Experience #3—Drama                                    Name:____________________

Winter 2001    

J. Roth

 

TAKE-HOME EXPERIENCE (50 points possible)

DUE IN MY OFFICE NO LATER THAN WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21, 2001 AT 2:30

ABSOLUTELY NO EXCEPTIONS

 

Directions:  Please put your answers on this handout, writing your answers in ink.  Answers should be to the point, but complete.  You may use any individual resources available, but please do your own work and use your own words.

 

I. Oedipus Rex

 

According to your text, Aristotle suggested that  “the tragic hero is good, though not perfect, and his fall results from his committing what Aristotle calls ‘an act of injustice’ (hamartia) either through ignorance or from conviction that some greater good will be served.  The act is, nevertheless, a criminal one, and the good hero is still responsible for it even if he is totally unaware of its criminality and is acting out of the best of intentions.  Some later critics ignore Aristotle’s insistence on the hero’s commission of a guilty act and choose instead blame the hero’s fall on a flaw in his character or personality” (Perrine 1081). 

 

In either case, then, is Oedipus a tragic hero?  Please answer with at least a healthy paragraph of well-reasoned thought.

 

 

 

 

II. Othello

 

Recall that the classical plot line has these five steps:

 

                       

4.  climax

                        3.  intensification

            2.  complication                                                                        5.  denouement

                                                                                                                        end of plot

1.  exposition

                                                beginning of plot

 

 


Consider Shakespeare’s Othello.  Dig in to the play to find examples for each of the plot-line steps listed above.  For each of the five steps, locate a representative set of lines (3 or 4 lines are enough).  In your answer, first identify the act, scene, lines, and speaker.  Then explain in a few sentences why the lines you chose do, in fact, represent that part of the plot line.

 

An example:  Exposition:   Act____, Scene ____, Lines ____, Speaker ________

 

Justification: In these beginning lines, Iago expresses his anger at Othello for appointing Cassio lieutenant instead of him.  Iago also expresses resentment toward Cassio.  This is exposition because at the opening of the play the audience needs to know Iago’s reasons for revenge in order to understand the actions that will unfold.

 

Exposition:  Act______, Scene _______, Lines ________, Speaker ____________

 

Justification:

 

 

 

 

 

Complication:  Act______, Scene _______, Lines ________, Speaker ____________

 

Justification:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Intensification:  Act______, Scene _______, Lines ________, Speaker ____________

 

Justification:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Climax:  Act______, Scene _______, Lines ________, Speaker ____________

 

Justification:

 

 

Denouement:  Act______, Scene _______, Lines ________, Speaker ____________

 

Justification:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

III.  Hamlet

 

Translating Hamlet:

 

III A. Please translate the following lines as best you can into Modern English:

 

 

The following lines (Act IV, Scene 7, Lines 10-25) are spoken by the king (Claudius).  In this scene, Laertes (Polonius’s son) has just returned from France after hearing of his father’s death at Hamlet’s hands.  Laertes, speaking to the king, asks why the king has not done the obvious to Hamlet—lock him up.  After all, Hamlet has killed an innocent man (Polonius), seems to have gone insane, and may represent a threat to others, including the king.  This is the king’s answer to Laertes’s question.  Please translate it word-for-word, as best as you can.

 

O, for two special reasons,

Which may to you perhaps seem much unsinewed,

But yet to me they’re strong.  The Queen his mother

Lives almost by his looks, and for myself—

My virtue or my plague, be it either which—

She is so conjunctive to my life and soul

That, as the star moves not but in his sphere,

I could not but by her.  The other motive

Why to a public count I might not go

Is the great love the general gender bear him. 

Who, dipping all his faults in their affection,

Work like the spring that turneth wood to stone,

Convert his gives to graces, so that my arrows,

Too slightly timbered for so loud a wind,

Would have reverted to my bow again

But not where I had aimed them.

 

Translation:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

III B. Even more translating Hamlet:

 

Please translate the following lines as best you can into Shakespearean English:

 

Geeze, I really don’t know what to do.  I mean is it better to stick around and suffer all this pain and anger and frustration and stuff?  I mean like I could kill myself and then I wouldn’t have to sweat any of this.  ‘cept if I kill myself to avoid this, what if there really IS a hell?  The word is that God is really tough on people who kill themselves.  Thinking that there really might be a hell and that it might be even worse than here, even as bad as this is, I guess makes most of us choose to stick around.

 

Translation:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

III C: Finally, please translate the following lines as best you can into Modern English:

 

 

1.      Forsooth, methinks my literature instructor hath instructed a bit too much!

 

 

 

 

 

 

2.      Zounds, this experience hath confounded my intellect.

 

 

 

 

 

 

3.      If thy bodkin gleams brightly, then, peradventure, though hast a translucent scabbard.

 

 

 

 

 

4.      But soft, methinks my literature teacher be akin to Jove!

 

 

 

 

 

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