I’m a place you can carry the items you’ve got;
Heed my microwave warning: my filling gets Hot;
I’m a zone of resistance; a quarterback’s spot;
And a hole in the pool table – take your best shot.
Who am I?
UPDATE: Riddle solved by Asher. See comments for answer.
I was telling someone of my list of favorite scenes this evening, and it made me think of a reading that I was planning to have several years ago. Instead of choosing one play, I would edit together a collection of the most popular scenes for us to read. Due to scheduling problems, we weren’t able to have the reading, but I did send out an invitation. The invitation was written largely in iambic dimeter (!), and I thought the readers of this site might appreciate it.
Enjoy!
A witches’ brew. A fiery shrew. A knavish sprite. A portly knight. A maid’s disguise. A Jew’s surprise. A bastard’s plan. Each age of man. A paper crown. A motley clown. A nightmare haunt. This John of Gaunt. A guarded door. A jealous Moor. A castaway. St. Crispin’s Day.
A eulogy. A balcony.
The death of kings.
And other things…
It’s the very best of all the scenes, speeches, and sonnets from Shakespeare, hand-picked and edited by yours truly. Be there … or not to be there.
Shakespeare wrote two tetralogies of history plays. The First Tetralogy consists of the three Henry VI plays and Richard III. The Second Tetralogy is set before these (like the second Star Wars trilogy is set before the first one) and consists of Richard II, Henry IV Part One, Henry IV Part Two, and Henry V. Today’s Conundrum questions are about these tetralogies.
1. Name a character who appears in three plays in one of the tetralogies, and another Shakespeare play outside of the tetralogies.
2. Name a character who appears in all four plays in a single tetralogy.
3. Name a character who appears in both tetralogies.
4. Name a character who appears in Richard II and Henry V, but neither Henry IV play.
UPDATE: All four questions answered correctly by Micah. See comments for answers.
WARNING: There are spoilers for this season of 24 below. If you haven’t watched it yet, and you intend to, stop reading now.
After watching the Season Finale of 24, tonight’s Question of the Week was going to be this:
What part of “Season Finale” don’t you understand, 24?
But I have a bigger question that was inspired by some of the events in the last few episodes. If you haven’t seen them, here are the main points relevant to my question:
Olivia has a serious grudge against Jonas. She contacts her friend Martin and asks if he knows someone who can kill Jonas for her. Martin gives her number to an anonymous Hitman. Hitman calls Olivia and gives her a bank account number and a price. He tells her that, after she transfers the money into the bank account, he will kill Jonas. She agrees, but after she gets off the phone, she gets cold feet and decides not to transfer the money. She has no way to contact Hitman directly. Hitman realizes he will soon lose his window of opportunity to kill Jonas, and contacts Martin, who vouches for Olivia being good for the money. Hitman kills Jonas. Olivia contacts Martin, who tells her that she should transfer the money because Hitman isn’t the kind of guy you want to mess with. Out of fear, Olivia transfers the money.
The Question of the Week is this:
Is Olivia guilty of murder? If so, what category?
You can also feel free to post your thoughts on this season of 24, or the Season Finale.
WARNING: Comments may contain additional spoilers.
In the performing arts, there is often a distinction made between creative artists and interpretive artists. In the theatre, the creative artist is the playwright who created the original work. Interpretive artists include actors, directors, designers etc. who take these creative works and interpret them for the stage. The word “creative” here is used in its narrowest sense; clearly a great deal of creativity is needed to be an interpretive artist.
How wonderful, then, to encounter a company like Propeller, that under the direction of Edward Hall is able to stage vibrant, original works that not only remain faithful to the original texts, but illuminate them. Their brilliance is not only that they go beyond the play, but also that they bring the play along with them. They are interpretive artists and creative artists at the same time. I had the opportunity to see their productions of The Taming of the Shrew and Twelfth Night at the Brooklyn Academy of Music two years ago, so when I heard that they were returning to BAM with their production of The Merchant of Venice I knew not to miss it. I went in with high expectations, and they were well exceeded.
The entire production is set inside a prison. Two levels of prison cells loom large as they stretch around the perimeter of the stage. The all-male cast is in drab uniforms and prison tats. The Christians and Jews congregate in different cliques in the yard. And when Antonio crosses that line to borrow money from Shylock because of his love for Bassanio, the concept is so strong that you might as well be watching an episode of HBO’s Oz. But these elements are in the play already; the concept brings them to the fore.
The prison connection is a bit more abstract in the Belmont scenes where Bassanio and his rivals must choose their caskets, though these scenes are the comic highlight of the production. Portia is a prisoner in a different sense, in that she is not free to marry who she chooses, and so the setting for these scenes works more on the symbolic level. But Shakespeare’s play does contain a sharp contrast between the realistic world of commerce in Venice and the fairy tale world of Belmont, a contrast that the production concept, once again, illuminates. Once Bassanio chooses the correct casket, Portia removes her artificial feminized clothing, and joins the rest of the prisoners in the yard.
Men play female roles in female clothing, but with no wigs. This was also true of the earlier two productions I saw, but in this case there was an extra layer to the choice, as it left the impression that all of the characters were biologically male while some had female gender identities. Not a word of the original Shakespeare is changed to accommodate the sex of the characters nor the prison setting, so the audience is left to absorb these elements conceptually while listening to the dialogue. When Portia and Nerissa arrive dressed as young men, the conceit of a man playing a woman playing a man requires a bit of extra audience attentiveness, but it works well.
The cruelty of the prison setting allowed the production to explore what the play has to say about the cruelty of society and man’s inhumanity to man, and it did so by playing with our sympathies. When Antonio asks for money from Shylock in this production, he is an uncouth thug trying to bully the prison loanshark. But as sympathetic of a character as the original Antonio is, that’s an undercurrent of the original play. When Shylock delivers his most humanizing speech in this production, he does so while committing a violent prison atrocity. But if you read the whole scene, that’s faithful to the original play as well. In the end, Antonio wins his case in this production, not just because the judge is really Portia in disguise, but also because he is able to rile up an angry mob against the Jew.
And, in a very real sense, that’s part of the original play, too.
From Sonnet CV:
Let not my love be call’d idolatry,
Nor my beloved as an idol show,
Since all alike my songs and praises be
To one, of one, still such, and ever so.
Shift around the letters, and it becomes:
If Danny and Allison got less poll votes, Adam Lambert or Kris Allen will also be doomed by a nil vote. So, cynics, you deserve the chosen one.
It’s time once again to check in on what searches people have done to find themselves at Shakespeare Teacher, and to respond in the name of fun and public service. All of the following searches brought people to this site in the past week.
There are two John Talbots in Shakespeare, both in Henry VI, Part One. Shakespeare distinguishes them by calling them Lord Talbot (the father) and John Talbot (his son). The son, I believe, only appears in two scenes, found here and here, and doesn’t really have what you’d call a monologue. In both scenes, Lord Talbot wants his son to flee the battle, but the young John Talbot prefers death to dishonor. The father has a larger part in the play, including a number of long speeches throughout the play, but I’m not sure which monologue you’re looking for. Perhaps you could look for a monologue here or here.
Well, that’s entirely subjective, but I will nominate Charles II of Spain who is a classic example of what happens when cousins marry.
For Shakespeare at his most fairy-tale-esque, check out the four Romance plays he wrote towards the end of his career: Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest. If it’s actual fairies you’re looking for (and even a talking animal), then I’d recommend A Midsummer Night’s Dream. But one play that you might not expect to be influenced by fairy tales is none other than our own King Lear. Check out Love Like Salt to see the retelling of the source fairy tale across a variety of cultures.
It’s YouTube, and if you go there and search, the most relevant find seems to be this claymation version of the play, created by a fifth-grade class. I’ve directed Midsummer with fifth-graders, and even taped it, but the quality of the tape is too poor for posting. I am working on a number of video projects with 8th graders right now, and I hope to be able to share them with you by the end of next month.
This is the scene before the famous balcony scene, and it can be found here. Romeo appears on stage, having just left the party where he has met Juliet, and decides to hide from Benvolio and Mercutio so he can go back and find her. As Romeo’s friends search for him, they mock his preoccupation with love. Finally, they give up and leave. The next scene begins with Romeo’s response: “He jests at scars that never felt a wound.” This would seem to indicate that the action is continuous, and that a scene break is unwarranted. But tradition breaks the scene here, and really, who wants to be the first one to mess with the numbering of the balcony scene?
Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon used Rapidshare until Henry’s break with the Catholic church in the early 1530’s. The Act of Unlimited Bandwidth was introduced into Parliment in 1532, and made Live Mesh the only permissible file hosting service in England. This enraged the Pope, who sent Henry a papal bull of excommunication as a PDF file via YouSendIt. It was his sixth wife, Catherine Parr, who convinced Henry to use Megaupload, which he did until his death in 1547.
I leave the task of responding to the remaining search terms to my readers:
who becomes claudia’s plot against hamlet?
the tempest crossword shakespeare
vitruvian man, thomas jefferson
riddle “marvin the martian” dice
macbeth:in shakespeare time
character analysis of anne boleyn in shakespeare’s henry the eighth
I’m diminutive cakes you bake six to a pan;
I’m worn high on a woman; and low on a man;
I’m a half-pint of milk, an eight-ounce soda can;
And America’s race for a catamaran.
Who am I?
UPDATE: Riddle solved by Asher. See comments for answer.
Remember that Karl Fisch video “Did You Know?” that I posted in March 2007? Well, DeLisa just sent me the 3.0 version, and I think it’s worth a repost, not only because of the snazzy new visual design, but also to note the updates over the past two years.
School should be about questions, not about answers. School should be about learning how to think, instead of learning what to think. Students should be working collaboratively on projects. They should be experiencing history, and making it. They should be using technology to break boundaries. And we as teachers should realize how much we have to learn from them.
What does it all mean? It means that to be good teachers, we have to teach students how to be good learners. How well are we doing that?
Oh, did I mention that I’m giving a presentation at the Folger in June?
Readers in the Washington DC area should definitely check this conference out, considering the quality and variety of the two-day program. My co-presenters are an amazing collection of top-notch Shakespeare educators, and I feel incredibly honored to be listed among them.
I will be presenting my research into how technology can help facilitate the collaborative project-based learning that helps younger students make a meaningful stretch into Shakespeare. This study was recently accepted for publication as well, so it’s good news all around.
News and updates, of course, will be posted here.