John Kelly over at Shakespeare Confidential gave me something to think about this week. Some things, actually.
‘I want to be an air hostess – what’s Shakespeare got to do with me?’
Possibly the first and most significant was about what I wanted to do with this fledgling blog, now that I seem to have some impetus and a little momentum.
If this is the first time you’ve read an essay here, please take a look at this post before proceeding.
This essay was set as the first assignment for my KS5 class this year – on the OCR specification. Student submissions were therefore marked on the following criteria:
Richard’s unscrupulous ambition and misogyny is balanced, in Act 1 scenes 1 and 2, by his facility with words and mischievous, almost devilish sense of humour.
AO1: Personal Response (30%)
AO2: Analysis of Writer’s Methods (40%)
AO3: Understanding of the role and influence of Context (10%)
AO5: Exploring different interpretations of the text (20%)
“There is as much to admire as there is to loathe about Richard.”
How far and in what ways do you agree with this statement? [Act 1, scenes 1/2: 1,000 words]
It’s almost impossible for me to set an assignment on Shakespeare without producing some kind of model answer … it’s a compulsion rather than a chore.
So this blog will increasingly be a place to find:
Macbeth feels like one of the more memorably visual plays … which makes choosing a quotation for a poster all the more difficult.
I’ve ignored this blog for too long.
Here’s a second classroom poster. Now it’s up in my room I’ve had a few questions about it …
My classroom badly needs some decoration over the summer: picture very little on the walls apart from wax-like dribbles of blue and white-tack that have melted in the heat (and which look horribly like chewing gum) …
Did anyone else watch the BBC’s RSC Live show last night?
I’ve never really engaged with the question of whether or not Shakespeare actually authored the plays attributed to him – until this last week. Sure, I knew there were various claimants, but I shrugged ‘the authorship question’ off as unimportant. That I can no longer do. In fact, ‘a mote it is to trouble the mind’s eye’ …
The run-up to the BIG anniversary has been an eye-opener.
I like an insane conspiracy theory as much as the next person. Ask the class who I recently introduced to the suggestion that the Apollo landings were staged in Area 51. That truly was a lesson that people will remember in years to come: it resulted in conversations – and arguments – at home, debate in other subjects (especially Physics, apparently), and with one pupil being literally dragged away from her research homework to get to bed (as her mum told me in the local shop).
The Boar's Head, Eastcheap 