English 339 Fall 2011

Some possible topics for paper #2—on Twelfth Night

Due as email Word.doc attachment on Wednesday November 2 (note the new due date, as indicated on the current syllabus)

1. One of the topics on the midterm exam study guide that you didn’t write about on the exam

2. The way one scene in the text moves from beginning to middle to end

3. The treatment of one short segment in either the English 510 Players production or the Trevor Nunn production. This can involve setting, costume, stage business, camera work, and actors’ performances, including voice, facial expression and movement. What possibilities in the script are selected and enhanced by this performance? What possibilities in the script are unrealized?

For example, Trevor Nunn's intercuts and alterations of Act 2 Scene 4 of the script: [on YouTube]

during text’s 2.3--Part 6, 7:40--8:40 (bathtub)
following text’s 3.1—Part 8, 1:00-4:00 (playing cards)
following text’s 3.3--Part 8, 7:25 to Part 9 5:06 (The barn and the cliffs)

4. One or more elements of mirroring or twinning in the play other than the story of Viola and Cesario

5. Variations on being the object of infatuation

6. Variations on being infatuated or carried away

7. Select one short quotation, interpret some of its meanings, and elaborate its relevance to larger patterns of plot, character or theme. For example:

a. “And thus the whirligig of time brings in its revenges.” 5.1.579

b. “And since you called me master for so long

Here is my hand; you shall from this time be

Your master’s mistress.” 5.1.326-8

d. “Do I stand there? I never had a brother

Nor can there be that deity in my nature

Of here and everywhere.” 5.1.226-8

e. "Disguise I see thou art a wickeness
Wherein the pregnant enemy does much
How easy is it for the proper false
In women's waxen hearts to set their forms." 2.2.27-30