Levi included in Ad ora incerta a poem that explicitly references Hamlet’s Ghost, who is referred to as an ‘old mole’ because he continues to speak from beneath the floorboards (Hamlet, Act I, Scene 5, v. 183). Italian translations render this line as ‘vecchia talpa’, words that Levi borrowed for the title of a 1982 poem, which literalises the reference - the poem is in fact written from the perspective of an old mole - while nevertheless conveying the sense of the original, with its profound intimations of the latent power of buried knowledge.

In altri tempi seguivo le femmine,

E quando ne sentivo una grattare

Mi scavavo la via verso di lei:

Ora non più; se capita, cambio strada.

Ma a luna nuova mi prende il morbino,

E allora qualche volta mi diverto

A sbucare improvviso per spaventare i cani. (OC II, 727)

The reference to an ‘istrice’ in ‘Il canto di Ulisse’ similarly suggests hidden depths.

CLL

‘The Canto of Ulysses’ records a truly remarkable feat of cultural memory, as Levi recalls and recites Dante amidst the ruin of Auschwitz. He does so to teach Italian to his campmate Jean. But as he recites the words of Dante, Levi also feels his past come back to him. He begins to recover something of his identity and his humanity in the degraded world of the Lager, to feel again that he is ‘a man’.

Dante is not, however, the only canonical writer to appear in ‘The Canto of Ulysses’. So too does Shakespeare. <br /> Levi admits to ‘gaps’, ‘holes’, and ‘lacuna[e]’ in his memory as he recites Dante, some of which would seem to be ‘irreparable’. Unable to recall his Dante, Levi is forced to confront ‘silence’:

I would give today’s soup to know how to connect ‘the like on any day’ to the last lines. I try to reconstruct it through rhymes, I close my eyes, I bite my fingers – but it is no use, the rest is silence [il resto è silenzio]. Other verses dance in my head: ‘…The sodden ground belched wind …’, no, it is something else. [Woolf’s translation.]

‘[T]he rest is silence’: Levi is quoting the last words that are spoken by Hamlet, before he dies:

O, I die, Horatio!

The potent poison quite o’ercrows my spirit.

I cannot live to hear the news from England.

But I do prophesy th’election lights

On Fortinbras; he has my dying voice.

So tell him, with th’occurrents more and less

Which have solicited – the rest is silence.

With his ‘spirit’ succumbing to the ‘potent poison’ Claudius and Laertes have used to kill him, Hamlet undertakes the impossible: to testify to his own death, to ‘tell’ in words his fall into deathly silence. This is his ‘dying voice’.

What is Hamlet doing in ‘The Canto of Ulysses’? Why does Levi place it where he does, in ‘the caesura’, the abyssal gap between Auschwitz and his cultural identity and memory, embodied by Dante? It is certainly ironic that Levi draws once again on the Western canonical literary tradition to record the moment of its ostensible breakdown. What emerges from the lapse, the silence that Levi testifies to, is another tie to his compromised past, and the literary culture that would seem to have been obliterated by the Holocaust – even if Levi does not choose to bring obvious notice to his allusion by using quotation marks or by writing, ‘as Hamlet says’. The poetry of Hamlet appears to be among the ‘other verses’ Levi has confusedly ‘dancing in his head’ while he tries to fill the gaps in his memory.

By quoting Hamlet, Levi would appear to again testify to the power of literature as a mainstay of culture and humanity, evincing his commitment to humanist ideals. This is certainly the positive interpretation of Hamlet in ‘The Canto of Ulysses’. I would make the case, however, that Levi is using Shakespeare for an altogether more challenging purpose. By appropriating the ‘dying voice’ of Hamlet, Levi records the place where his memory and his identity collapse, testifying to the reduction of the camp inmate to silence and oblivion. Bryan Cheyette writes that ‘even when his memory self-consciously fails him’, Levi is always ‘at pains to bear witness to those moments of failure’ (Cheyette 1999, 64). Levi seeks to testify to the silence, to show that ‘something has occurred even if it cannot be understood’ (Druker 2009, 64). This is the role played by Hamlet in ‘The Canto of Ulysses’. Levi does not use the play to testify to the endurance of the human spirit in the camps, but to silence, to a ‘world of negation’ (OC I, 235). Hamlet, perhaps ironically given its near-unrivalled canonical and cultural status, marks the space beyond language and culture, into which Levi is at risk of falling. This, as Levi called it, is the ‘black hole’ of Auschwitz (OC II, 1663).

Through his allusion to Hamlet, Levi rewrites Shakespeare from the perspective of Auschwitz, endowing the play with new meanings as he confronts the lacunae and voids produced by the world of the concentration camp. Levi uses the play to record the disintegration of humane values in Auschwitz, as memory and language are brought to the point of collapse. Jacques Derrida does much the same in his own work on the play. He draws Hamlet into conversation with Holocaust testimony when he compares the play to the poetry of survivor Paul Celan in his 1995 piece ‘The Time is Out of Joint’. Derrida contends that the paradox of testimony is that the witness must uncannily ‘outlive his life’ (3.2.117) – or ‘survive’ that which is not ‘survivable’: the collapse of all meaning and death (Derrida 1995). This is the sense in which Hamlet is a play about the ‘impossible possibility of testimony’, as Derrida calls it. Hamlet has ‘seen the worst’ and is ‘the witness of the worst disorder, of absolute injustice’, writes Derrida. Hamlet has witnessed too much for words – but testimony, ‘though it hath no tongue, will speak’ (2.2.546).

Levi must also confront and testify to the painful death of memory, the destruction of human identity and culture, before the event of physical death itself – or as Jacques Lacan would call it, ‘symbolic’ before ‘actual’ death, the death of the self before physical death. Lawrence Langer uses the phrase ‘deathlife’ to name the same phenomenon, of ‘dying while one is living’ (Langer 2021, 13). Not unlike the melancholic prince, Levi attempts the impossible of testifying to his own demise. He deploys Hamlet to record his fall into a place beyond humanity and beyond culture – even beyond language. It is, to adopt the words of Jean Améry, an act of both resignation and revolt: resignation to silence, and a determined revolt against oblivion, by testifying to it. It is an astonishing moment.

RA

‘The Canto of Ulysses’ records a truly remarkable feat of cultural memory, as Levi recalls and recites Dante amidst the ruin of Auschwitz. He does so to teach Italian to his campmate Jean. But as he recites the words of Dante, Levi also feels his past come back to him. He begins to recover something of his identity and his humanity in the degraded world of the Lager, to feel again that he is ‘a man’.

Dante is not, however, the only canonical writer to appear in ‘The Canto of Ulysses’. So too does Shakespeare. <br /> Levi admits to ‘gaps’, ‘holes’, and ‘lacuna[e]’ in his memory as he recites Dante, some of which would seem to be ‘irreparable’. Unable to recall his Dante, Levi is forced to confront ‘silence’:

I would give today’s soup to know how to connect ‘the like on any day’ to the last lines. I try to reconstruct it through rhymes, I close my eyes, I bite my fingers – but it is no use, the rest is silence [il resto è silenzio]. Other verses dance in my head: ‘…The sodden ground belched wind …’, no, it is something else. [Woolf’s translation.]

‘[T]he rest is silence’: Levi is quoting the last words that are spoken by Hamlet, before he dies:

O, I die, Horatio!

The potent poison quite o’ercrows my spirit.

I cannot live to hear the news from England.

But I do prophesy th’election lights

On Fortinbras; he has my dying voice.

So tell him, with th’occurrents more and less

Which have solicited – the rest is silence.

With his ‘spirit’ succumbing to the ‘potent poison’ Claudius and Laertes have used to kill him, Hamlet undertakes the impossible: to testify to his own death, to ‘tell’ in words his fall into deathly silence. This is his ‘dying voice’.

What is Hamlet doing in ‘The Canto of Ulysses’? Why does Levi place it where he does, in ‘the caesura’, the abyssal gap between Auschwitz and his cultural identity and memory, embodied by Dante? It is certainly ironic that Levi draws once again on the Western canonical literary tradition to record the moment of its ostensible breakdown. What emerges from the lapse, the silence that Levi testifies to, is another tie to his compromised past, and the literary culture that would seem to have been obliterated by the Holocaust – even if Levi does not choose to bring obvious notice to his allusion by using quotation marks or by writing, ‘as Hamlet says’. The poetry of Hamlet appears to be among the ‘other verses’ Levi has confusedly ‘dancing in his head’ while he tries to fill the gaps in his memory.

By quoting Hamlet, Levi would appear to again testify to the power of literature as a mainstay of culture and humanity, evincing his commitment to humanist ideals. This is certainly the positive interpretation of Hamlet in ‘The Canto of Ulysses’. I would make the case, however, that Levi is using Shakespeare for an altogether more challenging purpose. By appropriating the ‘dying voice’ of Hamlet, Levi records the place where his memory and his identity collapse, testifying to the reduction of the camp inmate to silence and oblivion. Bryan Cheyette writes that ‘even when his memory self-consciously fails him’, Levi is always ‘at pains to bear witness to those moments of failure’ (Cheyette 1999, 64). Levi seeks to testify to the silence, to show that ‘something has occurred even if it cannot be understood’ (Druker 2009, 64). This is the role played by Hamlet in ‘The Canto of Ulysses’. Levi does not use the play to testify to the endurance of the human spirit in the camps, but to silence, to a ‘world of negation’ (OC I, 235). Hamlet, perhaps ironically given its near-unrivalled canonical and cultural status, marks the space beyond language and culture, into which Levi is at risk of falling. This, as Levi called it, is the ‘black hole’ of Auschwitz (OC II, 1663).

Through his allusion to Hamlet, Levi rewrites Shakespeare from the perspective of Auschwitz, endowing the play with new meanings as he confronts the lacunae and voids produced by the world of the concentration camp. Levi uses the play to record the disintegration of humane values in Auschwitz, as memory and language are brought to the point of collapse. Jacques Derrida does much the same in his own work on the play. He draws Hamlet into conversation with Holocaust testimony when he compares the play to the poetry of survivor Paul Celan in his 1995 piece ‘The Time is Out of Joint’. Derrida contends that the paradox of testimony is that the witness must uncannily ‘outlive his life’ (3.2.117) – or ‘survive’ that which is not ‘survivable’: the collapse of all meaning and death (Derrida 1995). This is the sense in which Hamlet is a play about the ‘impossible possibility of testimony’, as Derrida calls it. Hamlet has ‘seen the worst’ and is ‘the witness of the worst disorder, of absolute injustice’, writes Derrida. Hamlet has witnessed too much for words – but testimony, ‘though it hath no tongue, will speak’ (2.2.546).

Levi must also confront and testify to the painful death of memory, the destruction of human identity and culture, before the event of physical death itself – or as Jacques Lacan would call it, ‘symbolic’ before ‘actual’ death, the death of the self before physical death. Lawrence Langer uses the phrase ‘deathlife’ to name the same phenomenon, of ‘dying while one is living’ (Langer 2021, 13). Not unlike the melancholic prince, Levi attempts the impossible of testifying to his own demise. He deploys Hamlet to record his fall into a place beyond humanity and beyond culture – even beyond language. It is, to adopt the words of Jean Améry, an act of both resignation and revolt: resignation to silence, and a determined revolt against oblivion, by testifying to it. It is an astonishing moment.

RA

https://www.folger.edu/blogs/collation/the-key-to-removing-a-rod/

There are broadly five types of card catalog rod configurations: - no rod - threaded rod - friction fit rod - lift and pull rod - hidden release rod

https://www.amazon.com/Shakespeare-Insult-Generator-Match-Insults/dp/1452127751

Suggested by Dan Allosso

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzhgaeJmPDU

shakespeare.mit.com

novamov.com has copy of whole film Much Ado About Nothing

Is she mistaken here? Wasn't it Garrick who rewrote/modernized Shakespeare and Cibber, his rival, who deplored him for it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Cade%27s_Rebellion

Poem XII's authorship is unknown. It was later published in a collection of Thomas Deloney's work, but Deloney's collections often contained the work of other poets. Hallett Smith has suggested that this poem out of the whole collection appears to readers as the most Shakespearean.

Macbeth has occult content, but every high school reads it! gothic literature has supernatural elements, too! How can a literary element be praised within one genre and criticized within another?

Shakespeare invented "swagging"

Shakespeare invented "swagging"

Two of Shakespeare's more fanciful plays, The Tempest and A Midsummer Night's Dream explore the limits of the human form through its characters: the grotesque monster-human hybrid Caliban in The Tempest and the comical Bottom from Midsummer, a human with the head of an ass.

Shelley is conscious of Frankenstein's play with generic convention, and the role genre has in its agreement with representation of reality. In his review of the first edition in 1818 for Edinburgh Magaizine, Sir Walter Scott seems cognizant of the shift in consciousness. He notes: "The real events of the world have, in our day, too, been of so wondrous and gigantic a kind--the shiftings of the scenes in our stupendous drama have been so rapid and various, that Shakespeare himself, in his wildest flights, has been completely distanced by the eccentricities of actual existence."

Despite the comparison of these Shakespeare plays to Greek tragic poetry, The Tempest and A Midsummer Night's Dream are romances, not tragedies. Nonetheless, both romance and tragedy are genres to which this novel is deeply indebted.

The first definition of "chronicle" in the Oxford English Dictionary is "A detailed and continuous register of events in order of time; a historical record, esp. one in which the facts are narrated without philosophic treatment, or any attempt at literary style." Though a chronicle is usually without literary style, the sonnet's chronicle is full of beauty, rhyme, and praise. The OED further notes the figurative use of chronicle, which may apply here, too. Shakespeare's Henry IV describes elders as "time's doting chronicles."

      In the play Much Ado About Nothing, the concepts of love and romance are concretized in two different forms, represented by the relationship between Claudio and Hero, and the relationship between Beatrice and Benedick. These two couples express their love in contrasting ways, with Claudio and Hero’s relationship representing the more traditional lust filled romance, and that of Beatrice and Benedick representing a much more unconventional relationship. At first, this unconventional romance seems to lack love but in the end, it endures longer than Claudio and Hero’s does. The issue with the latter relationship is that it seems to be forced by tradition and even though there is much love or. lust at the surface of the relationship, it’s substance proves to be quite shallow. This is why trust quickly becomes a major issue. In Beatrice and Benedick’s lackluster relationship, the key factor is that although there seems to be less love in the romantic sense, there is much more thinking which overpowers the emotional aspect. This is why the shallow issues which usually befall a conventional couple are not a problem for Beatrice and Benedick. In a sense, Shakespeare is using irony to make the statement that conventional love, filled only with emotion is what leads to a faulty relationship. 

"Faint-Hearted"is a term used to describe those who are timid or not very brave. Shakespeare came up with this.

Shakespeare invented the term "break the ice", which means to relieve tension upon meeting new people.

Shakespeare invented the idiom, "Heart of Gold".

means the person is so horrible that heaven recognizes them to belong in hell.

means the person's talking is idiotic and extremely stupid.

""Poetry in Fiction": A Range of Options - Connotations." https://www.connotations.de/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/bauer0232.pdf.

Reference to Shakespeare's Richard III and, perhaps, 18th century literature like Nicholas Rowe's play, The Tragedy of Jane Shore

Is this true? Gardner, as a literary scholar, do you agree?

This is the book.

Sonnet 130: My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun

What you can see below is a page taken from the so called 'First Folio' - a cheap print of Shakespeare's texts.

“Testing, testing, one, two three!” the man in the elaborate suit and tie announced, tapping the microphone. Bianca, still in a daze, looked around in her surroundings, finding that she was in a large space with blinding white stage lights in every direction. She glanced at the man, and was staggered to see her father Baptista, with a joker-like smile towards the audience, walking around the stage like a show host.

“Welcome all who are present, especially those who are eager to take this prize off the stage. I am your host Baptista, and we will be giving our audience the chance for the most optimal and successful contestant to take my daughter and the cash prize of $50,000 home,” Baptista says eagerly. “Whoever does the best job of impressing me, or prove that they have the income to take care of my daughter, will have the chance to become her husband.”

Bianca stared at her father with a horrified expression, and tried to move off the stage. However, even though she desperately wanted to move her body, she realized that she was in a fixed position, having no mobility for any of her limbs. Her hands were stuck to her waist, and her feet seemed to be glued to the stage; she was a mannequin without the plastic. She was even encased in a clear glass box, displayed like fancy jewelry.

Baptista began to pick random men from the audience, motioning them towards Bianca. Bianca stood there with no hope of escape. The expression on her face was a still picture, displaying a bright, blinding smile, but her insides churned at the thought of being wed to any of these men in the audience. Suddenly, a man that could have been considered her grandfather approached her, sliding his hand down the glass container. She could slowly feel the bile crawl up her throat as this man stared at her from head to toe.

“I will take her! I have more than enough money to care for her myself,” Gremio exclaimed gallantly to Baptista.

“She will love me!” Hortensio exclaimed angrily, waving his finger in Gremio’s face.

You cannot buy love! Bianca screamed in her mind, distraught by the men in front of her. Love is not an object for you to give away without my consent!

“Well, in order for you to take my daughter and have her love, you both must show me what you have. Say, Signior Gremio, what can you assure her?” (Shakespeare Act II ll. 365).

In Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew” Petruchio approaches his marriage to Kate as an opportunity to control her. Before they meet for the first time, Petruchio discusses his plans to court her. He states he will “...woo her with some spirit when she comes! Say that she rail, why then I’ll tell her plain She sings as sweetly as a nightingale.” (177-179) Despite her crude and ruthless comments, Petruchio plans to act as though she is flirting with him and speaking in beautiful prose. The structure of these lines show the playful approach Petruchio plans to use to subdue Kate. He speaks in internal rhymes which plays into the witty and lighthearted banter that he and Kate enter into in the next few lines. He believes if he approaches her with “spirit” it will benefit him. He knows Kate is infamous for her sharp tongue and wit. If he does not keep up and over power her intellectually, he has no chance of controlling her. Comparatively, the nightingale is known for its gentle and sweet call. Comparing Kate to a nightingale is a part of a recurring theme in the book. Petruchio constantly refers Kate to animals, whether wild or calm. In this particular quote she is referred to as a sweet and gentle animal. This is because Petruchio is trying to appeal to her better nature and woo her. However, when Kate first appears in the play, she is called a “wildcat” by Gremio. The constant reference of kate to an animal shows that people want to tame her wild personality and make her a domesticated creature.

Allusion to Shakespeare, the footnotes acknowledges what Mr. Darcy says is related to Duke Osino’s opening line. The lines reveals and foreshadows one of Mr. Darcy interest which is music, so this line foreshadow that Elizabeth plays music and Mr. Darcy shows this fact in Part II, Ch. XIII (Doody, Jane Austen’s Names, 292).

This transcript is derived from the automatically generated closed captions on the video. The original file contains many errors. We did some initial editing but now can no longer eliminate these without risk to the annotations, sadly.

Summary and Analysis

Be sure you are able to analysis this poem for the midterm!

Stylistically, Sonnet 29 is typically Shakespearean in its form. The first eight lines, which begin with "When," establish a conditional argument and show the poet's frustration with his craft. The last six lines, expectedly beginning in line 9 with "Yet" — similar to other sonnets' "But" — and resolving the conditional argument, present a splendid image of a morning lark that "sings hymns at heaven's gate." This image epitomizes the poet's delightful memory of his friendship with the youth and compensates for the misfortunes he has lamented.

The uses of "state" unify the sonnet's three different sections: the first eight lines, lines 9 through 12, and the concluding couplet, lines 13 and 14. Additionally, the different meanings of state — as a mood and as a lot in life — contrast the poet's sense of a failed and defeated life to his exhilaration in recalling his friendship with the youth. One state, as represented in lines 2 and 14, is his state of life; the other, in line 10, is his state of mind. Ultimately, although the poet plaintively wails his "outcast state" in line 2, by the end of the sonnet he has completely reversed himself: ". . . I scorn to change my state with kings." Memories of the young man rejuvenate his spirits.

• Aime Cesaire: A Tempest (Une Tempete) | First Year Foundation
• Une Tempête (English Wikipedia)
• Une Tempête (French Wikipedia)

Interesting how the technology improves.

This line is taken from Hamlet. Ophelia speaks it to Gertrude and Claudius while she grieves (and sings) for the death of her father. This line is interesting to think about in that context, especially when you consider the tragic/unfair fate Shakespeare writes for Ophelia and the larger issue of gender in Hamlet. Does this relate to Lil?

Shakespeare uses they for singular in comedy of errors.

I believe that the understatement of the French invasion of England in the folio is a flaw. To understand the direction of the plot, the statement that France is mobilizing against the armies of Goneril and Regan is important for when one reads the battle scenes. Though the folio mentions French spies, neglecting to mention the mobilization of France makes the dissent against Goneril and Regan appear more ambiguous.

In the folio, the Fool more directly answers his own question regarding "whether a madman be a gentleman or a yeoman," and it is significant that the Fool negates and corrects Lear's answer of "A king, a king" with "No." When the Fool corrects Lear's 'wrong' answer, it could bias the reader's understanding of Lear's mental state to think of Lear as mad and wrong.

I find it interesting that in the quarto, Lear says, "I task not you, you elements, with unkindness," while in the folio, Lear says, "I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness." Using "task" implies that the elements are given an obligation to Lear (imposed by Lear), while "tax" implies that the elements most certainly owe Lear (and are obligated by a greater force to comply, such as a legal one, compared to the self-imposed obligation to Lear implied by the word "task").

The fact that the line "That makes ingrateful man" stands on its own line in the folio version of the play makes the line that much more powerful when Lear ends the first part of one of his great speeches in the heath. The image conjured up by "all germens spill at once" is very strong, because the spilling of seed in this place of nothingness reminds us of the sub-theme of infertility in the play. The result of this spilling of seed--"That makes ingrateful man"--seems much more significant when it stands on a line of its own in the folio. The spilling of fertile seed into nothingness can only bring forth ingrateful [sic] offspring or make the parent figure ingrateful [sic] as well. The image is stronger when it stands on its own line to end this section of Lear's rambling speech.

It is significant that Kent asks "What's here" in the quarto edition compared to "Who's there" in the folio. The "who" indicates that Kent is inquiring about the identity and whereabouts of a person, while the "what" indicates that the unknown presence in the scene could be more ambiguous--such as a natural force or something that potentially has an inhuman quality. A human stripped down to its base nature, like Lear or Poor Tom in the scenes containing their madness and nakedness, could also be considered a "what." Therefore, I think it is powerful that, in the quarto, Kent presents this possibility of a stage presence with an ambiguous quality existing in the scene, because it fits in with Shakespeare's thematic use of chaos and perverted human nature in the play.

This section of the gentleman’s answer to Kent’s question regarding the whereabouts of King Lear only exists in the quarto. These eight and a half lines constitute one of the largest differences between the quarto and folio versions of Act III. The gentleman gives us a preview of Lear’s madness in the heath—telling us how the storm strikes Lear and how he attempts to fight back against it—and then relates the scene to dangerous predatory animals that would usually hunt in the night and in the elements. He essentially says that even such fierce creatures are taking cover from the storm, yet Lear still runs in it, rages against it, and thinks the storm will listen and react to his words. The shorter response of the gentleman in the folio neglects to provide us with this in-depth preview of Lear’s actions in the storm.

In the folio, the gentleman answers Kent’s question about Lear’s whereabouts in a simpler manner. He just essentially discusses how Lear fights against the storm and entreats it to behave in a certain way. The four succinct lines set up the following scene (III.2) in which Lear both encourages and rages against the storm. These lines are also in the quarto, but in the folio, the word “element” in the quarto becomes plural as “elements,” and this small, one-letter change to make the word plural causes the storm to seem even bigger, stronger, and harsher. Without the next eight and a half lines that are only included in the quarto, the audience does not get an in-depth preview of Lear’s chaotic raging, and so the next scene, featuring Lear, is slightly more of a shock for the audience.

These first few lines in the gentleman's reply that are not in the folio are especially powerful in incorporating major themes that continue throughout the play. The reference to Lear's "white hair" shows the theme of age in the play that is often connected to Lear's madness, and the "impetuous blasts" foreshadow the apocalyptic language and scenes that personify Lear's madness as the great chaos of the storm. The adjective "Eyeless" to describe "rage" brings in the theme of seeing and not seeing--as well as of deception. The "eyeless rage" also just literally shows that the storm has no human or animalistic features and so obviously cannot respond to Lear's entreating. The use of the word "nothing" continues the theme of nothingness throughout the play, and the storm makes Lear's hair into nothing--just as almost everything in the play is reduced to nothing. Unfortunately, the folio version does not contain these lines and thus does not have these immense connections to the play's major themes.

It is interesting that, in the quarto version, the fool says "Here's a night pities neither wise man nor fool," while, in the folio version, the fool's sentence becomes plural: "Here's a night pities neither wise men, nor fools." When the sentence says "wise man nor fool," it seems that the fool implies that, of Lear and himself, one is a wise man and one is a fool--even though which character is the wise man or fool is not specified. When the sentence says "wise men, nor fools," it seems that the fool implies that, of Lear and himself, one could be wise, one a fool, or both characters could be wise men or fools. The situation seems a bit more vague. The answer to this question of characterization as wise or foolish is never explicitly answered in the quarto and folio versions of the play.

I think the difference between "smite" in the quarto and "Strike" in the folio is significant because "smite" has a much more severe connotation than "Strike." The quarto version of "smite" fits in better with the apocalyptic language used by the characters in the heath and with Lear's mental apocalypse in Act III--where Lear's madness is even personified in the absolute chaos around him. "Smite" also incorporates a biblical connotation that fits in with the hellish chaos of the storm when Lear is on the heath.

Though simply a difference of line placement and a single comma, it is still significant that, in the quarto, a comma comes after "thou." The fact that there is a comma before and after "all-shaking thunder" in the quarto makes it an appositive phrase, and clarifies that Lear is directly addressing the thunder--an entity that has no ability to listen and react to him--thus more strongly showing Lear's mental degradation. The folio version does not use an appositive phrase, so the direct address of the thunder is not as clear.

It is interesting that Lear calls the fool "my good boy" in the quarto, while he simply calls the fool "boy" in the folio. Calling him "my good boy" in the quarto denotes ownership, affection, and familiarity that it is not explicitly expressed in the folio version of this line.

The folio differs in this sentence by Lear stressing the gravity of the storm and that his daughters abandoned him by reminding the audience that his daughters "shut me out" in "such a night as this." The quarto does not go through the extra trouble of once again reminding us how Lear's daughters shut him out.

The Fool's prophecy that ends Act III.2 in the folio version of the play is one of the main, most striking differences between the quarto and folio in Act III. The Routledge Parallel Text Edition of King Lear attributes much of the prophecy to a Chaucerian parody where the land of Albion (England) shall come to great confusion and chaos, and the footnote interpretation of the Fool's words states that, intellectually despairing, he means "that both the world as it is and the world as it ideally should be are equally confusing and meaningless" (p. 204). The Fool's metatheatrical performance here in the folio directly addresses the audience by breaking the fourth wall, and indicates that the Fool is significant beyond the realm of the play. The Fool expresses that he even predates Merlin--an English legendary figure which no other character in the play is aware of. In addition, bringing in this idea of life becoming meaningless and chaotic in the realm of Albion would play to the contemporary audience's fears about the kingdom(s) and the succession during the reign of King James and continue the theme of political chaos brought about by Lear dividing the kingdom--an action that would horrify the paranoid contemporary English audience. I believe that this prophecy is an exceptionally important and powerful speech during the play, and it is unfortunate that it only appears in the quarto.

It is interesting that Lear's line regarding prayer only appears in the folio version. At first I thought that in a pre-Christian play one might not expect Lear to announce that he would go off to pray, but then I remembered that pagans and other pre-Christian peoples still prayed to certain deities or figures, and Lear has previously addressed Nature and other storm forces as if praying. However, he has not retired to go pray before. This line, only appearing in the folio version, could be interpreted in multiple ways: it could simply be a filler line, or it could show that Lear has so strongly internalized the betrayals and harm done to him that he has resorted to prayer as a comfort with which to deal with his hurt emotions or as a cry for help in his degraded state of nothingness.

Here is the biggest change that occurs between the quarto and the folio and this section. In the quarto, Shakespeare has this mock trial of his daughters, which is included in the quarto, but not in the folio. The Norton edition says that the lack of this scene in the folio is an act of censorship, as this scene takes away the seriousness of the play before Gloucester's torture scene. However, the editors of the Norton say that they include it because it became an important part of the popular perception of the play. This section is another excellent indicator of Lear's madness, and provides levity in a play that is not exactly known for its humor.

Rhyme Scheme: line1) a slave line2) b pleasure L3) a crave L4) b leisure L5) c beck L6) d liberty L7) c cheque L8) d injury L9) e strong L10) f time L11) e belong L12) f crime L13) g hell L14) g well

This has to be one of the most intense opening scenes in all of literature. We are immediately thrown into a moment of panic as each guard responds wearily to the other's approach. In general these opening lines set the tone of the play to be one of apprehension.