Homework for 18th October Tuesday

Homework for next week. This homework is due Tuesday lunch break.

Finish reading Othello and then write a plan and an essay of a minimum two sides on the following subject.

Compare the experiences and situations of Othello and Alan (Equus) and their two 'crimes': the killing of Desdemona and the blinding of the horses.

You must consider in your essay:

• Why the characters commit their 'crimes' - you should discuss the hostile worlds/societies they belong to.


• Compare the 'crimes'.


• Compare how the playwrights present their characters - is it a sympathetic presentation?


• Compare how an audience might respond to each character's 'crime' - you could refer to specific productions of each play.


• Compare the playwrights' messages - what are they saying about their character and his actions?

You must use PEE (Point, Evidence & Explanation) in your essays - you must support your points with textual evidence. If you hand in an essay without textual evidence I will ask you to rewrite it.

Monday 26th classwork & homework

Classwork: to watch Oliver Parker's version of Othello. (a register will be taken)

Homework: to write a review (minimum A4 page long) of as much of the film as you're able to see in a single period. (There's a review of the film on the blog you may find handy to generate ideas). Due Thursday 29th.

Consider in your review:

• Whether the play belongs to the character Iago or Othello (there's an article on this subject on the blog)


• Laurence Fishburne's interpretation of the role compared to Laurence Olivier's (clips of Olivier as Othello are available to watch on youtube)

You could also take a look at Orson Welles' version of Othello (clips are again in youtube) and compare his heavily visual film to Parker's.

Lesson Monday 26th

On Monday 26th I will be out of school on a Y9 Shakespeare trip, but your lesson will still take place. I will post further details plus that week's homework on this blog. I'm currently considering arranging for you to watch Oliver Parker's film adaptation of Othello.

Thursday classwork & homework

Classwork is to read & annotate Act Two, Scene One. A question to consider when reading is Iago's attitude towards women.

Homework is to write a diary account for Iago, in which he reflects on all that has happened in Act One (hand in Thursday 29th). Have fun exploring his mind!

Consider including reflections on

- Cassio's promotion

- Othello's marriage

- his developing plot to destroy Othello's peace of mind

- why he is so determined to ruin Othello

For further inspiration explore the blog to see how critics, directors and actors have interpreted the workings of Iago's mind (for instance James Earl Jones thinks Iago is a tragic rather than evil character - see excerpt below)

"I contend that Iago is the most complex character that Shakespeare ever created. He has also been called vengeful and nihilistic, a man of 'diseased intellectual activity, with an almost perfect indifference to moral good or evil.'

Iago is dangerous to those who love and trust him because he convinced them over time that he loves them in return, and that he can be trusted absolutely.

The tragedies that happen to Othello and Desdemona are grand, classical tragedies. There is a much more modern tragedy in the character of Iago. His is a very contemporary tragedy that should not be thrown away."

*Connor deliver your homework asap Friday to the English staffroom or feel my wrath! Alex, I'd like your homework, due Monday, as well, Friday.

Oliver Parker's Othello

http://bostonreview.net/BR21.2/Stone.html

A thought provoking review of Oliver Parker's Othello published in the Boston Review.

Orson Welles on Othello

In 1952 Orson Welles adapted and directed Othello for the cinema with himself playing the title role. Though a troublesome shoot that took over three years to complete, Welles' heavily Film-noir influenced movie creates images that match the grandeur and eloquence of Shakespeare's language.

In an excerpt below from an

interview with

Peter Bogdanovich

Orson Welles discusses the characters' Othello and Iago.

PB: Why do you think Othello is destroyed so easily? Do you think he’s a weak man?


OW: He’s destroyed easily because of his simplicity, not his weakness. He really is the archetype of the simple man, and has never understood the complexity of the world or of human beings. He’s a soldier; he’s never known women. It’s a favorite theme of Shakespeare’s. A curious thing about Lear, too: Lear clearly knows nothing about women and has never lived with them at all. His wife is dead – she couldn’t exist. Obviously, the play couldn’t happen if there were a Mrs. Lear. He hasn’t any idea of what makes women work – he’s a man who lives with his knights. He’s that all-male man whom Shakespeare – who was clearly feminine in many ways – regarded as a natural-born loser in a tragic situation. Othello was another fellow like that. Total incomprehension of what a woman is. His whole treatment of her when he kills her is the treatment of a man who’s out of touch with reality as far as the other sex is concerned. All he knows how to do is fight wars and deal with the anthropophagi and “men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders”.


PB: That’s his tragedy, then.


OW: Yes.


PB: He could not imagine a person like Iago.

OW: No, and neither could a lot of Shakespeare’s critics. As a result of which we have eight libraries full of idiot explanations of Iago – when everybody has known an Iago in his life if he’s been anywhere.


PB: There are several moments in the movie which give the impression that Iago does what he does because it’s in his character, rather than that he’s plotting for some particular reason.


OW: Oh, he has no reason. The great criticism through all the years has been that he’s an unmotivated villain, but I think there are a lot of people who perpetuate villainy without any motive other than the exercise of mischief and the enjoyment of the power to destroy. I’ve known a lot of Iagos in my life. I think it’s a great mistake to try to motivate it beyond what is inherent in the action.
PB: You could say he was like the scorpion that followed his own character.


OW: Well, yup [laughs].


PB: Iago is certainly the most interesting part in the play.


OW: Shakespeare is like no other artist when his characters start to live their own lives and to lead the author against his wishes. In Richard II, Shakespeare is absolutely for Richard, but nevertheless he has to do justice to Bolingbroke. And, more than that, he has to make him seem real, human – so that suddenly this man Bolingbroke takes life and pulls off a large part of the play. You see Shakespeare trying to hold him back: nothing doing, Bolingbroke is launched! A very interesting theory has been put forward by some scholars; according to them, Shakespeare not only played small roles, but large ones. They think now that he played Iago and Mercutio – two second-level roles which steal the play from the stars…


PB: You said somewhere that there was an implication of impotence in your Iago.


OW: Yes. I don’t think that is necessary to the truth of the play, but it was the key to MacLiammóir’s performance, that Iago was impotent. It isn’t central, but it was an element that we used for the actor, as a means of performing the part. In the play, it’s pretty clear that isn’t so, and when I did the play in the theatre later, there was no suggestion of it. But I think it’s a perfectly valid way of doing it, though I wasn’t anxious for the audience to understand it, not trying to inform them of it – if the audience can find it, more power to them. To use the Stanislavsky argot, it was basically something for the actor “to use”. I do a lot of that with actors. I’m always making fun of the Method, but I use a lot of things that are taken from it.


PB: Does Othello feel guilt at the end – after Iago’s proven guilty?


OW: Depends on how you play it.


PB: In your picture.


OW: I’ve forgotten, because I remember my performance in the theatre much more clearly than in the movie, and I revised a lot of my ideas of playing it.

PB: Well, then, in the stage production.


OW: I don’t think “guilt” is the right word. You know, Othello is so close to being a French farce. Analyze it! All he’s got to do is say, “Show me the handkerchief,” and you ring down the curtains. Being that close to nonsense, it can only come to life on a level very close to real tragedy – closer than Shakespeare actually gets. And Othello is so blasted at the end that guilt is really too small an emotion. Anyway, he’s not a Christian – that’s central to the character. And Shakespeare was very, very aware of who was a Christian and who wasn’t, just as he was very aware of who was a Southern European and who was a Northern, who was the decadent and who was the palace man, and the outdoor man. These things run all the way through Shakespeare.


PB: There’s an implication at the end that Othello understands, even almost forgives Iago for what he had done.


OW: He didn’t forgive him.


PB: Well, understood.


OW: Yes, it was this terrible understanding of how awful he was which drains him of hate. Because when something is that awful you can’t react to it that way. He becomes appalled by him.


PB: The look between them is filled with ambiguity.


OW: That’s a very interesting moment in the play.


PB: Do you think Othello is detestable in his jealousy?


OW: Jealousy is detestable, not Othello. He’s so obsessed with jealousy, he becomes the very personification of that tragic vice. In that sense, he’s morally diseased. All Shakespeare’s great characters are sometimes detestable – compelled by their own nature.


PB: So are your characters.


OW: Well, you could say it, I think, about all dramas, large or small, that attempts tragedy within the design of melodrama. As long as there is melodrama, the tragic hero is something of a villain.


PB: Why did you give Roderigo a white poodle?


OW: Because Carpaccio’s full of them. And it’s not a poodle, it’s a tenerife – very special kind. We had a terrible time getting it. All the dandies in Carpaccio fondle exactly that dog – it’s almost a trademark with them, like Whistler’s butterfly; they’re always clinging to those terrible little dogs.

Watch the opening scene of Orson Welles' Othello:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fETm6neCEJ0&feature=related

'I hate the Moor' Kenneth Branagh performs Iago

Othello - Act 1, scene 3 "I hate the Moor"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fItEfJhf0oc&feature=related

Iago and the nature of evil

What sort of evil does Iago represent in Othello? Consider how literary critic A. C. Bradley answers the question below.

'Iago stands supreme among Shakespeare's evil characters because the greatest intensity and subtlety of imagination has gone to his making, and because he illustrates in the most perfect combination the two facts concerning evil which seem to have impressed Shakespeare most.

The first of these is the fact that perfectly sane people exist in whom fellow-feeling of any kind is so weak that an almost absolute egotism becomes possible to them, and with it those hard vices - such as ingratitude and cruelty - which to Shakespeare were far the worst. The second is that such evil is compatible, and even appears to ally itself easily, with exceptional powers of will and intellect. In the latter respect Iago is nearly or quite the equal of Richard, in egoism he is the superior, and his inferiority in passion and massive force only makes him more repulsive. How is it then that we can bear to contemplate him; nay, that, if we really imagine him, we feel admiration and some kind of sympathy? Henry the Fifth tells us:

There is some soul of goodness in things evil,

Would men observingly distil it out;

but here, it may be said, we are show a thing absolutely evil, and - what is more dreadful still - this absolute evil is united with supreme intellectual power. Why is the representation tolerable, and why do we not accuse its author either of untruth or of desperate pessimism?

In the first place, Iago is not merely negative or evil - far from it. Those very forces that moved him and made his fate - sense of power, delight in performing a difficult and dangerous action, delight in the exercise of artistic skill - are not at all evil things. We sympathise with one or other of them almost every day of our lives. And, accordingly, though in Iago they are combined with something detestable and so contribute to evil, our perception of them is accompanied with sympathy. In the same way, Iago's insight, dexterity, quickness, address, and the like, are in themselves admirable things; the perfect man would possess them. And certainly he would possess also Iago's courage and self-control, and, like Iago, would stand above the impulses of mere feeling, lord of his inner world. All this goes to evil ends in Iago, but in itself it has a great worth; and, although in reading, of course, we do not sift it out and regard it separately, it inevitably affects us and mingles admiration with our hatred or horror.

All of this, however, might apparently co-exist with absolute egoism and total want of humanity. But, in the second place, it is not true that in Iago this egoism and this want are absolute, and that in this sense he is a thing of mere evil. They are frightful, but if they were absolute Iago would be a monster, not a man. The fact is, he tries to make them absolute and cannot succeed; and the traces of conscience, shame and humanity, though faint, are discernible. If his egoism were absolute he would be perfectly indifferent to the opinion of others; and he clearly is not so. His very irritation at goodness, again, is a sign that his faith in his creed is not entirely firm; and it is not entirely firm because he himself has a perception, however dim, of the goodness of goodness. What is the meaning of the last reason he gives himself for killing Cassio:

He hath a daily beauty in his life

That makes me ugly?

Does he mean that he is ugly to others? Then he is not an absolute egoist. Does he mean that he is ugly to himself? Then he makes an open confession of moral sense. And, once more, if he really possessed no moral sense, we should never have heard those soliloquies which so clearly betray his uneasiness and his unconscious desire to persuade himself that he had some excuse for the villainy he contemplates. These seem to be indubitable proofs that, against his will, Iago is a little better than his creed, and has failed to withdraw himself wholly from the human atmosphere about him.'

To continue reading this discussion follow the link below to p.154 of "Othello" from A. C. Bradley's book Shakespearean Tragedy available to read online. http://www.scribd.com/doc/33323542/Othello

A. C. Bradley (1851-1935) was a professor at Oxford. His book Shakespearean Tragedy (1904) was one of the most significant works of Shakespearean criticism of the twentieth century. Bradley has sometimes been criticised for writing of Shakespeare's characters as though they were real people.

Does Casio's promotion liberate Iago?

This post is a continuation of the critic A. C. Bradley's discussion of Iago's motivations, so read the post Iago: a boy who torments frogs before reading this post.

'Iago's longing to satisfy the sense of power is, I think, the strongest of the forces that drive him on. But there are two others to be noticed.

One is the pleasure in an action very difficult and perilous and, therefore, intensely exciting. This action sets all his powers on the strain. He feels the delight of one who executes successfully a feat thoroughly congenial to his special aptitude, and only just within his compass; and, as he is fearless by nature, the fact that a single slip will cost him his life only increases his pleasure. His exhilaration breaks out in the ghastly words with which he greets the sunrise after the night of the drunken tumult which has led to Cassio's disgrace: 'By the mass, 'tis morning. Pleasure and action make the hours seems short.' Here, however, the joy in exciting action is quickened by other feelings. It appears more simply elsewhere in such a way as to suggest that nothing but such actions gave him happiness, and that his happiness was greater if the action was destructive as well as exciting. We find it, for instance, in his gleeful cry to Roderigo, who proposes to shout to Brabantio in order to wake him and tell him of his daughter's flight:

Do, with like timorous accent and dire yell

As when, by night and negligence, the fire

Is spied in populous cities.

All through that scene; again, in the scene where Cassio is attached and Roderigo murdered; everywhere where Iago is in physical action, we catch this sound of almost feverish enjoyment. His blood, usually so cold and slow, is racing through his veins.

But Iago, finally is not simply a man of action; he is an artist. His action is a plot, the intricate plot of a drama, and in the conception and execution of it he experiences the tension and the joy of artistic creation.'

In comparing Iago to a dramatist A. C. Bradley says 'Shakespeare put a good deal of himself into Iago'. Bradley points to Iago's soliloquies where he broods over his plot, drawing out an outline and puzzling how to develop it and then gradually clarifying it as he works upon it or lets it unfold. Bradley says Iago's musings are similar to the musings a playwright has in the early stages of dramatic composition.

'Such, then, seems to be the chief ingredients of the force which, liberated by his resentment at Cassio's promotion, drives Iago from inactivity into action, and sustains him through it. And, to pass to a new point, this force completely possesses him; it is his fate. It is like the passion with which a tragic hero wholly identifies himself, and which bears him on to his doom.'

Bradley believes that Iago is caught in his own web, and 'could not liberate himself if he would'. He notes that Iago 'never shows a trace of wishing to do so, not a trace of hesitation, of looking back, or of fear, any more than of remorse'.

Bradley states: 'Iago's fate - which is himself - has completely mastered him: so that in the later scenes, where the improbability of the entire success of a design built on so many different lies forces itself on the reader, Iago appears for moments not as a consummate schemer, but as a man absolutely infatuated and delivered over to certain destruction.'

To continue reading this discussion follow the link below to p.154 of "Othello" from A. C. Bradley's book Shakespearean Tragedy available to read online.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/33323542/Othello

A. C. Bradley (1851-1935) was a professor at Oxford. His book Shakespearean Tragedy (1904) was one of the most significant works of Shakespearean criticism of the twentieth century. Bradley has sometimes been criticised for writing of Shakespeare's characters as though they were real people.

Iago: a little boy who torments frogs?

The literary critic A. C. Bradley discusses Iago's motivations and suggests that far from being a Machiavellian genius Iago is ‘moved by forces which he does not understand’.

‘Passion, in Shakespeare’s plays, is perfectly easy to recognize. What vestige of it, of passion unsatisfied or passion gratified, is visible in Iago? None: that is the very horror of him. He has less passion than an ordinary man, and yet he does things, frightful things. The only ground for attributing to him, I do not say passionate hatred, but anything deserving the name of hatred at all, is his own statement, ‘I hate Othello’, and we know what his statements are worth.

Iago is moved by forces which he does not understand.

So what are Iago’s motivations? A disinterested love of evil? A delight in the pain of others?

The boy who torments another boy, as we say, 'for no reason,' or who without any hatred for frogs tortures a frog, is pleased with his victim’s pain, not from any disinterested love of evil or pleasure in pain, but mainly because this pain is the unmistakable proof of his own power over his victim. So it is with Iago.

Iago’s thwarted sense of superiority wants satisfaction. What fuller satisfaction could it find than the consciousness that he is the master of the General who has undervalued him and of the rival who has been preferred to him, that these worthy people, who are so successful and popular and stupid, are mere puppets in his hands, but living puppets, who at the motion of this finger must contort themselves in agony, while all the times they believe that he is their one true friend and comforter. It must have been an ecstasy of bliss to him. And this, granted a most abnormal deadness of human feeling, is however horrible, perfectly understandable. There is no mystery in the psychology of Iago; the mystery lies in a further question, which the drama has not to answer, the question why such a being should exist.'

To continue reading this discussion follow the link below to p.150-151 of A. C. Bradley's book Shakespearean Tragedy available to read online.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/33323542/Othello

A. C. Bradley (1851-1935) was a professor at Oxford. His book Shakespearean Tragedy (1904) was one of the most significant works of Shakespearean criticism of the twentieth century. Bradley has sometimes been criticised for writing of Shakespeare's characters as though they were real people.

Iago: a contemporary tragedy?

James Earl Jones won an Obie award for his portrayal of Othello in a production in Central Park, New York in 1964. He went on to play the Moor a further six times and has been hailed as the greatest American Othello.

Read Jones' study of the role below and see if you agree with his understanding of the character. It is worth comparing his study of Iago to that of A. C. Bradley's. Note that he never once calls Iago evil.

'I contend that Iago is the most complex character that Shakespeare ever created. He has also been called vengeful and nihilistic, a man of 'diseased intellectual activity, with an almost perfect indifference to moral good or evil.'

Iago is dangerous to those who love and trust him because he convinced them over time that he loves them in return, and that he can be trusted absolutely.

The tragedies that happen to Othello and Desdemona are grand, classical tragedies. There is a much more modern tragedy in the character of Iago. His is a very contemporary tragedy that should not be thrown away. To view Iago as a jokester and a clown - just a Machiavellian gangster - is to demean and distort the characters of Iago and Othello, as well as to diminish the tragedy of the whole play; but it takes a strong director and a strong vision of the play to lead the actor playing Iago into the tragic and mysterious depths of Iago's true nature.

I am looking for a model for Iago. To understand him we have to understand Iago's fall from grace. So who is a role model? Darth Vader?

Consider Lucifer, who fell because he failed to 'play the game' with God. Iago feels that he has lost to Cassio, who plays the game better. He certainly works for a boss who is solitary and secretive so as not to assure Iago of his real value. This causes Iago anguish, as he tells us at the outset of the play, when he is denied the office of a lieutenant to Othello: '... by the faith of man,/ I know my price, I am worth no worse a place (Act 1, scene i). And Iago's real value comes from his sinister side. He is the Goebbels to Hitler, the Beria to Stalin. Othello, while no Hitler or Stalin, was secretive and solitary, and he did not get the word out to people very well. He could have had a discussion with Iago about the appointment; he could have had a discussion with Brabantio about the marriage. Othello's failure to do so contributes mightily to the estrangement of Brabantio, his beloved friend, and to the animosity of Iago, his trusted ensign.

[...]

The key factor of money establishes Iago's relation to the whole play. He is a common man who lacks the social wherewithal that Othello, Desdemona, Cassio and even Roderigo possess. He occupies a rung further down the social ladder, and where he is, he is not going to be successful. He was counting on being elevated to Othello's lieutenant. Was this delusion? Casting is important here: Iago has to appear to qualify as the general's lieutenant, at least on the battlefield, even if he lacks Cassio's social finesse, and, like, Lucifer, he should be gorgeous to look at. The reason for his fall is engimatic to him. He was not passed over because he lacked social appeal. He lacks the formal social graces of a higher station, but he is very personable and very smart.

When Iago perceives that he has been crossed, he becomes quite dangerous to the whole society and he will take it all down with him. Now everything tastes like shit in his mouth, including his own marriage. He has not found a Desdemona to fulfil his life. He believes his station, his wealth, his chance at having a life - all have been ruined when Othello has passed over him for a promotion.

Iago is extremely clever. This makes Iago's life even more tragic. Such a mind is a terrible thing to waste, and it doesn't have a shot in the world. Iago evokes Janus - the two-faced God (Act 1, scene ii). He says to Roderigo, 'Were I the Moor, I would not be Iago ... I am not what I am' (Act 1, scene i).

When Iago says, 'I am not what I am,' he seems to me full of regret, as if to suggest, 'The "I am" is what I could have been and should have been.' There is a universal complaint here: I am nobody. I know I have a soul; but nothing else confirms that. I am not what I am.

Consider him as a Janus figure. Each of Iago's Janus 'faces' is genuine, they just look out in opposite directions, as the faces of Janus do. When Iago is with those he loves, he loves them. When he is not, we have a quite different Iago. When he says to Othello, 'You know I love you,' he does love Othello, believe it or not. As much as Iago says to Roderigo, 'I hate the Moor,' he loves him. I don't mean homosexually, either, but soul to soul. Othello and Iago have shared a military life together; they have built that trust between them. Ironically, Iago has a great deal of fear-based respect for Othello, yet he tries to convinces Roderigo that he hates the Moor.

We need to see Iago as a human being. Ultimately, this makes his tragedy all the more terrifying.'

Excerpts taken from Actors on Shakespeare, Othello, James Earl Jones.

Were I the Moor, I would not be Iago:

In following him, I follow but myself ...

For when my outward action does demonstrate

The native act, and figure of my heart,

In complement extern, 'tis not long after,

But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve,

For doves to peck at: I am not what I am.

Iago to Roderigo (Act 1, scene i)

RSC Shakespeare's Language - Shakespeare's tools for verse and prose

Shakespeare's tools for verse and prose

Here (in alphabetical order) are brief explanations of some of the major language devices Shakespeare uses to make meaning in his verse and prose. Shakespeare did not necessarily give them the technical labels in bold below - he simply used these verbal strategies to great effect. It is perhaps not so important to know the technical terms as it is to appreciate how Shakespeare achieves his effects and to recognise the clues they offer us.

Alliteration is the repetition of consonants in words close together. It commands attention, emphasises special words and helps to link ideas. It can be used for comic or satiric effect, as Beatrice does in Much Ado About Nothing. Hear how she tuts and taunts Benedick with her repetition of 't's:

BEATRICE And men are only turned into tongue, and trim ones too.

Antithesis uses a parallel sentence structure to compare two opposing ideas. Shakespeare is very fond of this device and uses it often, for coherence and to point up the key ideas in the passage. Here are two examples:

MACBETH This supernatural soliciting Cannot be ill, cannot be good.

RICHARD III And if King Edward be as true and just As I am subtle, false and treacherous

Antithesis is a major feature of Shakespeare's prose and always deserves our attention. It is a clue: what idea is being emphasised? Why? Notice how often Brutus uses antithesis in the speech from Julius Caesar cited above.

Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds in the same phrase or verse line. Again, this is done for emphasis. Vowels carry much of the music and feeling of the verse and the repetition of them strengthens the emotion, mood or atmosphere described. Ophelia's pain in reflecting on the change in Hamlet is captured in the repeated 'o', 'eh' and 'aw' sounds, almost like wail of grief:

OPHELIA

O, what a nOble mind is here O'erthrOwn.

The cOUrtier's, sOldier's, schOlar's eye, tOngue, swOrd,

Th'ExpEctation and rOse of the fAIr stAte,

The glAss of fAshion and the mOUld of fOrm,

Th'ObsErved of All ObsErvers, quite, quite dOwn.

A marked pause within a verse line is called a caesura. It is usually indicated with a full stop or a semi-colon. It slows down the line and marks a change of some kind, often an emotional change. Shakespeare used it with increasing frequency as he developed his poetic technique. See how often Hermione uses it in this brief extract from The Winter's Tale, written late in Shakespeare's career:

HERMIONE The Emperor of Russia was my father.

O that he were alive, and here beholding

His daughter's trial! That he did but see

The flatness of my misery; yet with the eyes Of pity, not revenge!

What clues to Hermione's emotional state do these strong breaks give us? How would they help to guide an actor's way of speaking the lines?

A verse line which only makes sense when it runs on and stops at a caesura in the following line is called enjambment, from the French word for 'to straddle'. It's the opposite of an end-stopped line whose sense is contained within the line. Many more end-stopped lines are to be found in Shakespeare's early plays, while enjambment is a feature of his later work. Enjambment can give emotional urgency to a thought by providing the energy to drive it on. It can also seem more natural than a more self-contained verse line. Notice the examples of enjambment in Hermione's speech above and compare this passage from Romeo and Juliet, a much earlier play.

PRINCE ESCALUS

A glooming peace this morning with it brings.

The sun for sorrow will not show his head.

Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things.

Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished.

Half and shared lines are deviations from the standard iambic pentameter line spoken by a single character. A half line can be anything from a single syllable to three or four iambic feet: it's an incomplete iambic line. Why, we need to ask, has the character not completed the line? What is the internal or external reason? Unless there is an interruption, a half line indicates a pause and we are invited to wonder what fills this pause.

Two or more shared lines between two or more characters make up one line of verse. Here is a sequence from Macbeth which contains both shared and half lines. Why does Shakespeare write shared lines for the characters at this point in the play? What fills the pauses of the half lines?

LADY MACBETH I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry.

Did not you speak?

MACBETH When?

LADY MACBETH Now?

MACBETH As I descended?

LADY MACBETH Ay.

MACBETH Hark!

Who lies i' the second chamber?

LADY MACBETH Donalbain.

Shakespeare's prose and poetry are full of lists and ladders. He uses these when characters are intensifying an idea or feeling - when they are raising the stakes. In prose especially, a list or ladder helps to give form and unity to the text. Here is Rosalind from As You Like It:

ROSALIND

There was never anything so sudden, but the fight of two

rams, and Caesar's thrasonical brag of I came, saw, and

overcame. For your brother and my sister no sooner met, but

they looked; no sooner looked but they loved; no sooner

loved, but they sighed; no sooner sighed, but they asked one

another the reason; no sooner knew the reason, but they

sought the remedy

Onomatopoeia is the use of a word which sounds like what it means. Here are two examples of a device frequently found in Shakespeare's verse and prose:

Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments

Will hum about mine ears...

(The Tempest, Act 3 Scene 2)

The moon shines bright. In such a night as this,

When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees...

(The Merchant of Venice, Act 5 Scene 1)

Shakespeare is a master at creating mood and atmosphere through the sounds of the words. Although only 'kiss' in the passage above may be strictly onomatopoetic, notice how the sounds of many of the other words contribute to the spirit of the speech together with its gentle rhythm. The length and quality of the vowel sounds are one tool Shakespeare uses; the sounds of consonants are another.

Compare this line to the ones above:

But since I am a dog, beware my fangs,

The duke shall grant me justice

(The Merchant of Venice, Act 3 Scene 3)

Hear the hisses, the bullet-like monosyllables, the hard plosive consonants.

Shakespeare can make music of infinite variety with his command of language.

The Elizabethans were an aural society, good at listening, and they relished wordplay. Shakespeare's plays are full of wordplay in the form of puns. Shakespeare's puns can sometimes be more difficult for today's readers because many of them are topical, referring to events and attitudes of the time. A pun is a play on meaning of the same or two similar words, like this, from Twelfth Night:

VIOLA Save thee, friend, and thy music! Dost thou live by thy tabor?

FESTE No, sir, I live by the church.

VIOLA Art thou a churchman?

FESTE No such matter, sir. I do live by the church;

for I do live at my house, and my house doth

stand by the church.

Mercutio makes a more sombre pun when, dying, he says:

MERCUTIO Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man.

Notice how the effect of the pun exchange from Twelfth Night above depends upon repetition of words and phrases. Shakespeare uses repetition extensively in his plays and poetry to heighten dramatic effect, to comment ironically, to create wit, and to link situations, thoughts and feelings.

Repetition of words and phrases is always worth investigating. Here is a famous instance of repetition, heavy with irony. Notice the shared line which, together with the repetition, tells us so much about the character relationships at this point in the play:

OTHELLO Is he not honest?

IAGO Honest, my lord?

OTHELLO Honest? Ay, honest.

Simile and metaphor are two ways of creating word pictures. In the Elizabethan theatre audiences were called on to use their imaginations to create the scenery of the play: the Elizabethan stage was relatively bare compared to most modern theatre practice.

Shakespeare's word paintings can take us in a moment from Egypt to Rome, from England to France. They can enliven and illuminate private feelings and public debate. In a breath, Shakespeare can move from very plain language to the most extravagant similes and metaphors.

Similes enrich description by comparing two seemingly unlike things using 'like' or 'as.' Metaphors do the same but miss out the comparative words. Notice how Macbeth moves from a simile in the first line into an extended metaphor in the rest of the passage:

MACBETH And pity, like a naked new-born babe,

Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubin, horsed

Upon the sightless couriers of the air,

Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye

That tears shall drown the wind.

Metaphors and similes like these offer us insight into the way a character thinks. They are a valuable clue.