the id, the ego, & the single misfiring brain cell

Hello. My name is Diana and I...love Shakespeare. 

I began innocently enough, as a social Shakespearean, at parties. But it...felt so good. I tremble to admit it now, but...I do it all alone in the basement sometimes, just to get my fix. I can't stop. 

Before I went into this block of instruction for Shakespeare, I stopped class about 5 minutes early and told them how to read Shakespeare: read past the end of the iambic pentameter line, as though it were a full sentence. Be advised that he loved to play with language, to make nouns into verbs--many of whose tweaks are still with us. Read it aloud, if only to yourself, even if it makes your roommate think you're retarded. 

Student: My roommate already thinks I'm retarded. 

Me: So you're already ahead of the game. 

Then I asked them what Shakespeare they'd read, at which point I'd quote a favorite passage from the play. Sometimes I dork it up for fun, like for Romeo and Juliet. "Oh Romeo, Romeo! Where the f-word art thou, Romeo?"*

* Shamelessly plaigerized from Dave Barry. I forget where. 

I didn't have trouble having my students read assigned material and come to class with interesting, thought-provoking observations and questions until the Shakeman reared his head. After the first day, wherein they satdst all about with eyes as blank and pitiless as the sun, I told them to expect a surprise pop quiz the next class day, and exactly what it would be on. To wit: I will provide quotes, and you will tell me who said it. IN OTHER WORDS, SparkNotes will help you understand the plot but because the awesomeness of Shakey is how he uses language, you must read the text. 

How many took me seriously? Well, several, I suppose, but I had no perfect scores and only one 90. Class average: 40%. Clearly, some tested me...and lost. 

Oh, somewhere in that favored land the sun was shining bright; the band was playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts were light. And somewhere men were laughing, and somewhere children shouted, but there was no joy in Mudville....

Not that day. Their tender spirits were crushed. I could see it in their eyes and feel it in their bones. Or something like that. 

So I told them they now knew what my quiz was like, and they could expect another surprise pop quiz at our next class meeting. Somewhere through there, I told them to read SparkNotes and No Fear Shakespeare for help. I mean, the tools are there. You just have to be fucked to use them. You must care enough to research those things you don't understand, and I don't have to teach you how to use Google, right? To my mind, there's far less reason now to come to class unprepared in literature. You read it and don't understand what you read? Research it! From the privacy of your cola-spattered keyboard! 

The next day I didn't come in with a quiz. We spent the period reading and acting out bits of the play, then pausing to put into our own words what they were saying. 

For example, from Act 1 Scene 1:

Nay, but this dotage of our general’s

O’erflows the measure. Those his goodly eyes,

That o’er the files and musters of the war

Have glowed like plated Mars, now bend, now turn

The office and devotion of their view

Upon a tawny front. His captain’s heart,

Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst

The buckles on his breast, reneges all temper

And is become the bellows and the fan

To cool a gypsy’s lust.

Student: Doting on? 

Me: Good! Yes! Dotage also means "old age." Now..."This dotage of our general's / O'erflows the measure." It's too much, right? "Those his goodly eyes / That o'er the files and musters of the war / Have glowed like plated Mars...." Who is Mars?

Another student: God of war. 

Me: Yes! And "plated Mars"? What is Philo saying about Antony here, exactly?

Another student: That he is the god of war. 

Me: YES! Excellent! But they "now bend, now turn / The office and devotion of their view / upon a tawny front." What does he mean "tawny"?

Class: ...

Me: Dark. Philo's a racist. Check it! Also, note that cute little play on words, what with Antony being a war god and looking at a new "front." 

Etc. 

So Tuesday, the dawn of a new era in which I'm teaching 8 classes instead of 4 (3 of which are doubled with my classes--FUN!)*, I had my students volunteer to act out Scene 14 of Act 4 of Tony and Cleo. This is the scene where Antony has been told that Cleopatra killed herself** because she knew Antony was angry with her--seriously, folks, this play is an original soap opera, considering how it's seething with petty melodrama--and he asks his slave Eros to kill him. 

* And again, I extend my thanks to the three civilian professors whose classes I've taken over. They left me wonderful students and classes--at least for the first two or three days--that were self-regulating, making my transition easier.

** Cleo: I'm not dead yet. I'm not dead. T's only a flesh wound....

Shakespeare had so much fun with this stuff. Seriously. I mean, when Antony is off stage in this play, we're told what an amazing general he is, suffering as his lowest soldiers suffer, drinking horse piss and eating the bark off trees to survive without complaint. But every time he's on stage, he's pathetic. This play gives you cognitive dissonance. 

Anyway...in this scene, Antony turns his back and waits for Eros to run him through. Eros, however, kills himself rather than kill his admired master. In other words, the slave is braver than the great general who, when he tries to kill himself, botches it. This scene is as often acted as a comedy as a tragedy. (Picture Antony on his knees with his back to his slave, waiting for the fatal blow that never comes. The audience generally laughs when he finally peeks around to see what's taking Eros so long.) 

Anyhow...I had volunteers come up and act out this scene, this time using Shakespeare's words.* I encouraged histrionics, since Antony and Cleopatra are both pathetically petty and emotional. I can't remember the last time I laughed that hard. They did such an amazing job. They picked up random items from my desk as props to work with as they went. The young man playing the eunich, Mardian, did it in falsetto and with passion, much to the pleasure of his peers and instructor. I had also appointed a "translator," for whom I would occasionally pause the action so he could put in colloquial terms what had just gone down, also to the merriment of all.**

* The first time I did this, I divided them into groups and had them act out a scene using their own words. 

** Cadets generally come to us as competitive creatures, but this trait is encouraged in them. In my class, this sometimes amounts to them trying to out-flamboyant each other. 

I'm on my last day of Antony and Cleopatra tomorrow, and tomorrow I must merge my class with my friend Andrea's (Dr. Van Nort, who is a Shakespeare scholar, but whose students just finished the S-man and are into something else). Thus, I've built a quiz for my kiddos. Again...they know what's coming. This is a tragedy (characterized by carnage) and there will be a body count on the quiz; I give you the names and you tell me if they're alive or dead. I put this picture at the top of the quiz: 

It has nothing to do with anything, but I cannot resist that picture. :)

This time, they not only have to identify "who spake thus," but they must explain it in the vernacular. And if they get their acts together on this quiz, I'll toss out the last one. 

We'll see how it goes. :) 

Y'all be excellent to one another.

d