Final Evaluation

We did it!! Congratz everyone and well done on your projects. I was quite impressed with the other projects and how well everything turned out. I loved seeing all the artwork and how it related to Hamlet. The music video was exceptionally well done and had so much emotion in it. The play was probably my absolute favorite part. It was very cool to recap on three classic couples in Shakespeare's plays and see how they interacted.

So then to the project that I was part of. All of it was so fun and I really learned a lot about audio recording and editing. Then just figuring how to record specific characters and where the sound should come from in relation to everyone else was definitely an interesting way to analyze the play. We recorded our audio in stereo, so even where the actors stood in relation to the microphone changed the way that the recording sounded. So part of recording was figuring out who had the most important part of the dialogue and closer to the center of the microphones.

So now to the learning outcomes!

1. How have I gained Shakespeare literacy?

I've read some pretty fantastic Shakespeare books that I probably wouldn't have read otherwise. I learned new ways to interpret Shakespeare and how to really delve into the text and relate it to myself. I also saw some pretty fantastic Shakespeare plays. The performance we saw of The Winter's Tale at the beginning of the semester was my first Shakespeare play that I saw performed. It was such a different experience realizing how different interpretations could be conveyed in sets, lighting, and costuming. 

2. How have I analyzed Shakespeare critically?

I didn't blog very consistently towards the end of the semester, but what I did post about King Lear was attempting to understand the psychology of the characters themselves better. I had a post all about familial connections and how Gloucester's difference in treatment between his sons resulted in such a significant difference between Edmund and Edgar. I also enjoyed tracing parallels between Shakespeare's works and other examples of the archetypes Shakespeare portrayed, such as the similarities between Caliban and Grendel.

3. How have I engaged Shakespeare creatively?

Well, the final project was a pretty good example of creatively engaging Shakespeare. Figuring how to record, edit, and how to change things around to sound better or better exemplify characters and themes. Another thing that I did this semester was participate in a performance of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abridged, which helped me see the crucial elements of Shakespeare's plays, then figure out exactly how the short summaries should be portrayed.

4. How have I shared Shakespeare meaningfully?

Our final project was posted on youtube so that anyone wanting to hear it can search for it and find it. Performing in Shakespeare Abridged really helped me reach out to a larger group of people. It helped me reach out to some of my friends. One person who saw us perform had not read a Shakespeare play before. Then after he saw us perform, he started reading Hamlet. I also shared Shakespeare by showing my blog with some of my family members and friends. My roommate is a big fan of Harry Potter so I showed her my blog post about J.K. Rowling's Hermione. Another friend of mine is a fan of Pokemon so I showed him my blog post comparing Ash and Misty with Benedick and Beatrice. I also shared Much Ado About Nothing with my little brother and exposed him to his first Shakespeare play.

To wrap up, I really enjoyed this class. It really forced me to look at Shakespeare in a different way and it was so much fun delving deeper into the plays than I had before gone. I'm definitely going to keep loving Shakespeare!

Sample recordings for a ghosty voice

Hey guys, sorry this post is so late. It's been a busy day. BUT, I've taken one of the ghost's short speeches and played around with a few different effects and stuff that just sounds cool. Check them out! I have a total of three samples for you, less than last time, but they are still pretty cool. Also, check back on Monday for some more samples of the audio recording session we did during class on Thursday!

And one more video as a teaser for a performance of Shakespeare Abridged that some friends and I are doing. The date and time is still somewhat tentative, but we're getting a room through professor Burton.

All right guys, enjoy the samples and happy blogging!

More on the final project and a bit on King Lear and biology

Hey, sorry for not posting this on time again, I'm going to really try and commit to putting my posts together the night before so that I'm SURE that I will post on time. Sorry for the inconvenience and the inconsistency.




So seeing the sound booth yesterday was VERY exciting! I reserved it for this evening so that I can tinker around with the hardware and whatnot in it and figure out how everything works. But there's definitely some hard-core awesome microphones. The major thing is just figuring out how to turn everything on. Once I can do that, the sound should be golden. I also think I'll record a few things and play around with various effects on human voices, so stay tuned for some fun samples on Friday.



Also, our rough cut in the googledoc posted here is finished. Thursday in class, we'll be going over the whole thing, reading through and getting the general feel of the script, possibly do some more cutting, possibly put in more lines.

Children betraying the father is a major theme throughout King Lear, seen both in Gloucester's sons and Lear's daughters. There is a very distinct biological, hormonal bond that ties the father to the child's well-being during gestation. In fact, some sources, like this article, say that the hormonal change causes parenting behavior. Then when the children are born, they form an instant tie with their mother and father, who provide social acceptance and emotional nourishment as well as food and shelter. Then as the child grows older, they can find social acceptance and emotional fulfillment elsewhere, illustrated in Cordelia's line, "Why have my sister's husbands, if they say/ They love you all?" Lear's daughters have by this point found love outside of him and no longer need him, while Lear has given everything to his daughters and is now reliant upon them for his well-being. The parental-child role here has been flip-flopped, and without that spike in hormones, his daughters feel very little obligation to actually take care of Lear, especially when he continues to treat them like his children.

Then in Gloucester's case, he has a rather good relationship with Edgar, who greatly loves his father and, along with Cordelia, is one of the only characters that actually exhibits love for his parent. However, Edmund, whose major difference from Edgar is the identity of his mother. Yet this difference drastically changes the Edmund's place in society as well as his mental health and connection with his father. It is highly unlikely that Gloucester really cared very much for the whore that bore him a son and probably did not spend a lot of time with her during the pregnancy, significantly weakening that hormonal tie. As he says, "I have so often blushed to acknowledge him... and the whoreson must be acknowledged." Due to the expectations of society and his position in it, Gloucester is forced to act as Edmund's father, although I doubt that he was treated with the same love and affection that Edgar was. Edmund's plots against Edgar is less an actual ploy for power as it is a sad, misguided attempt to take Edgar's place and earn his father's love.

Final Project: fun with music and a link for our cut

Hey guys, so I'm posting a little early because we agreed in our group today that I would put together a googledoc for our group to post our cut script. I'm in the audio group, which will be making an hour long audio production of Hamlet. We've figured out the order of the scenes and assigned people to cut specific parts. So for those of you in the group, click here! And if you aren't part of the group and are curious, you can check it out, too.

So one thing that I'm sort of in charge of is the music and sound effects for the recording, which is WAY exciting! I've been playing with a recording of the to be or not to be speech and some background music for it. Unfortunately, the recording I found is rather dull and dry, but that leaves it entirely up to the music to set the tone.

So the following videos are actually audio files containing the crazy stuff I've been doing. In each video, I'll provide a brief description of the background music. Be  sure to let me know what you think of whatever you listen to.


These audio clips will probably not actually be used in the final recording since they are copyrighted, but my roommate has a keyboard with a recording function, but instead of recording a bunch of sample stuff, I'm just using different songs to figure out what kind of tone we want.

The second set of writing in this video is supposed to be talking about how pretty the piano of is and how it sound more classical.

I apologize for the many videos, I know that it isn't very visually appealing. But the project itself is going to be great and I'm very excited for it!

Edmund has daddy issues and an inferiority complex

How would you like it if your dad always introduced you by saying that he was slightly embarrassed of you, but that your mother was a good whore? That's pretty much the way Edmund feels. At the very first, Gloucester seems to be emphasizing the fact that Edmund is his illegitimate son who "must be acknowledged" because his mother was pretty and "there was good sport at his making." Seriously, how could you grow up like that and NOT want to implement some crazy scheme to get your dad to notice you? 

Edmund isn't the only younger brother
living in the shadow of his elder sibling.

So according to this article by Timothy Lin, there are four major causes that can aggravate an inferiority complex: physical defects, mental limitations, social disadvantages, and parental attitudes. These last two are both very applicable to Edmund's situation, especially the latter of the two. Constantly being compared to his older, legitimate brother, who will inherit his father's lands and power, he is forced to face and re-confront the reality that he will never be politically powerful or rich, despite the fact that his father is a powerful earl. Simply because of his illegitimate status, he is socially inferior to his elder brother. Indeed, that is what Edmund focuses on when he gives his initial speech detailing his plans.


Symptoms of inferiority complexes fall into one of two categories: withdrawal tactics and aggressive tactics.  Edmund does not exhibit many withdrawn tendencies, but does show many of the more violent tactics of criticizing others and seeking for attention. In the absence of truly being able to find fault and criticize his brother, Edmund is framing him, making up things to criticize him for. In successfully doing so, he will not only gain what he sees to be his rightful inheritance, but also the love and appreciation of his father.

Catch-up 3: Blog Assessment

Learning Outcomes


Yeah, I think that I've increased my Shakespeare literacy with this class. My major experience with Shakespeare before was rather limited--I hadn't even seen a real Shakespeare play. But since then, I've read four new plays and seen three performances. I've been examining his works for critical elements and themes, and feel like I can confidently discuss his plays.

I definitely feel like, as the semester has progressed, I've been posting more and more in depth analysis of Shakespeare's plays, making comparisons to mythological and, at times, modern parallels. I'm not super-crazy outgoing in our large class discussions, but in out smaller groups, I'm definitely talking.

How have I been engaging Shakespeare creatively? I think that a lot of my blog posts can answer that question. I try to find fun and interesting pictures to enhance my blog and make it more entertaining. Even though I didn't create the pictures in almost all cases, I think I used some of them very creatively. And I've always been able to relate what we are learning back to something that I enjoy.

I think that I may be lacking in the sharing department. I haven't been super consistent with my blogging and lately I've been blogging very late. I'm also not super fantastic at finding the time to post on the blogs of others. However, I do find Shakespeare seeping into my everyday life, and that I've started making references to it to my friends and posting lines that I particularly enjoy on facebook, which opens up the avenue of explanation and elaboration to the people that I talk to.

Self-Directed Learning


Hahaha, measuring learning, something psychologists have been trying to do for centuries.

Well, I definitely feel like the way this particular class is set up, we have to become self-directed learners and be responsible for our own learning. We are given nothing really other than a schedule and a day to have the play read by, but we are not told how to interpret it or think about it. The blogging itself requires that we delve deeper into the text and learn for ourselves what we think a particular line is supposed to mean or how we might envision it. I think that comparing blog posts is a logical way to try and measure our learning in this class, and, if you compare my more recent blog posts with my older posts, you'll find a significant change in thought quality.

Collaborative and Social Learning


I think that Cassie has done a really good job of posting consistently and commenting on other people's blogs. She's certainly the person that has commented most on my blog. Keelan has also made a few comments that has helped forward the point of my post. Brittni doesn't comment much, but she is rather animated in our small group discussions and always has something to say.

I also really like the small group format when we come to class. I don't feel like we interact a lot through our blogs, but I love just having a group to start immediately discussing Shakespeare when I come to class. It's rather fantastic.

Like I said earlier in this post, I reference Shakespeare in social situations, which is way fun because people either ask me to explain it, or just think I'm a genius for knowing random Shakespeare quotes.

Looking Ahead


So I'm actually way excited to get this whole final project thing going. What it seems like so far is that I'll pull some people who want to participate in a production of Shakespeare in non-acting roles. I have two other people from outside of class that are working with me towards the performance of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abridged. If you haven't seen it, it's hilarious. But it would be fantastic to get some people from class involved so that the three of us could focus on learning our lines and getting our blocking down. We were thinking of having a prop master, a costume designer, and a general techie/lighting person to help out the other two and be in control of lighting when we do the final show. It's rather exciting :P

Catch-up 2

So I shared Much Ado About Nothing with two different people. The first person I taught was a friend of mine named Brandon, who lives in my apartment complex. The second was my little thirteen-year-old brother, Cody.


As you can imagine, simply the age differences between these two called for some serious differences in teaching. I had to really tone down the sexual connotations for Cody but could play them up for Brandon. I found it rather difficult to even share one of the major themes (cuckolds and disloyalty) with Cody, simply because he was so young and I didn't want to have to teach him what a cuckold is. Yet Brandon was easier to teach in this respect. Brandon is older than I am, and I didn't need to worry about giving him a talk about birds and bees so he could understand.

However, teaching Cody about the masks was a delight. Cody became enchanted by some of the masks that the characters wore at the masquerade and was very interested in their deeper meanings. For Cody, it was early Halloween. Brandon was interested in the masks, but the themes of mistaken identity that they represented didn't appeal to him as much.


I definitely enjoyed teaching Cody more, even though it was more difficult and I had to leave out some key parts of the story in order to shelter him.