English Literature: Week 12

This you will need to get from the library or from a bookstore. Be prepared for this, and read it carefully enough to keep track of what is going on. The plot is quite complex. You may wish, with your parents' assent, to watch the Laurence Olivier film version of the play from the 1950s. I cannot recommend the more recent version with Ian McKellan, though he is in many respects an extraordinary actor. It is not suitable for family viewing, and McKellan has taken such grotesque liberties with the play that it no longer has much resemblance to Shakespeare's play.

For this week's discussion, I would like to concentrate on these points:

Character: how does Shakespeare create characters? What does he tell you, and what does he not tell you? Compare his building of character with Chaucer's, for example.
Diction: how does Shakespeare use diction to reveal character?
Tools of the working dramatist: here we have dramatic irony, comic relief, suspense, and so on. How does Shakespeare use his "bag of tricks" in the plays you have read so far?

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