Why Shakespeare ?

Chapter One Definitions

 Act & scene :
• Act : an act is a complete section of a drama, made up of one or more
scenes. An act is a part of a play defined by elements such as rising
action, climax, and resolution.

• scene : a scene normally represents actions happening in one place at

one time, and is marked off from the next scene by a curtain, a blackout,
or a brief emptying of the stage.
 Blank verse & Iambic pentameter
• blank verse unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter, which is the
standard verse unit of Shakespeare’s plays.

• Blank verse is written in iambic pentameter, which is the technical

name for an extraordinarily flexible metrical form that you can see
on just about every page of Twelfth Night: for example,
‘If music be the food of love, play on’

• Iambic pentameter : a line with five major stresses, in the form of

an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one.
Check
this
one
 Classical studies :
• Classical studies : is the conventional name for the academic study of
the ancient cultures of Greece and Rome.

• It reaches back as far as the eighth century BCE (and sometimes

earlier), when Greek civilisation first began to organise itself into city-
states and its population significantly increased .

• all the way through to the slow decline and eventual collapse of the
Roman empire in the fifth century CE.
 Classics :
• it is derived from the Latin word ‘classicus’ meaning of the highest social class.

• it first appeared in English in the 1610s as an adjective meaning ‘ of or

belonging to the highest class’

• by the 1620s it meant ‘ belonging to or characteristic of standard authors of

Greek and Roman antiquity.

• By the early eighteenth century, a classic referred to a ‘ Greek or Roman work

or writer’

• in the middle of the eighteenth century, this meaning extended to any work or
author held to have a similar quality or standing ; an artist or literary production
of the first rank.
 There are two types of classics :

Popular classics & high classics

Popular classics :
• they are felt to exert more wide-ranging influence upon culture either at the time
they first produced or subsequently.

High classics :
• a series and important book that has stood the test of time.
• A treasured repository of shared cultural wisdom or moral understanding to be
passed on down the generations.
 Comic dynamism :
• where different characters often talk at cross purposes, in slightly different
registers or styles of speaking, and frequently with little or no understanding of the
perspectives and desires of the characters they’re talking to.

• This is an important ingredient of Shakespearean comedy and part of what has

given this genre and this particular play its classic status.

• An example : in Act 5, Scene 1, Olivia is waiting to know the truth from the
priest, and the priest gives her a long paragraph instead of saying ' yes, you are
married '
 Cultural capital :
• Cultural capital, broadly, is about the values, knowledge, skills, and ideas that are
valued in a given culture, society, or social group.

• An individual that possesses these values, knowledge, skills, and ideas

• or who understands them and can develop some of them will be more able to
thrive and succeed in that culture or group.
 Drama :

• Drama : also known as a play,

• is a form of literature written intentionally for theatrical performance.

• Most of the parts in a drama are consisted of scripted dialogues, or only the
acting in some cases, between characters intended to be performed by actors
and actresses to move the story along.

• An example : Hamlet by Shakespeare is a drama

 Gender :

• gender : whereas ‘sex’ is a biological category, with ‘female’ and ‘male’ being associated
nouns,

• ‘gender’ refers to socially constructed and/or accepted notions of associated behavior,

which vary across time and space.

• An example : Twelfth Night deeply explores the concepts of gender, masking, and role-
play through the characters of Viola and Cesario. After beginning to role play as the
character Cesario, Viola is described to be an effeminate man by many in the cast; his
voice is illustrated by Orsino to be “as the maiden’s organ” and Cesario is “all semblative a
woman’s part”.

Al Batool says : This is not the truth, this is what they want
you to believe as the truth. ( do not mention this in exams )
 Literary canon :

• The literary canon serves as an important standard for determining the quality and
long-term value of any given work.

• Even texts and writers who are not specifically considered canonical are measured
against the broader canon to determine their literary value.

• the literary canon is a technical term used to describe a set of texts that serve as a
recognized standard against which other writers and texts are judged.

• For example, Twelfth Night is considered one of the Literary Canon.

 Martin Droeshout :
• the portrait of Shakespeare by Martin Droeshout adorns the title page of the 1623 First Folio, the
first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays.

• Droeshout’s image (it’s an engraving, a portrait that has been incised onto a flat surface to
produce a template that could be reused) is in many ways a strange picture.

• Droeshout was only 15 years old when Shakespeare died in 1616, and 22 when the First Folio
was published, so it’s likely that this portrait wasn’t drawn from the life with Shakespeare in the
room, but was instead copied from another image.
• Droeshout’s image of Shakespeare is flat and without psychological depth.
 The first folio 1623 :

• The First Folio is the first collected edition of William

Shakespeare's plays,

• collected and published in 1623, seven years after his death.

• Folio editions were large and expensive books that were seen as prestige
item.

• Droeshout was only 15 years old when Shakespeare died in 1616, and 22
when the First Folio was published, so it’s likely that this portrait wasn’t drawn
from the life with Shakespeare in the room, but was instead copied from
another image.
 Metaphor & simile :
• Metaphor : metaphor figurative language where one thing is
described in terms of another.
• An example : Characters in Twelfth Night frequently use metaphorical
language to talk about love and desire. Orsino is using music as a metaphor
that feeds the appetite of love. 'If music be the food of love, play on'.

• simile : simile is a figure of speech comparing two unlike things with the
usage of ‘like’ or ‘as’.
• An example : Orsino said' But [my love] is as hungry as the sea
 Periphrasis & circumlocution :
• periphrasis is a rhetorical figure of speech for saying something in a roundabout
way. ‘using as many words as possible’

• An example : such as the priest's dialogue in the climax, when Olivia wants to
know the truth about her marriage to Cesario ‘ actually it is Sebastian’
 Soliloquy :
• A soliloquy is a speech made by one character alone on stage, directed at the
audience.

• A soliloquy is a literary device, most often found in dramas, in which a character

speaks to him or herself, relating his or her innermost thoughts and feelings as if
thinking aloud.

• An example : Viola’s soliloquy in Twelfth Night, when she realizes that Olivia loves
her, she starts to show her thoughts.
https://youtu.be/mzP8OzbGxmA?si=xPg8V7l3ezjrnfM2

Copy this and paste it in google to watch Viola’s soliloquy ☝

Best regards