July 3rd

Tuesday morning began with sweet bread (not sweet breads) and coffee and then a lecture by Jay Hallio, of The U. of Delaware, editor of the Cambridge edition of King Lear,  on "The Tragic Dimension of Shakespeare's Comedies."  To summarize briefly, and hopefully not baldly:  Socrates wrote that "The genius of comedy is the same as tragedy," and Elizabethan dramatists agreed, unlike other eras that kept them quite separate.  "Comedy and tragedy are two sides of the same coin."  Shakespeare adds many comic elements to Plautis' tale on which The Comedy of Errors is based.  Hallio then spoke of the "dark shades" of tragedy within many comedies, including: Loves Labour Lost, Midsummer Night's Dream, All's Well that ends Well, Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Comedy of Errors, and Twelfth Night.  He spoke of Portia in Merchant of Venice and Roselyn in As you Like it as adding the comic provenance, and described how tragedy can be averted by kindness or "nobility of mind," as in Orlando rescuing his brother from the snake and the lioness in All's Well.
    Aristotle's equation of fear and pathos engendered by tragedy was evoked, and Hallio said that these same emotions are also evoked by cruel behavior within comedies, such as Mariah's treatment of Malvoio in Twelfth Night, and his embittered close of the play: "I'll be revenged on the whole pack of ye."  Then the song which ends the play, "And the rain it raineth every day," reminds us that there is sadness within the very texture of life.  Shakespeare's plays mingle tragedy and comedy with complexity.  In the q&a session afterwards we spoke of different determinations of genre, such as if it ends in death it is tragedy and if marriage, a comedy, but Hallio said that traditionally it was the rank of the portrayed characters that would determine the genre.  He said that moth include violence, revenge, and forgiveness / penitence, and that tragedy always has a "What if?".

     In the seminar discussion with Hallio afterwards we spoke of ways to teach The Comedy of Errors, and thought students would connect well with the theme of control vs. freedom, the beating and bullyng of the Dromios, the hands off parenting.  I liked the idea of asking them to imagine they were in a foreign land (as some 20% of the students at my school are) and that they were mistaken for someone very successful and got to benefit from all that person's respect and even possessions.  We also spoke of a method called "cut scene" where students work to cut the text as a means to help deal with challenges presented by the language.
     In our curriculum session we got our Shakespeare Toolkits, and worked with choral responses.  (At first I had trouble with this, as I didn't really get that we weren't supposed to stand out.)  We also got a list of "Don'ts" which probably included at least one thing each of us has been doing, so it was humbling.  It all comes down to:  Perform it!  Mike evoked Peggy O'Brian, who we will meet soon, who said to start with the words.  Then ask, What is happening in the scene in this line?  And, How do the words work so we know what's happening?  We practiced saying the word "O" and adding both tone and stress.

     Exhausted, many of us watched a bit of junk reality TV and ordered Chinese food.  I then retired to my room to watch The Game of Thrones, two episodes of which had just arrived via Netflix, and then to bed, to sleep 'til 10 as the 4th was a holiday.