a FINAL Reflection

Pause to THINK and reflect

Here it goes again, another time to stop and reflect Shakespeare in my life. Lets start with the awesome event we just had.

ENGAGING SHAKESPEARE

Ok, I am incredibly satisfied with how the event Engaging Shakespeare went down. To be honest I was a little skeptical when our class jumped one the, "lets do a huge complicated event where we synthesis all of our ideas and projects" bandwagon. I wondered why we couldn't all just do our own thing. However as  things went along I really became a believer and very excited for the event. Then when it happened I was very impressed with what we were able to pull off.

The play was really good. I wish it was showing for a week because I would go again, I was really impressed. The music video was well done and I'm glad it has been imortalized on the internet because I want to watch it a few more times along with the documentatry, which was very professionaly done. The audio book was cool as well. In my humble opinion the art was fantastic, and then the whole event was well planned and executed.

Since I had more of a part in the art I want to share a little bit about how that happened.

Less Matter More Art

Artwork done by Cassandra

I am really happy with how well the two ideas of creating artworks for Shakespeare and creating an art curriculum for Shakespeare worked. The first few days of the project seemed a little rough as we all tried to get on the same page. It seemed like not very much got done at first, but as soon as we all understood each other we became very productive and were able to all create multiple pieces of art and very well done lesson plans. Everyone in the group was very dedicated to doing a good job and that is just what we did.

I really liked how our group, with not very much artistic experience, were able to make so many great works of art. Angela is a Landscape Design major, Eric is doing Spanish, Cassandra made more sense with Art Education, Melanie is Pre-Photography (and turned out to be a closet artist. It was hard to get to see her art works, but we were able to convince her to actually hang some up for the background of our video so that it would be more visually pleasing than just a blank wall) and don't ask me what my major is. It's really cool how we were able to get together and study Shakespeare, then think about what he wrote and then react creatively.

Personal Part


The main reason I got the idea to do art with Shakespeare was because of my paintings and sketches I was making. I was somewhat bummed when I found out we had to make our final project a group project. Then I got the idea for an art gallery. After some work this was able to mesh with Cassandra's art curriculum idea, and I am very glad it did, because I think it really helped us to meet all of the learning outcomes. Making the art was for sure engaging him creatively, and thinking of what to create was thinking critically (deciding what was really being said, what should be highlighted from a scene or act, how specific lines should be portrayed). The lessons we made were able to make us think more critically and also share better.

I had the opportunity to make two of the six lesson plans. One was the overarching Hamlet research plan. I talked a little bit about introducing Hamlet and how students would make works of art as they read the play. The other lesson I got to make was speaking of a specific theme in Hamlet, death. It was made to help students see the theme of death through the play and also to create works of art that go along with the theme of death.

My response to Melanie

I also got to try out Melanie's lesson plan which was a lot of fun. I enjoyed the thoughts on control and the art works I got to make.

Another fun thing was making the name of our group. J.J. told us we needed a title an so I looked all over Shakespeare for references to painting, art, etc. I found Gertrude says, "More matter, Less art." I disagreed with her and switched it around to "Less Matter, More Art." Our group voted and we loved the name. Yay. 

LEARNING OUTCOMES

I really feel that from the mid-term assesment time I really have gained an understanding of the learning outcomes and have done much better at reaching them.

Gain Shakespeare Literacy


I feel that I have become much more Shakespeare literate. This was one thing that I wanted to test with reading King Lear. All of the plays we had read up to that point I had background information at least on. King Lear was brand new to me. I loved it and felt that I really understood it on a level I would not have before this class. My blog posts on King Lear I think show this.

Reading all of the plays that I did also helped me realize a larger breadth of Shakespeares works. I got to read Hamlet, Love's Labours Lost, The Tempest, A Winters Tale, Othello, and King Lear. I also loved being in groups where people read other plays because talking to them taught me more about plays I was not reading myself. Like Gabe with Merchant of Venice, or Justin with Henry IV.

I feel like I got a lot of depth with the play Hamlet especially. We studied him in class and the play was the subject of the lesson plans we made which encouraged us all to study it even more.

Performance I got by the incredible one of Friday as well as watching A Winter's Tale, and The Tempest. Also during this time I went and saw Macbeth done by the Grassroots Shakespeare Company.

Legacy I got by going to class and learning of the history behind the plays and reading blogs of my peers to see Shakespeare in a lot of pop culture.

Analyze Shakespeare Critically

This was one I was struggling with at the midterm. I was doing plenty of creative things with Shakespeare but not as much research. I really tried to get deeper into what the play was saying or background. I think my post on King Lear really demonstrates this. As well as my lesson plan on death and the lesson plan on Hamlet overall. I feel like I got a lot of historical analysis done in class, talking with my group, or listening to the lectures. That was one of my favorite parts of class was  learning background and the renaissance context from Dr. Burton. Analysis of digital mediations happened with my works of art, others works of art,  seeing the Othello movie, and reading blogs outside of my classmates.

Engaging Shakespeare Creatively

Flag of Navarre

This is the one I feel I did best at. Whether I was writing poems about Hamlet, writing poems defending Hamlet, adapting popular music to Winters Tale, painting, drawing, sketching, more drawing, more sketching, creating lesson plans, analyzing art. This learning outcome I enjoyed and excelled at. I really believe that in all of this creativity I really had to analyze Shakespeare creatively as well. In order to make something that connects well with Shakespeare I had to really process and analyze what was being said or how to depict those things. A minor example. In creating drawings for Love's Labour's Lost I wanted to depict the nations of France and Navarre in a simple symbolic way. I thought of flags and so looked up flags for Navarre, I never would have done this or learned anything of this place had I not wanted to do something creative with it,  again, a minor example.

Share Shakespeare Meaningfully

Once again I am glad that the final project was as a group because it really helped us all do this. Earlier in the semester I had share by posting on blogs of classmates, and blogs of other people outside of our class. I talked to my room mate, took people to productions of Shakespeare. I would share with informal blog posts as well as more formal researched blog posts.

Since that time however, I have been able to find more meaningful ways to share Shakespeare. The Engaging Shakespeare Event was very important. I honestly invited tons of people. Unfortunately all my room mates, my ward, and most of my friends were either at temple square, had a date, or were sick. However when I would invite people it gave me a great opportunity to share what I have been learning. The event was great to share with other people who came too, and I did see a few friends in the audience who still came.

Art work by Melanie

Along with this my group was able to share our curriculum by posting it to a website for teachers, connections or cnx.com. We also made a video explaining our project which we posted to youtube. Then with all of this we posted our artworks to our blog, but we also shared them on an online art website, deviantart.com. This was actually really cool because our art had not been up for more than five minutes before we received messages that our works were being posted to other "deviants" favorite pages.

Sharing globally and locally was very meaningful and satisfying to me.

In Conclusion

This class was great and the blogs we get to make were awesome. I plan to continue mine with a Shakespeare thought or drawing every now and again. I really feel like I have met all of the learning outcomes, like I make a better connection to Shakespeare, and like I am competent in the digital world we now live. I am very happy I took this class and I have referred it to many people. Who would have know that what my earlier experience with Shakespeare which began as a closet love, and came out due to a crush, would blossom into the experience that it has today.

Thanks Will.

Shakespeare and I

A Fallacy inspired Soapbox Rant

The other day I was walking around campus and I saw a very misinformed boy with a shirt that said "Shakespeare Hates Your Emo Poems." While, I'm not emo myself nor an advocate for emo kids, this shirt made me feel somewhat irate (Maybe because I posted an emo poem earlier). I like to write poetry, and I believe the occasional emo poem is healthy.

Now, in honor of the fact that I just finished reading Hamlet again (a very emo character (WHO DIES!! Maybe he does hate emo things, no, just kidding) This post is dedicated to emo poetry and I'm sure my room mate is going to judge me.

First will be one of Hamlet's Soliloquies "To be or not to be", which is all about the contemplation of suicide, how much more emo can you get.

Then will be a poem of my own, once again inspired by Hamlet, about how his despair consumed him completely until everything around him, including himself, was destroyed by it. Very sad.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

Cypress Tree

There is a cypress tree

that grows inside of me

Parasitically eating

my hearts final beating

the living of my being

As all of my fears

made manifest in tears

all my soul's pain

is it's life giving rain

The agonized bleating

of my hearts bleeding beating

is it's sun softly beaming

on its leaves slowly feeding

My decomposing soul

it's dark soft rich soul

and I scream bloody murder 

as it's roots push on deeper

This tree that needs felling

to me it is telling

Like a dark Van Gogh painting

of yet another failing

and what there is waiting

when my heart stops it's beating

As I breath my last breath 

and give in now to death

this dark tree

takes the last of me

as I cease to be

nothing more that the

symbol you see

in a dark cypress tree.

Shakespeare loves my Emo poems (but I promise I'm a happy person)

Simon, Garfunkel, and Shakespeare

This morning I was musing on the play A Winters Tale, and in my head started to play the song "I am a Rock" by Simon and Garfunkel. At first I thought the sadness of the song would connect it to Leontes. After thinking I realized that it connects much better to his wife, Hermione. With no disrespect to S and G and their great music, Here is "I am a Rock", Winters Tale style.

(Words in red are changed by me)

A winter's day
In a deep and dark December;
I am alone,
Gazing from my window to the streets below
On a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

I'm behind walls,
A fortress deep and mighty,
That none may penetrate.
I have no need of friendship; friendship causes pain. 

Because of laughter and loving I'm disdained.
I am a rock,
I am an island. 

Hermione: I am a Rock

I have my books
And my poetry to protect me;
I am shielded in my armor, 

Locked within my room, a child's left my womb.

Leontes can't you see
I've touched no one and no one has touched me.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

And a rock feels no pain;
And an island never cries.

For "I am not prone to weeping, as our sex commonly are."

Hamlet, The Original Emo

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. This is my favorite of Shakespeare plays. My favorite thing about the play is it's namesake, Hamlet himself. Oh dramatic, depressed, distraught, doubting Hamlet. Such a complex character. One moment willing to slay his friends lest they hinder him from speaking with the ghost of his dead father, the next too cowardly to confront his murdurous uncle about his crime.

Hamlet is one of those people who doesn't even know themself. He seems almost a dual personality, the deep and depressed thinker, and the coach, "speeching" himself into frenzies of emotion. I love his character, he is the original emo. I'm not emo myself, but I love that Hamlet is. Dressed in black, somber faced, depressed, poetically dark. In thinking of Hamelt and his person I was inspired to....write a poem.

My Dear Dark Things

My dear dark things
Who love to rip
At my heartstrings
And make me shout
Blood-curling screams
As you torment
Me in my dreams,

Please, won't you just
Stop hurting me.
Quell your dark lust,
And hear my plea.

I wear your sable on my skin
I cannot feel dark as sin
Someday I want this ache to end
Without pain as my only friend
And so this message I must send

My Darkest Things
I keep within
I cannot keep you
Close as kin
One day this battle
I will win
And cast you out
As light doth sin

But 'til that day
I will succumb
I feel my mind
Is going numb

As I give in
To blackest dreams
And ponder on
My Dear Dark Things

-Mason Bennett