The Bard's Challenge: Week Two

The Bards Challenge: Week Two

In this post:

Sonnets 5-9

King Lear



Statue of King Lear located in Chicago. Beautiful, eh?



Thoughts on King Lear:

Oh. My. Heavens. I’d forgotten how HEAVY King Lear is! I know I’m in way over my head as far as coming even close to capturing the sheer awesomness of this play, so I won’t try. Intead I’m just going to keep it short and sweet. Maybe ask a few questions in the process.

Your thoughts:

First and foremost, I REALLY want to know what your thoughts were on this play. Seriously. What did you think of Edmund? Lear? Kent? What was your favorite quote/part? How did you feel while reading it?

“Never”

I had the wonderful opportunity of discussing the last scene in Lear with one of the Utah Shakespeare Festival’s foremost educators, Michael Bahr. We were talking about iambic pentameter and other varieties of meter Shakespeare used. In essence, we were looking at one of Lear’s last lines before he dies:

“Never never never never never”

Deep, huh? But it is! Humor me for a second and try this:

Pretend for a second that each syllable in this line represents a beat of your heart. We’ll try beating your chest with your fist. Normally Shakespeare’s meter, (iambic pentameter) would mean you’d beat your chest softly and then hard, then soft, then hard, with each syllable. (think “daDUN daDUN daDUN daDUN daDUN” kind of like your heart beating). Try beating your chest with that rhythm as you say the line above out loud.

Notice how it sort of sounds like your normal heart beat? Now try this.

Instead of beating your chest soft, hard, soft, hard; try beating your chest hard, soft, hard soft. “DAdun DAdun DAdun DAdun DAdun.” Now try saying the line out loud while beating in this fashion, but slow down the beating as you read aloud. (Remember, one pound for each syllable).

If you do it right, it sort of sounds like a heart taking a few last beats before going out completely. It’s eerie, especially because Lear dies only about two short lines after that.

Shakespeare is deep.

*                      *                      *                      *

Sonnets:

So this is my first time reading all of the sonnets through together in order. And I must say, I get this image of Shakespeare sending these notes once a week to this other person, and if I were that person I would be sooooo annoyed at Shakespeare right about now! We know you want him to have kids already! And clearly he either doesn’t want them, or doesn’t want them right now. So stop pestering him about it, will ya? It’s beautiful language, but the redundancy… What do you think so far?

Vocabulary Words:

Moiety: a portion, part or share. In this case of lands.

Propinquity: Closeness. In this case, closeness as kin.

And Next Week….

·         Measure For Measure.

o   This will be a tough play, it’s one of his lesser known plays, and even I haven’t read it. So it will be a surprise for all of us. J

·         A Lover’s Complaint