When in Doubt, It’s from Shakespeare…

1. When in Doubt, It’s from Shakespeare… Summer Watts Third period 9/28/11 Chapter 6

2. Taken from the Original • Between the eighteenth and twenty-first centuries, you will find Shakespeare in every literary work. Each author changes him to fit their story line. • The new work won’t surprise any one familiar with the original because you already know the whole story. The new copy isn’t very different from the original. • An example is “Jane Smiley rethinks King Lear in her novel A Thousand Acres”(Shakespeare 39). • Jane is taking an original and changing it up to make a novel that she feels can fit into the kind of story she wants to tell.

3. Fugard is best known for his play “Master Harold”. Fugard “…turns to the history plays, to Henrey IV, Part II, to the story of a young man who must grow up. In Shakespeare, Prince Hal must put his hard-partying ways behind, stop his carousing with Ealstaff, and become Henry, the king who in Henry V is capable of leading an army and inspiring the kind of passion that will allow the English to be victorious at Agincourt”(When in Doubt, It’s from Shakespeare… 45). Hally must become Master Harold and grow up. Harold’s mantle is made of adult responsibility, racism, and heartless disregard. “’Master Harold’ makes us reexamine the assumptions of right-and rights- that we take for granted in watching the Shakespearean original, notions of privilege and noblesse oblige, assumptions about power and inheritance, ideas of accepted behavior and even of adulthood itself”(When in Doubt, It’s from Shakespeare… 45). The grown up Henry V, still must have his old friend Falstaff hanged. The values endorsed by Shakespeare lead directly to the horrors of apartheid. Athol Fugard

4. Bard is Always With Us “All right so the Bard is always with us. What does it mean? He means something to us as readers in part because he means so much to our writers. So let’s consider why writers turn to our man. It makes them sound smarter? Smarter than what? Than quoting Rocky and Bullwinkle, for instance.” this quote is useful because it shows the importance of Shakespeare. Other writers depend on his work. They use his work to help create their own stories. Bard is a lyrical poet who usually recites epics or similar grand works. William Shakespeare is often referred to as "The Bard" as a sign of respect for his immense literary accomplishments.

5. Just Not as Good As Shakespeare “There are lots of sources that don’t sound as good as Shakespeare. Almost all of them , in fact”(How to Read Literature Like a Professor 42). Shakespeare is used by so many different authors. He is a great resources for writers to rely on. “When pioneer families went west in their prairie schooners, space was at a premium, so they generally carried only two books: the bible and Shakespeare”(How to Read Literature Like a Professor 42). Shakespeare is not only loved by authors, but by the readers as well.

6. Back to The Beginning “My father was a great fan of that play and loved to recount the desperation of that scene, so I began hearing it in the early grades”(How to Read Literature Like a Professor 42). The Author’s father loved to talk about the stories and plays he got to enjoy. “We love the plays, the great characters, the fabulous speeches, the witty repartee even in times of duress”(How to Read Literature Like a Professor 42).

7. The Struggle “Shakespeare also provides a figure whom writers can struggle, a source of texts can bounce ideas. Writers find themselves engaged in a relationship with older writers; of course, that relationship plays itself out through the texts, the new one emerging in the part through earlier texts that exert influence on the writer in one way or another”(How to Read Literature Like a Professor 43). This makes it possible for a potential struggle, which is called interextuality. Many writers find themselves influenced by Shakespeare. “‘ The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock’, had his neurotic, timorous main character say he was never cut out to be Prince Hamlet, that the most he could be is an extra, someone who could come on to fill out the numbers onstage or possibly be sacrificed to plot exigency. By invoking not a generic figure- ‘I am just not cut out to be a tragic hero,’ for instance- but the most famous tragic hero, hamlet, Eliot provides an instantly recognizable situation for his protagonist and adds an element of characterization that said more about his self-image than would a whole page of description”(How to Read Literature Like a Professor 43).

8. Great Expectations “As we saw in the previous chapter, a woman seems to drown like Ophelia, only to turn up in a hugely surprising way late in the book like a Hero in Much Ado About Nothing. The novel is full of astonishing disappearances and reappearances…”(When in Doubt, It’s from Shakespeare… 39). After reading this quote the first character that I thought of from Great Expectations is Magwich. At the beginning of the story he is a convict and gets arrested. We think his part in the novel is over, and he will never be heard from again. Towards the middle of the story he pops back up and makes Pip a gentlemen (making himself a hero). No one saw this coming, it was a very important part of the novel. So just like in this novel which was referenced to Shakespeare this character drowns and you think she is gone forever until the surprisingly returns. She is described as a hero. “ Yes, Pip, dear boy, I’ve made a gentlemen on you! It’s me wot has done it!”(Dickens 340).

9. All the world’s a stage, / And all the men and women merely players What a rogue and pleasant slave am I Good night, sweet prince, / And flights of angles sing thee to thy rest! Get thee to a nunnery Who steals my purse steals trash The better part of valor is discretion We few, we happy few, we band of brothers By the pricking of my thumbs, / Something wicked this way comes The quality of mercy is not strained, / it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven O brave new world, / That has such people in’t! Oh, lest I forget To be, or not to be, that is the question These are important to this chapter because they are examples of being taken from an original copy. Most people don’t know where these quotes come from, and aren’t familiar with the literature, but you wouldn't have to of read the literature to know these quotes. Shakespeare is in My Life A lot of stories that Shakespeare writes can relate to your everyday life. One of the best examples is Romeo and Juliet. Have you every been in a relationship knowing that your family wouldn’t approve? Well that’s the story of Romeo and Juliet.

10. Works Cited Dickens, Charles Great Expectations. New York: Bantam Dell, 1986. Print. Foster, Thomas C. How to Read Literature Like a Professor. New York: Harper-Collins Publishers, Inc., 2003. Print.