When the feeling's gone and you can't go on...

Hi there

So it's wall-to-wall tragedy at the moment! We talked a bit about WHY tragedy has been such an important part of culture for so long - what exactly is there to ENJOY about a tragedy? Something that we will need to talk more about later. And I asked you to read the tragedy booklet I gave you and think about the questions on the back page - for discussion next week.

We've also started Hamlet, and we talked a bit about what we expect to LEARN from studying a Shakespeare play in detail. The list we came up with was something like this:

1. How writers (i.e. Shakespeare in this case) use language and structure to convey ideas
2. How literary texts (i.e. Hamlet in this case) give a REPRESENTATION of society and individuals within that society.
3. How readers make INTERPRETATIONS of texts that they read, in this case a complex literary text
4. How the MEANINGS of literary texts might change over time, and in particular how HAMLET might have been understood in Shakespeare's time

As we read through / listen to / watch the play, you will need to keep notes on aspects of all those topics, as well as trying to keep track of the characters and plot of the play. We'll talk more about this next week.

Our discussion on Act One Scene One focused on (1) the war which is being prepared, and what we learn about the relationship between Norway and Denmark, and (2) the Ghost of old Hamlet, and the Christian context in which the ghost is presented, with the image of the cock representing Christ and the Ghost representing the Devil.

Someone also pointed out that it was odd that the characters had Italian names although the play is set in Denmark: a very good point. The references to Rome and Julius Caesar are also part of the Italian / Classical framework of the play. At this point in the Renaissance, the influence of Italy on artists, writers and thinkers in Northern Europe was huge.

Mr Snapper