Paradise Lost meets Lord of the Flies

First person to watch this video and send me TEN QUIZ QUESTIONS for the rest of the class doesn't have to answer those questions.

How the two are linked:
http://gclotf.weebly.com/the-island.html


Summary of Paradise Lost:


INTRODUCTION Paradise Lost is about Adam and Eve—how they came to be created and how they came to lose their place in the Garden of Eden, also called Paradise. It's the same story you find in the first pages of Genesis, expanded by Milton into a very long, detailed, narrative poem. It also includes the story of the origin of Satan. Originally, he was called Lucifer, an angel in heaven who led his followers in a war against God, and was ultimately sent with them to hell. Thirst for revenge led him to cause man's downfall by turning into a serpent and tempting Eve to eat the forbidden fruit.

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SUMMARY The story opens in hell, where Satan and his followers are recovering from defeat in a war they waged against God. They build a palace, called Pandemonium, where they hold council to determine whether or not to return to battle. Instead they decide to explore a new world prophecied to be created, where a safer course of revenge can be planned. Satan undertakes the mission alone. At the gate of hell, he meets his offspring, Sin and Death, who unbar the gates for him. He journeys across chaos till he sees the new universe floating near the larger globe which is heaven. God sees Satan flying towards this world and foretells the fall of man. His Son, who sits at his right hand, offers to sacrifice himself for man's salvation. Meanwhile, Satan enters the new universe. He flies to the sun, where he tricks an angel, Uriel, into showing him the way to man's home. Satan gains entrance into the Garden of Eden, where he finds Adam and Eve and becomes jealous of them. He overhears them speak of God's commandment that they should not eat the forbidden fruit. Uriel warns Gabriel and his angels, who are guarding the gate of Paradise, of Satan's presence. Satan is apprehended by them and banished from Eden. God sends Raphael to warn Adam and Eve about Satan. Raphael recounts to them how jealousy against the Son of God led a once favored angel to wage war against God in heaven, and how the Son, Messiah, cast him and his followers into hell. He relates how the world was created so mankind could one day replace the fallen angels in heaven.
Satan returns to earth, and enters a serpent. Finding Eve alone he induces her to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree. Adam, resigned to join in her fate, eats also. Their innocence is lost and they become aware of their nakedness. In shame and despair, they become hostile to each other. The Son of God descends to earth to judge the sinners, mercifully delaying their sentence of death. Sin and Death, sensing Satan's success, build a highway to earth, their new home. Upon his return to hell, instead of a celebration of victory, Satan and his crew are turned into serpents as punishment. Adam reconciles with Eve. God sends Michael to expel the pair from Paradise, but first to reveal to Adam future events resulting from his sin. Adam is saddened by these visions, but ultimately revived by revelations of the future coming of the Savior of mankind. In sadness, mitigated with hope, Adam and Eve are sent away from the Garden of Paradise.

Fear and its role in controlling people

Must read: Fear during the Cold War.



Should read: Fear throughout history.


Could read: Fear in America today.


Must read (short): Fear in George Orwell's novels


Should watch but I know you won't: The Power of Nightmares

Brief summaries of each act

Act 1 Summary:

Act 2 Summary:

Act 3 Summary:

Act 4 Summary:

Other productions of Othello - in pictures

https://www.rsc.org.uk/othello/past-productions/other-productions

The first female Desdemona, the first black Othello, and other landmark performances

The Publishing and Performance History of Othello

The play was written between 1601 and 1604. The first printed Quarto (Q) was published in 1622 by Nicholas Okes for Thomas Walkley. It was entered in the Stationers’ Register the previous year, 1621. The First Folio (F) was published in 1623. The second Quarto (Q2) was published in 1630. Q and F contain many differences: for example, the Willow Song appears only in F, but profanities were deleted from F.[1] Modern editions choose readings from both Q and F. [2]

The first recorded performance of Othello was in 1604, by the ‘Kings Maiesties plaiers’ in King James’ Banqueting Hall at Whitehall, according to the account book of the then Master of the Revels. There was a performance by the King’s Men in Oxford in 1610, at which Desdemona’s dying face ‘implored the pity of the spectators’; [3] in contrast, at a performance in 1660, the diarist Samuel Pepys records that a woman in the audience ‘called out, to see Desdemona smothered’. [4] In the Restoration period, the female roles were taken by actresses for the first time: Desdemona was played by an actress in 1660 (possibly Margaret Hughes, who appears on a cast list in 1669). A prologue and epilogue were written by Thomas Jordan for the 1660 production, addressing the issue of whether actresses could perform without being thought to be loose women. Jordan’s epilogue assured the audience that the actress was ‘As far from being what you call a whore,/ As Desdemona injured by the Moor’. Jordan invited women especially to approve the actress playing Desdemona: ‘But ladies, what think you? for if you tax/ Her freedom with dishonour to your sex,/She means to act no more, and this shall be/ No other play, but her own tragedy’. [5]

Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the play remained popular, often performed in cut and censored versions, [6] with famous actors of the day taking on the part of Othello, with varying success. Actors tended to emphasise either Othello’s thoughtfulness and introspection, or his explosive passions. [7] The play was turned into the librettos of two nineteenth-century operas, by Rossini and Verdi. Modern performances of Othello have seen the lead acted by Laurence Olivier in 1964 [8] and Anthony Hopkins (for the BBC) in 1981,[9] with famous Iagos including Olivier in 1938 and Richard Burton in 1956. However, as early as the 1960s, some critics found it odd to have a white actor playing Othello in dark makeup, with one complaining of the ‘by-now outrageous impression of a theatrical Negro stereotype’. [10]

The first black actor to play Othello was an American named Ira Aldridge, who performed the role in the late nineteenth century. Aldridge received critical acclaim, but was also the subject of racist attacks in the press: The Times of 11 April 1833 described a performance of Othello ‘by an individual, of Negro origin, as his features sufficiently testify,’ saying that ‘such an exhibition is well enough at Sadler’s Wells, or at Bartholomew Fair, but it certainly is not very creditable to a great national establishment’. Aldridge’s only advantage was that he could play the part ‘in his own native hue, without the need of lampblack’, and the Times writer commented, ‘Well might Desdemona’s father imagine that sorcery, and not nature, had caused his daughter to listen to such a wooer’. However, he had to admit that the performance was ‘extremely well received’. [11]

Another black actor to perform Othello was Paul Robeson, first at the Savoy Theatre, London, in 1930, and later on Broadway in 1943-4. A famous singer, Robeson played the part with dignity and emphasised Othello’s noble qualities. [12] More recently, James Earl Jones played the part on Broadway (1981-2), opposite Christopher Plummer’s Iago; Jones was also a commanding presence, as one critic puts it, ‘doing his Darth Vader voice from Star Wars’, and played Othello with a mixture of vulnerability and ‘military authority’. [13] In 1995 Laurence Fishburne became the first black actor to play Othello in a film version, [14] acting opposite Kenneth Branagh as Iago.

Iago: revenge tragedy's finest?

Here are some features of revenge tragedies. How far does Iago conform to these archetypes?


http://crossref-it.info/textguide/The-White-Devil/32/2269

Wow. The Connell Guide to Othello

http://lib.nobles.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/The-Connell-eGuide-to-Othello.pdf

Other Shakesepearean others

 

https://www.grcc.edu/sites/default/files/docs/shakespeare/course/shakespeare_and_other.pdf

 

http://dare.uva.nl/cgi/arno/show.cgi?fid=352550

 

HAPPY NATIONAL POETRY DAY!

Caleb Femi has just been named the first Young People’s Laureate for London. He grew up in Peckham and  his aim is to help the youth with a “platform to voice their concerns and experiences through poetry.”

 

Read about him:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/03/poet-caleb-femi-named-first-young-peoples-laureate-for-london

 

More videos:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n918E1O9MFk

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu50ymDL9c0

Did Shakespeare sell women short?

Did Shakespeare sell women short?

The RSC is turning to Jacobean drama in search of better roles for women. So does the Shakespearean tradition hold actresses back?

Vanessa Thorpe

Saturday 14 September 2013 13.15 BST

A leading lady seeking the challenge of a truly great stage role – the equivalent of Lear or Hamlet – often has to reach back into the ancient world, perhaps for Medea or Antigone, or to go to Scandinavia for Ibsen's Nora or Hedda Gabler. To remedy this failing in British theatrical tradition, the Royal Shakespeare Company has announced that it is reviving three major female roles from Jacobean drama. The plays, The Roaring Girl by Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker, the anonymous Arden of Faversham from 1592 and The White Devil by John Webster, will be produced partly as a "provocation", according to deputy artistic director Erica Whyman. She does not aim, she said, to solve the issue of gender inequality on the stage, but she is "intent on asking some questions".

Whyman argues that the time is right to look at these rarely performed works because gender power today is in flux, as it was when they were written. But her bold foray into the Jacobean raises a question that sounds almost heretical, especially coming from the RSC in Stratford-upon-Avon: did Shakespeare short-change women?

The lack of classic roles for women in English-language theatre is widely acknowledged, but could it possibly be the Bard's fault? Brigid Larmour, award-winning artistic director of Watford Palace Theatre, suspects the great playwright is guilty as charged.

"The impact of Shakespeare is still inspiring, of course, but it can also be limiting," she said. "There are huge characters, such as Cleopatra or Beatrice, that we reference all the time in the rehearsal room. But the problem is that we have kept the same gender balance in today's theatre because of the success and genius of his plays. It created a blueprint that means playwrights do not notice when they have written something for nine men and one woman."

Larmour, who has worked to create an even proportion of female and male parts in her Ideal World season at Watford, understands Whyman's concern. "At Stratford the other day I heard actresses talking about how few roles for older women there still are. And these are the actresses who have learned their craft and can really deliver."

Shakespeare, despite his confident genius, was unaware of the influence his dramatis personæ would have down the ages. And the question of his original gender bias is further complicated by the fact that in his day all parts were played by men.

One actress who has gone on the record about her disappointment in Shakespeare's legacy for women is Janet Suzman. She complains: "There are no soliloquies of any note, although Cleopatra comes nearest, achieving a Lear-like clarity about her place in the world after the death of Antony. And none of them earns the lengthy scholarly analysis accorded the eponymous heroes of the canon."

Suzman regards Cleopatra, the second-biggest of Shakespeare's female roles, as "the chiefest among his female creations", while Volumnia, Coriolanus's persuasive mother, also gets a vote. Lady Macbeth, Hamlet's mother Gertrude and lost love Ophelia she dismisses for "fizzling out".

Conventionally, among the most coveted female roles in Shakespeare are the cross-dressing duo of Rosalind in As You Like It and Viola in Twelfth Night. Rosalind, with 685 lines, is Shakespeare's biggest female role, while Viola, despite the warm appeal of her character, comes in tenth. The spiky Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing also packs a big dramatic punch with relatively few lines. But throughout the works the power of a role cannot be measured in lines alone. Lady Macbeth, who drives the plot by calling on her murderous husband to "screw his courage to the sticking place", has fewer than half his lines. Similarly, the voice of Othello's Desdemona, the lyric, gentle centre of the play, is dwarfed by her jealous groom's 880 lines.

Heroines such as Portia in The Merchant of Venice and Isabella in Measure for Measure carry both the weight of their legal arguments, as well as the play's moral argument, although men get much more airtime. Other roles, such as the wild Katherina in Taming of the Shrew or the passionate teenage Juliet, might come close to seeming mere objects of dispute, if deft characterisation had not ensured that they burn bright.

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For 400 years even Shakespeare's minor female roles have been desired by great actresses. Titania, the fairy queen of A Midsummer Night's Dream, has only 141 lines to speak but in 2010 was played for the second time to acclaim by Judi Dench, though the part is usually doubled up with that of Hippolyta to give it bulk.

Young girls in Shakespeare are full of innocence, yet they are also repositories of wisdom. Among this line-up, with under 200 lines apiece, appear Hamlet's Ophelia, Lear's Cordelia and The Tempest's untouched Miranda, the only female character in her play.

"I always find it an annoying misinterpretation when these small, key roles are played at a high emotional pitch," said Whyman. "Ophelia is often portrayed as if she is a mess. Why don't directors think she means what she is saying? She has seen everything, more than anyone else, and yet there is nothing she can do. She is profound and political, as Miranda is at the top of The Tempest."

While there are some larger neglected parts, such as Imogen in Cymbeline, many memorable female characters in Shakespeare might be described as truth-speaking old dames. The three witches are a clear example, but the nurse in Romeo and Juliet, Mistress Quickly in Henry IV part I, Paulina in The Winter's Tale and Emilia in Othello are all also strong in this field.

So can it be fair to say there are no Shakespearean roles with real heft for women? Suzman has no doubt: "There is simply no spiritual, intellectual or metaphysical equivalent to Lear, the Richards, the Henrys, nor the twin peaks of Othello and his demonic tempter, Iago – and certainly no woman baddies of that order. No crazed Timons or Tituses, nor anything like the Everest of Hamlet, towering above them all."

Larmour agrees, adding that there are still few of the "arduous, testing parts like Lear or Hamlet" in the wider repertoire. "Charlotte Keatley [author of the award-winning My Mother Said I Never Should] is writing the role of Émilie du Châtelet, the mathematician, for us and that will really put the actor through their paces. Otherwise, we tend to go to Ibsen, or to America, or over to Ireland for Shaw or O'Casey."

In Shakespeare's time, gender politics was a perilous subject, with Elizabeth I's power waning at the end of her reign. Women were forbidden to appear on stage and this may well have dampened Shakespeare's enthusiasm for female roles. Larmour suggests that had this dramatic genius been born later, British theatre would be different now. "If Shakespeare had been writing during the freer Restoration era, we would have far more women's parts."

Whyman at the RSC also believes politics were critical. "The confidence of the Elizabethan age had faded a bit when Shakespeare was in his prime. People were anxious about the succession and about the idea that it might not be a man again," she said. "So although things had fundamentally changed, they swung back. We see that kind of shape-shifting today, where identities and roles are not fixed."

In the past directors have tackled the lack of weighty women's roles in Shakespeare with gender-blind casting. Larmour would like to see more of this. "When it comes to colour-blind casting, there is still a long way to go, but there has been some progress. With gender-blind casting we have not got any further at all. If anything we have gone back." She applauded last winter's all-female production of Julius Caesar at the Donmar Warehouse. "It was great, but that kind of casting was fairly standard in the 1980s."

Given the historical context, Whyman is happy to let Shakespeare off the hook: "While we can say he didn't write as many parts for women of the kind where you travel with them on a long journey, I do think he thought of them as people, just like his other characters. The range of women Shakespeare writes is, I think, second to none."

Whether or not the Bard qualifies as a feminist, for Whyman the astonishing achievement is that all his female characters remain so distinct.