Thursday, April 7, 2011

4/5 & 4/7 - Class Notes

"Tempest"

- The storm wasn't real, imagined
  • shift focus to mechanism that creates illusions
- Based on ancient religious mystery of Eleusinian 
  • draw from scriptures that are open to all
  • transforms lives by showing, saying, doing something
  • sacrament of marriage
  • everything is meant to be instead of random and uninspired
- Miranda = wonder

- The elements
  • fire, air = Ariel
  • water, earth = Caliban
- Prospero 
  • The mage, magician, sorcerer, alchemist
  • Operates in real time, always asking about time
  • Bottom wanting to play all the roles in the play
  • Prospero knows all stories
- What did Gonzalo put in the boat? Books. 

- Memorize Prospero's line: "What seest thou else in the dark backward and abysm of time?"
  • meaning: what else do you remember?
- What does Prospero seek?
  • Forgiveness and redemption rather than revenge
- Caliban's mother, Sycorax:
  • female magic allegory
- What is the echo or pattern in Shakespeare?
  • Prospero is going to put on a wedding and talks to perspective son-in-law about lust. Uses the same words Marina did in Pericles "break not the virgin knot". 
  • interest in virginity and chastity
  • Venus and Cupid are excluded of the blessing of the sacrament of marriage.
  • Iris speaks about Venus and Cupid. "Be not afraid. I met her Deity cutting the clouds towards Paphos and her son dove-drawn with her." What is the echo? 
    • In the poem of Venus and Adonis.  "Holding their course to Paphos, where their queen means to immure herself and not be seen."  
- Anamnesis: remembering from previous reincarnations 
  • Lost without memories, you are your memories
-Stage direction: "Enter certain reapers" - associated with harvest

-Stage direction: "A strange, hollow, and confused noise" 
  • Prospero forgot about Caliban's plot against his life.
- Most sublime moment in Shakespeare: 
  • Prospero: "These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air; and, like the baseless fabric of this vision, the cloud-capped tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great glove itself, yea all which it inherit, shall dissolve, and like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep."
  • It's all a dream, it's all a puppet show
- Trinculo and Stephano distracted by clothes, but Caliban wants Prospero's books.

- Gonzalo: "set it down with gold on lasting pillars" 
  • echo of Othello
- Prospero draws the curtain and Alonso sees his son Ferdinand whom he thought was dead. 

- Play within a play:
  • the whole play
  • the masque
- How to set Prospero free from the play?
  • Do you believe? If you do clap your hands. (Peter Pan)

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