English Language and Literature Commons^™

What Happens (And Doesn't) In Hamlet (And Who Cares?), Joanne E. Gates

Presentations, Proceedings & Performances

This lecture, sponsored by Sigma Tau Delta, uses the classic text by John Dover Wilson, What Happens in Hamlet, to initiate some important considerations on appreciating and teaching Hamlet. Attached as addenda 3 is a Handout which includes the list of soliloquies, keyed to act, scene, lines, as recorded in both the Riverside 2^nd edition and Norton 3^rd edition texts.

Wilson often gravitates to conundrums of the text. Is Hamlet fearing his own mental instability when he warns Marcellus and Horatio that he may put an "antic disposition" on? Why does Shakespeare give us two versions …

Teaching Titus Andronicus In Order To Re-Examine Shakespeare's Evolution Of The Tragic Form, Joanne E. Gates

Presentations, Proceedings & Performances

This paper revisits classroom strategies of two decades ago and the conference presentation that developed from them. Critics have come to regard Shakespeare's early tragedy Titus Andronicus as more than an early and inferior drama or one whose excess of violence makes it flawed. The early play merits attention for its insights in how Shakespeare evolved to write his mature tragedies Hamlet and Othello. A class in the Early Plays of Shakespeare (EH 403) usually studies the mature tragedies early in the semester, then revisits them with more insight after coverage of Titus Andronicus. Central to classroom debate is …

Alt Wars Of The Roses: A Guide To The Women In Shakespeare's First Tetralogy (Especially Richard Iii) For Fans Of Philippa Gregory's White Queen Series, Joanne E. Gates

Presentations, Proceedings & Performances

Since The Other Boleyn Girl made such a splash, especially with its 2008 film adaptation starring Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson, novelist Philippa Gregory has turned out book after book of first person female narratives, historical fiction of the era of the early Tudors and the Cousins’ War. (Gregory has an aversion to calling it "Wars of the Roses" but seems to be the sole voice against that classification.) With the film series of The White Queen released in 2013, we have what some consider a fuller pop culture alternative perspective on the women who intersect with the plays that …