Background
Students will receive a brief refresher course on the background of William Shakespeare and Elizabethan theater by watching a film lecture by Professor Eliot Engel (5). While viewing the film, students will complete a film quiz (Assignment 1), which we will discuss at the conclusion of the film lecture. This will give them a good foundation to understand the workings of the Elizabethan theater, Shakespeare's group of actors, and his theater, The Globe. They will review information about Queen Elizabeth, the English Renaissance, and the Queen's love and support of the theater. Students will be able to visualize the way the play would have been presented in Shakespeare's time on the small jutting stage of The Globe and appreciate the need for audience members to possess a great imagination to see and enjoy a performance in an outdoor theater in the middle of the afternoon in Renaissance England that includes night scenes and indoor and outdoor scenes, without the benefit of elaborate sets and costumes (3). To truly appreciate these theatrical masterpieces the audience's attention had to be focused on the characters and their dialogue.
Shakespeare was not always appreciated as the great dramatist we know and love today by all members of his society. A rival of his, Robert Greene, was an actor who was compared to Shakespeare's character of Falstaff and a "pamphleteer" who warned his supporters and readers against Shakespeare as a "puppet" when he wrote and circulated the following in one of his pamphlets:
"There is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you, and being an absolute Johannes-factotum ["jack-of-all-trades, master of none"] is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country."(2)
An understanding of the background of Elizabethan English society and theater-going behavior is crucial for students so that they recognize the importance of theater productions to the lives of even the poorest Renaissance Englishmen. Stage productions intimately related to the daily lives of the audience. The most ignorant member of the audience was able to understand what the action on the stage meant and could identify with and enjoy what modern audiences consider to be Shakespeare's most difficult works, like King Lear. Shakespeare's most tragic material, like Lear, contains comic moments not immediately grasped by today's audiences, but clearly understood by the poorest Englishmen, like the groundlings, as well as the more well-to-do members of the audience. Shakespeare could not write works to be enjoyed only by the Queen, her Court, and other members of the aristocracy, since, to make money to support himself, his theatrical troupe, and his theater, he had to attract lower members of society who would pay to see his work performed. (8)
Literary and dramatic devices will be discussed and identified throughout the play; for example (3):
Blank Verse
Shakespeare used iambic pentameter verse paragraphs, which give the illusion of speech; this sometimes includes shared lines within the dialogue.
Feminine endings
Some lines include an extra unstressed syllable at the end of a line that may suggest indecisiveness or uncertainty.
Stychomythia
The Elizabethans borrowed this technique from the Roman dramatist Seneca; it is the exchange of single or paired lines in which the words of one speaker are picked up and tossed back by another, giving the effect of a duel with words.
Imagery
There is a pattern of storm images and sight images, which are significant in Lear.
Puns/Metaphors/Similes
Puns, metaphors and similes involve bringing remote areas of relationships, whether paternal or siblings, into focus and give them meaning.
Conflict
External conflict refers to a struggle between a character and an outside force such as nature or another character. Internal conflict is a mental conflict occurring within the character.
Malapropism
A humorous confusion of words that sound vaguely similar; from Mrs. Malaprop, a character in Sheridan' drama, "The Rivals", who makes amusing blunders in her use of words.
Dramatic Irony
A plot device in which the audience's knowledge of events or characters surpasses that of the characters onstage. The words and actions of the characters take on a different meaning for the audience or reader than they have for the play's characters. This may occur when a character reacts in an inappropriate or foolish way or when a character lacks self-awareness and acts under false assumptions.
Allusions
Various allusions refer to the Bible, classical mythology, English history, and events in Shakespeare's time.
Hyperbole
Gross exaggerations are used for effect.
Foreshadowing
Stop periodically during the close reading to identify events that have been foretold earlier in the story. For example, what did the sight imagery in the first scene of the first act foreshadow?
Apostrophe
Lear uses a figure of speech when he addresses the fool and suddenly breaks off and addresses (in the second person) a person who is not there. In Act I, Scene ii Edmund invokes "Nature" to justify his actions in deceiving his father.
We will identify these and other devices as we go through the play; students will be expected to define these terms connotatively, quote examples of these elements from the play, and cite how they are significant to the meaning of a character's traits and performance. As various literary, dramatic, and poetic devices are introduced, students will be held accountable for finding examples of literary/dramatic devices and explaining their significance within the text as we go through the play's characters and themes. They will also find examples of these devices as they occur in their daily lives, in their own homes, among their own families.
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