Due Monday, February 4th - Witches

Website:  The Witches in Macbeth

Directions:  1) Read through the material on the website link above which contains helpful background material on the witches during Shakespeare's time.  You may find a whole new way of viewing the play and Macbeth.  2) Next, revisit all the moments where the witches come into focus.  Read the text with a fresh set of eyes.  How was Macbeth viewed when he first meets them?  In Act IV?  3)  Compose a blog response sharing your insights on the relationship among the witches, Macbeth, Banquo, and the concept of fate.  Please use direct evidence from the text and the website in your responses.

Due Wednesday, January 30th - Modern Day Macbeth

Directions:

1)  Please finish reading through "Macbeth" Act III.

2)  I would like you to do a little research and find examples of real life Macbeths and Lady Macbeths.  Look for world leaders, entrepreneur, CEOs, or any people in a position of power who abused their power through ambition.  It need not be murder (though, sadly, that has happened more times than we can count).  How has power or financial greed caused an abuse of power?  This can be seen in companies that started off with a worthy goal, and then ended up allowing money, greed, power and ambition take over, for example.

3)  In the following blog post, please share a real life example of a person or entity that resembles the downfall of Macbeth.  Please include a link to the website, so we can see your work.  Also, include at least 1-3 direct quotation(s) from Macbeth, Acts I-III that show direct parallels to your example.  Also, include links to source material.

I look forward to your responses!

Mr. P.

Due Friday, January 18th - "Henry VIII" by William Shakespeare

Directions: Please compose an essay using the following speech from Shakespeare’s play Henry VIII. Cardinal Wolsey considers his sudden downfall from his position as advisor to the king. Spokesmen for the king have just left Wolsey alone on stage. Read the speech carefully. Then write a well-organized essay (intro, thesis, body paragraphs, conclusion, direct evidence from the text below - the works) in which you analyze how Shakespeare uses elements such as allusion, figurative language, and tone to convey Wolsey’s complex response to his dismissal from court.

Please post the completed essay to Turnitin.com. If you would like more time, you can post it as late as Friday, January 16th at 11:59 pm. I look forward to your responses.

So farewell—to the little good you bear me. 

Farewell? a long farewell to all my greatness! 

This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth 

The tender leaves of hopes, to-morrow blossoms, 

And bears his blushing honors thick upon him; 

The third day comes a frost, a killing frost, 

And when he thinks, good easy man, full surely 

His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root, 

And then he falls as I do. I have ventur’d, 

Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders, 

This many summers in a sea of glory, 

But far beyond my depth. My high-blown pride 

At length broke under me, and now has left me, 

Weary and old with service, to the mercy 

Of a rude stream that must for ever hide me. 

Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye! 

I feel my heart new open’d. O how wretched 

Is that poor man that hangs on princes’ favors! 

There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to, 

That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin, 

More pangs and fears than wars or women have; 

And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,

Never to hope again. 

EXAM REMINDERS FOR NEXT WEEK:

Wednesday, January 23rd - 10:00- 11:30 am

Directions: You will be given a passage from a Jane Austen novel you have not read, and be asked to compose an essay using direct evidence from the text.  Please bring a charged computer, and be ready to post the essay to Turnitin.com during the allotted time.

Know the following literary devices:  personification, ellipsis, simile, metaphor, verbals, dramatic irony, iambic pentameter, paradox, inversion, and alliteration


NOTE:  I will be formally grading blogs beginning Monday, January 21st.  This is your last opportunity to get your work completed before the end of the term.  Please use the weekend to get caught up.  Also, make sure your Henry V essays are posted to Turnitin.com!

Due Tuesday, January 15th - "Macbeth" Act II Reactions

Directions: Reread Act II of Macbeth. Select major passages of at least 3-4 lines with depth and/or a dialogue exchange from Act II. Cut and paste it into your post. Next, compose a comprehensive blog response exploring the text in depth. Make sure to include your voice. What is your opinion on the text, characters, situations, and events about to ensue? What do you anticipate will happen in Act III?  How will fate play a role?  How will the characters evolve or devolve? Please engage with one another. Be bold! Be brilliant.

Lady Macbeth: "Had he not resembled/My father as he slept, I had done 't" (II,ii,13).

Due Friday, January 11th - Metaphysical Poetry & Modern Sonnets

Directions:  Read the material below on metaphysical poetry, as well as the three poems by John Donne.  Next, read the modern sonnets. In this blog space, please select a poem from below or from the link provided.  Cut and paste the sonnet into your post and comment on the poem in making comparisons to the various sonnet forms we have analyzed thus far.

Link to poetry.org.

Part I  -  Overview of Metaphysical Poetry & John Donne

John Donne was born in 1572 in London, England. He is known as the founder of the Metaphysical Poets, a term created by Samuel Johnson, an eighteenth-century English essayist, poet, and philosopher. His wife, aged thirty-three, died in 1617 shortly after giving birth to their twelfth child, a stillborn. The Holy Sonnets are also attributed to this phase of his life.

The term "metaphysical poetry" is used to describe a certain type of 17th century poetry. The term was originally intended to be derogatory; Dryden, who said Donne "affects the metaphysics," was criticizing Donne for being too arcane. Samuel Johnson later used the term "metaphysical poetry" to describe the specific poetic method used by poets like Donne.

Metaphysical poets are generally in rebellion against the highly conventional imagery of the Elizabethan lyric. The poems tend to be intellectually complex, and (according to the Holman Handbook), "express honestly, if unconventionally, the poet's sense of the complexities and contradictions of life." The verse often sounds rough in comparison to the smooth conventions of other poets; Ben Jonson once said that John Donne "deserved hanging" for the way he ran roughshod over conventional rhythms. The result is that these poems often lack lyric smoothness, but they instead use a rugged irregular movement that seems to suit the content of the poems.

For an example of metaphysical rebellion against lyrical convention, one can look at Donne's Holly Sonnet VI, below.

"Holy Sonnet VI"

by John Donne, 1610
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so,
For those, whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's deliverie.
Thou'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then ?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more, Death thou shalt die.


The poem personifies death through an extended metaphor. It speaks to death as if poking fun at its history of being known as “mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so” according to the narrator. The speaker even goes so far as to say “nor canst thou kill me.” This ends the first stanza and is much more interesting and off putting than “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day” or Let me not to the marriage of true minds” by Shakespeare.

That the punctuation is just as vital to the meaning of the work. In addition to challenging the conventions of rhythm, the metaphysical poets also challenged conventional imagery. Their tool for doing this was the metaphysical conceit. A conceit is a poetic idea, usually a metaphor. There can be conventional ideas, where there are expected metaphors: Petrarchan conceits imitate the metaphors used by the Italian poet Petrarch. Metaphysical conceits are noteworthy specifically for their lack of conventionality. In general, the metaphysical conceit will use some sort of shocking or unusual comparison as the basis for the metaphor. When it works, a metaphysical conceit has a startling appropriateness that makes us look at something in an entirely new way.

In the sonnet above, he last line is what does it for me, though and it was utilized brilliantly in Maraget Edison’s Wit.

Some editions of the text present the last line as follows:

And Death shall be no more; Death thou shalt die!

In the Gardner edition, it is presented as follows:

And death shall be no more, Death thou shalt die.

As stated in Edison’s play “Nothing but a breath. A comma separates life from eternal life.” Therefore, the metaphysical conceit of the sonnet is that when you die you live forever.


"Holy Sonnet IV"

by John Donne, 1610

If poysonous minerals, and if that tree,
Whose fruit threw death on else immortal us,
If lecherous goats, if serpents envious
Cannot be damn'd, Alas ! why should I be?
Why should intent or reason, born in me,
Make sins, else equal, in me more heinous?
And, mercy being easie, and glorious
To God, in his stern wrath why threatens hee?
But who am I, that dare dispute with thee?
O God, Oh! of thine only worthy blood,
And my teares, make a heavenly Lethean flood,
And drown in it my sinnes blacke memorie.
That thou remember them, some claime as debt,
I thinke it mercy if thou wilt forget.


"Holy Sonnet X"

by John Donne, 1610

This is my play's last scene; here heavens appoint
My pilgrimage's last mile, and my race
Idly, yet quickly run, hath this last pace,
My span's last inch, my minute's latest point,
And gluttonous death will instantly unjoint
My body and soul, and I shall sleep a space,
But my ever-waking part shall see that face,
Whose fear already shakes my every joint.
Then, as my soul to heaven her first seat takes flight,
And earth-born body in the earth shall dwell,
So fall my sins, that all may have their right,
To where they're bred and would press me to hell.
Impute me righteous, thus purged of evil,
For thus I leave the world, the flesh, the devil.


Part II - Modern Sonnets

"Sonnet XLIII"

by Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1956

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,

 I have forgotten, and what arms have lain 

 Under my head till morning; but the rain 

 Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh 

 Upon the glass and listen for reply, 

 And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain 

 For unremembered lads that not again 

 Will turn to me at midnight with a cry. 

 Thus in winter stands the lonely tree, 

 Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one, 

 Yet knows its boughs more silent than before: 

I cannot say what loves have come and gone, 

 I only know that summer sang in me 

 A little while, that in me sings no more.

"Florida Doll Sonnet"
by Denise Duhamel, 1961

I love Fresh Market but always feel underdressed
squeezing overpriced limes. Louis Vuitton,
Gucci, Fiorucci, and all the ancient East Coast girls
with their scarecrow limbs and Joker grins.
Their silver fox husbands, rosy from tanning beds,
steady their ladies who shuffle along in Miu Miu’s
(not muumuus) and make me hide behind towers
of handmade soaps and white pistachios. Who
knew I’d still feel like the high school fat girl
some thirty-odd years later? My Birkenstocks
and my propensity for fig newtons? Still, whenever
I’m face to face with a face that is no more real
than a doll’s, I try to love my crinkles, my saggy
chin skin. My body organic, with no preservatives.


"The Harlem Dancer" 

by Claude McKay, 1922

Applauding youths laughed with young prostitutes 

And watched her perfect, half-clothed body sway; 

Her voice was like the sound of blended flutes 

Blown by black players upon a picnic day. 

She sang and danced on gracefully and calm, 

The light gauze hanging loose about her form; 

To me she seemed a proudly-swaying palm 

Grown lovelier for passing through a storm. 

Upon her swarthy neck black shiny curls 

Luxuriant fell; and tossing coins in praise, 

The wine-flushed, bold-eyed boys, and even the girls, 

Devoured her shape with eager, passionate gaze; 

But looking at her falsely-smiling face, 

I knew her self was not in that strange place.


"Ever"

by Meghan O'Rourke, 2015

Never, never, never, never, never.
—King Lear

Even now I can’t grasp “nothing” or “never.”
They’re unholdable, unglobable, no map to nothing.
Never? Never ever again to see you?
An error, I aver. You’re never nothing,
because nothing’s not a thing.
I know death is absolute, forever,
the guillotine—gutting—never to which we never say goodbye.
But even as I think “forever” it goes “ever”
and “ever” and “ever.” Ever after.
I’m a thing that keeps on thinking. So I never see you
is not a thing or think my mouth can ever. Aver:
You’re not “nothing.” But neither are you something.
Will I ever really get never?
You’re gone. Nothing, never—ever.


"Superheroes as 2004 Volkswagen Passat: A Double Sonnet"
by Bruce Covey, 2012

The Invisible Woman is the windshield.

Mr. Fantastic is the wiper fluid. 

The Thing is the tire. 

The Human Torch is the spark plug. 

Spiderman is the antenna. 

Storm is the ignition coil. Rogue is the crank shaft. 

The Punisher is the exhaust pipe. 

Captain America is the hub cap. 

Quicksilver is the oil. 

Rogue is the gasoline. 

Psylocke is the catalytic converter. 

The Hulk is the cylinder block. 

She Hulk is the mount. 

Mantis is the manifold. 

Ms. Marvel is the muffler. 

The Scarlet Witch is the instrument panel. 

Iceman is the cooling system. 

Wolverine is the hood. 

Colossus is the camshaft. 

Banshee is the horn. 

Polaris is the voltage regulator. 

 Silver Surfer is the rearview mirror. 

Powerman is the bearing. 

Phoenix is the powertrain. 

Emma Frost is the hinge pillar. 

The Vision is the fuse box. 

Black Widow is the brake.

Exam - Wednesday, January 23rd - 10:00- 11:30 am

Directions: You will engage in a skills based exam. In part I, you will read a selection from Macbeth Act I and answer eight multiple-choice questions.  In part II, you will be given a passage from a Jane Austen novel you have not read, and be asked to compose an essay using direct evidence from the text.  Please bring a charged computer, and be ready to post the essay to Turnitin.com during the allotted time.

Know the following literary devices:  personification, ellipsis, simile, metaphor, verbals, dramatic irony, iambic pentameter, paradox, inversion, and alliteration

Due Tuesday, January 8th - Sing!

Directions: Engage in this creative assignment, as a means of applying your knowledge of Act I.
1) Select a theme: Ambition, Violence, Gender, Marriage, Fate v. Freewill, Nature v. Unnatural
2) Select a quotation, or brief dialogue exchange
3) Select lyrics from a song that matches the theme, passage/dialogue you chose
4) Explain the connection.

EXAMPLE:  Your post should look like the following...

1) Themes:

Ambition and Marriage

2)  Text:

MACBETH
We will proceed no further in this business:
He hath honour'd me of late; and I have bought
Golden opinions from all sorts of people,
Which would be worn now in their newest gloss,
Not cast aside so soon.

LADY MACBETH
Was the hope drunk
Wherein you dress'd yourself? hath it slept since?
And wakes it now, to look so green and pale
At what it did so freely? From this time
Such I account thy love. Art thou afeard
To be the same in thine own act and valour
As thou art in desire? Wouldst thou have that
Which thou esteem'st the ornament of life,
And live a coward in thine own esteem,
Letting 'I dare not' wait upon 'I would,'
Like the poor cat i' the adage?

MACBETH
Prithee, peace:
I dare do all that may become a man;
Who dares do more is none.

LADY MACBETH
What beast was't, then,
That made you break this enterprise to me?
When you durst do it, then you were a man;
And, to be more than what you were, you would
Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place
Did then adhere, and yet you would make both:
They have made themselves, and that their fitness now
Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know
How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me:
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums,
And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this.

MACBETH
If we should fail?

LADY MACBETH
We fail!
But screw your courage to the sticking-place,
And we'll not fail. When Duncan is asleep--
Whereto the rather shall his day's hard journey
Soundly invite him--his two chamberlains
Will I with wine and wassail so convince
That memory, the warder of the brain,
Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason
A limbeck only: when in swinish sleep
Their drenched natures lie as in a death,
What cannot you and I perform upon
The unguarded Duncan? what not put upon
His spongy officers, who shall bear the guilt
Of our great quell?

MACBETH
Bring forth men-children only;
For thy undaunted mettle should compose
Nothing but males. Will it not be received,
When we have mark'd with blood those sleepy two
Of his own chamber and used their very daggers,
That they have done't?

LADY MACBETH
Who dares receive it other,
As we shall make our griefs and clamour roar
Upon his death?

MACBETH
I am settled, and bend up
Each corporal agent to this terrible feat.
Away, and mock the time with fairest show:
False face must hide what the false heart doth know.

LADY MACBETH EXITS


3)  Song & Lyrics:

"A Man I'll Never Be" by Boston (1978)

MACBETH 

If I said what's on my mind
You'd turn and walk away
Disappearing way back in your dreams
It's so hard to be unkind
So easy just to say
That everything is just the way it seems
You look up at me
And somewhere in your mind you see
A man I'll never be
If only I could find a way
I'd feel like I'm the man you believe I am
And it's getting harder every day for me
To hide behind this dream you see
A man I'll never be
I can't get any stronger
I can't climb any higher
You'll never know just how hard I've tried
Cry a little longer
And hold a little tighter
Emotions can't be satisfied
You look up at me
And somewhere in your mind you still see
A man I'll never be
If only I could find a way
I'd feel like I'm the man you believe I am
And it's getting harder every day for me
To hide behind this dream you see

A man I'll never be


4) ANALYSIS:

In my opinion, Macbeth is haunted by his inability to produce an heir.  This will haunt him later when he becomes king.  Lady Macbeth consistently questions his manhood, even when we as an audience see how much he has accomplished, it appears that it will never be enough for his wife.  She calls to the spirits to "unsex me here,/And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full/Of direst cruelty!" (I,iv, 120-123).  This also undoes the sexual and emotional relationship between the two characters, making it impossible for them to work together as a couple.  The song bu Boston calls upon this idea, as the speaker feels it is impossible to say "what's on mind/You'd turn and walk away/Disappearing way be in your dreams."  Lady Macbeth has a vision for what she wants her husband to be.  It will continue to get harder for Macbeth "to hide behind this dream you see/a man i'll never be."

Due Monday, November 25th - "Macbeth" by William Shakespeare - Act I, scenes i-iv

Directions: Please reread Act I, scenes i-iv of Macbeth by William Shakespeare. Choose 1-2 major passages from the play and comment on the ideas, philosophy, and/or the motivations of the characters and the impact on the plot of the play. For example, what is Banquo thinking, now that he heard the witches and notices the actions of Macbeth? The Thane of Cawdor had betrayed Duncan. How are the king’s feelings about Macbeth ironic? How do the witches influence the action? Are the characters subject to freewill or not? How does Shakespeare use foil characters?  How does he employ dramatic irony? Explore the possibilities for our class discussion. Please read your fellow classmates responses and engage with one another.