1. MAAN class plan--September 93
2. Class I
1. to 12:15/1:45--attendance and seating chart; add forms
2. to 12:20/1:50-- Go see film; relation of viewing film to reading; reading fills in spaces of film; my enjoyment of film second time and after reading much more than previously
3. transition from first class
1. to12:30/2:00--video scene from HV and discussion
2. to12:40/2:10--metatheatrical THEMES:
1. plots and play; "Pleasant'st angling is to see the fish...greedily devour the treacherous bait"--joys of treachery; garden scenes especially; masks; tricks to reverse tricks; audience; Don Pedro staging comedy: II,iii, 310
2. role playing; masks and identities--change; stages of life; many parts
3. making and unfolding ERROR; that's time and story; some biting error...strange misprision...need for a test for the princes and Claudio; false death [another rite of passage"die to live"] (102)
4. to 12:50/2:20--overall plot outlines--U shaped plot of comedy; reverse U for tragedy
1. large pattern of plot--"Much Ado about Nothing":
1. Act I--false plots; Hero and Claudio vs. BB as lovers
2. Act II--ist plot resolved; plot to get BB and Don John's plot
3. Act III--both plots thicken and start resolving
4. Act IV--Don John's and BB plot completed; tragic and comic reversals; new plots hatched
5. Act V--Leonato's plot to forgive and teach Claudio by substituting another Hero
2. other large pattern: character change--recognition and reversal of couples:
1. heroic and cloudy become deluded and turn love to hate; those who apparently hate give in to love; passage of life stage; new roles of adulthood in marriage
5. to1:00/2:30--discussion of Acts I and II--specific passages
1. establishing setting and kind of society: party time; aristocrats; wooing; boys club and girls club--fraternity and sorority; country house; villa--film's doing this
1. bare buns; audience applause; underlying languor and anxiety
2. Bea's malicious gossip about Ben
3. Leonato and Pedro's excess courtesy vs. B and B's sparring
4. Ben and Claudio: love vs. bachelordom; mysogyny of Ben vs. Claudio's courtliness [to be reversed]
5. Cl. falls in love; Don John's malice; cf. Don John; "Cupid's crafty arrow made/ That only wounds by hearsay.
6. Bea and Hero about obedience and marriage II,i, 50
7. the masquerade party/dance--image for society--people hiding behind masks to tell truth; B and B can only communicate when they're hiding; indirect rather than direct communication; prince as stand-in; all that leads to confusion; Claudio as Benedick hears Don John's slander II,i, 170--errors; her stabbing with words--II.1.245; then he runs away; her pain II.1. 278; more gossip about Ben.and about Bea. All Claudio's courting is public
6. to 1:30/3:00 the garden scenes, II, iii and III,i
1. 1. arrangement onstage
1. Benedick hidden; we watch him watching them and them watching him watch them
2. 2. Ben's soliloquy--lack of self-knowledge; marvelling about transformation of self; lack of integrity; bragging about his resistance; he hides trying to get best of Claudio and mock him
3. 3. Song: deceit, inconstancy, inconsistency, fraud and celebration--Branach's use of it; beautiful lyricism vs. cynical words--modern example: Down by the Ohio
1. Judgement of song:
1. Ben's double reaction: divine air and sheep's guts--Shakespeare on love
2. Heavy courtesy between Balth and Pedro; Balth's false modesty; love itself is deception--wooing is false flattery--wordplay on not, note, noting and nothing--cf. title
1. Balth's false modesty, Pedro's praise and Ben's false condemnation [it moves him]
4. 4. the trick begins--loud voice vs. low voice; we're in on it; and Ben's reaction; bait the hook
1. issue of counterfeiting; appearance vs. reality; counterfeit vs. real--cf. Benedick's opening speech
2. Ben's desire to believe and proof to himself (125)
3. hearsay: Leonato has heard daughter say Bea's in love; negating all outward evidence of hatred shown to Ben. They gossip flatteringly about Ben
5. 5. Ben alone biting; he reverses self fully; the world must be peopled; what he said no longer counts; transformed perception;
6. 6. beautiful entrance of Bea to call him to dinner. She doesn't know what's up; he wont fight; she wants to--expression of Emma Thomson at this moment--puzzlement, contempt and disappointment
1. his misconstrual of everything she says; meanings elastic; confirming his misconception; misprision; reinterpretation--cf. Claudio; perception alters; the interfusing of perceiver and perceived.
1. Dialogue of BB: she expects banter; he dotes; she converts his doting to chafing; he converts her chafing to doting
7. 7. Benedick's literary interpretation: construing her text
8. 8. no big break here; her scene parallel; and ends with the film parallel of two of them in love; he in fountain; she on swing.
3. Class II
1. quiz
2. characters and character development
3. language in specific passages
4. Class III
1. Announcements:
1. Othello here Monday night; popcorn and snacks--or at their convenience
2. Tuesday paper #1 on Much Ado
2. IV,i 254-end--post wedding scene:
1. general questions
1. Class: notice what they did; what liked
2. Cast: how did they feel the part; being someone else; did saying the words, language help
3. what cues provided by script;
4. ask what they had trouble with;
2. specific moves
1. Beatrice on floor, crying
2. compassion for her; vulnerability; he goes on knee
3. her crying; both down and confess love in her tears
4. she gets up at I confess nothing; he gets up at I will swear by it
5. face to face: he grabs her at "I protest"
6. she breaks into laughter at God forgive me
7. he laughs
8. full yielding and clinch 285
9. Do anything--all lovey
10. Kill Claudio: very clear
11. He drops clinch; shock double take
12. She turns away at "you kill me"
13. He comes back at tarry; holds her
14. she struggles; he wont let go even at we'll be friends first
15. She breaks free at fight with mine enemy (294)
16. She paces stage in fury; he follows
17. She crosses in front of him at 311 cutting off his line
18. Chase continues; she breaks from anger to tears of frustration again at a woman with grieving; then tries to leave and he grabs her hand to stop her.
19. she places it on his sword, he yields
20. she places it on her "heart" on yea, as sure
21. He gets enthusiastic; kisses hand; says he'll leave; the kisses her after, so think of methen her heart
22. she exits last after time with audience
3. what does it mean to construct reality like this out of words, signs, moves, gestures
3. Wedding scene: crossing of Double plot; premature conclusion
1. (Neely)Broken nuptials--anxieties about marriage destroys simple romance; destruction rebuilds ideal concept--death and sacrifice required; change--Beatrice description of marriage as wooing, wedding and repentance 2.1.63--to the point today given divorce rates.
2. Ben: this looks not like a nuptial
1. Marriage as a trial--Pedro's testimony--confessed vile encounters a thousand times in secret (ridiculous)--catechizing; error and misprision
1. catechizing and interrogation; fallacious evidence in everybody's testimony: eyewitness, hearsay, blushes; error and misprision; like Dogberry's trial
1. Shame and death; foul, tainted flesh; rage in savage sensuality; Leonato's railing and disgust; daughterly unchastity; male preoccupation with female chastity
2. Claudio: Truth--"Stand I here?" Taking illusion seriously; Claudio's glory in being in control; revulsion against woman; leaves with Pedro not bride; who gives whom? Issue of virginity
3. Don John prissiness
3. A Church; role of Friar--official ritual; pushed out of way; retakes control as conscious hoax; Shakespeare's repeated view of religious ritual as theatrical make believe: as if; but very therapeutic; leading Leonato out
1. call me a fool; experience(165); rites, ostentation; dream I; death and rebirth; operation of imagination 224; otherwise reclusive and religious life; patience and endurance
1. church's treatment of sexual abuse
2. does it work--does Claudio miss her?
3. does Friar know if she's virgin or not?
2. Benedick's uncertainty; Beatrice's faith
3. Claudio's failure of romantic faith buttresses Benedick's
4. my wedding picture
4. Conclusion
1. Leonato's further self pity; now about Hero being belied; his reputation smirched
2. Age vs. Youth--Antonio and Leonato worked up about death of Hero, following idea of Friar; get carried away with play and plot; critique of youth
3. Benedick wont yield to the Boys club wit or gossip--he's in earnest; Claudio actually relieved to be free of marriage pressure 5.1.183 ff
4. Borachio's confession; Claudio and Pedro feel true regret; they are fools and clods--245
5. Ritual undoing of the sin; placing it on Don John; exoneration of Margaret; revenge dies
6. Benedick messes with Margaret and then with Beatrice in 5.2
7. Ritual funeral scene; poetic epitaph; rhyme resurrects
1. Three "deaths" engender comic reconciliation
1. Hero's
1. satisfies lover's desire for revenge while alleviating fear of infidelity; relief and guilt change slander to remorse; lover is freed from pain of desire and fear of losing her; can reidealize her
2. women risk or experience death or mock death as ultimate form of submission; friar's plan doesn't work until proof of Hero's fidelity is provided; her will is destroyed; faith in her requires ultimate sacrifice
2. Claudio's penance; giving up his will to the father and the woman; he'll have faith in anyone
3. Benedick
1. antidote to mysogyny and scepticism: he'll risk his life and his male friends for love and in testimony of faith in Hero and Beatrice; a hero of romance
4. Beatrice also has to die: 2.3.174: she will die if he woo her not and she will die ere she will make her love known
5. Second marriage more tentative than first; marriage as silliness and masquerade; my wedding picture
8. Masked marriage; there is no truth--as the song suggests; cynical joking between Claudio and Benedick in which he is accused of being a bastard; all men are cuckolds, which ties them together.