Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Sketching Shakespeare: Love's Labour's Lost

In order to help us better understand Shakespeare my teacher, Dr. Burton, made the suggestion of writing a one sentence summary of each scene as we read them. In another conversation with my professor he told me of a man who made a picture for every page of the book Moby Dick. I thought that this sounded really cool and so decided to combine both of these ideas together.

To draw a sketch for every scene of Shakespeare!

I went home and counted up how many scenes Will wrote and the grand total is...732 scenes and 2 epilouges. To be perfectly honest I don't know if I will complete the whole works of Shakespeare in sketch form but I'm going to do my best.

May I present to you, a play recently finished.
  Love's Labour's Lost

Act 1 Scene 1
So study evermore is overshot
While it doth study to have what it would
It doth forget to do the thing it should
And when it hath the thing it hunteth most
'Tis won as towns with fire, so won, so lost.

Act 1 Scene 2
I will herein confess I am in love; and as it is
base for a soldier to love, so am I in love  with a
base wench. If dreaming my sword against the humor
of affection would deliver me from the reprobate
thought of it, I would take Desire prisoner, and
ransom him to any French courtier for a new-devised
courtesy. I think scorn to sigh: methinks i should
outswear Cupid. Comfort me, boy: What great men
have been in love?

Act 2 Scene 1
'Fair' I give you back again; and 'welcome' I have
not yet. The roof of this court is too high to be
yours: and welcome to the wide fields too
base to be mine.

Act 3 Scene 1
A message well sympathized: a horse to be
ambassador for an ass.

Act 4 Scene 1
A mark marvelous well shot, for they both
did hit it.

Act 4 Scene 2
...As it were...

Act 4 Scene 3
In that each of you have forsworn his book,
Can you still dream and pore and thereon look?
For when would you, my lord, or you, or you,
Have found the ground of study's excellence
Without the beauty of a woman's face?

Act 5 Scene 1
Satis quod Sufficit






Act 5 Scene 2
We are wise girls to mock our
lovers so.

4 comments:

  1. Man, I love this idea. I think you should do this for every play we read in class. I admit, I am thinking slightly selfishly, because I look at these and find myself thinking a little deeper in the points that you focus on. Shakespeare's works are meant to be seen, and while these sketches aren't plays, they are still a good medium ground. Also, this play is a comedy, and I noticed your sketches are fairly comical, and true to the genre. I feel like I'm saying a bunch of nothing here (kind of ironic), but I love how you chose to interpret the play into one sketch per scene.

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  2. I agree with Gabe. This is good. I'd like to see more plays done this way, its an interesting interpretation and it provides a good insight into how other people interpret the scenes. How many plays have you completed?

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  3. Just the one right now. I have a painting I did for The Tempest opening scene, and a couple other doodles. No finished plays yet

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