Peer Evaluation: Joanna Barker

Number of Posts: 18!

Quality of Posts: She makes great posts, and they all seem to have good substance. Some of her posts are longer and full of text, and others have nice pictures, videos, or other supplementary stuff that keeps her blog interesting, engaging, and educational. She posts frequently, and she is able to make the posts beneficial and meaningful, which is hard to do.

A Strength: Joanna has maintained great focus on her learning objectives. She labels her posts, and keeps an organized list of all the labels and how many blog posts include each label. I think it is also helpful that she has her most popular posts displayed on her blog; it's a quick and easy way to find a few of the most interesting or commented-on posts. Good stuff!

An Improvement: The only suggestions I have for improvement are these: replying to others' comments and including links to outside articles. Joanna does reply to many peer comments on her posts, but there are many other comments that she could reply to and engage in nice conversation that could lead to more learning. Also, some posts don't link to much outside information. It's hard to find improvements, though, because the blog is great! Nicely done.

Mid-Term Evaluations

It's been a wild first half, and here's the report:

Learning Outcomes:

I feel like I have succeeded at several of my learning outcomes, and I have fallen short at some of them. I know that I have gained a great deal of Shakespeare literacy--especially considering where I started. I have read Henry V, Taming of the Shrew, Romeo and Juliet, and the Tempest, and this has expanded my Shakespeare knowledge and familiarity sevenfold. I feel like I have met my goals regarding Shakespeare literacy.

I haven't done as well on my second goal, which is to analyze Shakespeare critically. I haven't dug as deeply into his writings as I had hoped, so I will focus on that for the second half of the course. I want to have his writings under a analytical microscope; I want to discover new things about these plays, why they were written how they were, what was going on in the world at the time, and how they have been received since then. I will improve at my analytical efforts.

The other two learning outcomes involve engaging Shakespeare creatively and sharing him meaningfully. I believe I have done fairly well in these ways. I have not yet done a performance of Shakespeare stuff, but that will be done soon, thanks to my classmates. I have enjoyed especially my findings on the Taming of the Shrew, connecting it to John Wayne's McLintock. I also enjoyed sharing my findings on Romeo and Juliet in this post; I learned a lot from watching the modern adaptation of the play and seeing performances done by today's filmmakers and rock musicians alike.

All of my research and learnings have been based off of the actual plays written by the Man himself, off of the introductions to the plays in The Necessary Shakespeare, off of SparkNotes.com, and off of a variety of random websites, articles relating to Shakespeare and his works. I have really enjoyed (and have tried to connect my ideas to) a couple of my fellow classmates' blogs, including Whitney, Brooke R., Max,and Claire M. I thank them for their studies and their posts, as well as several others in the class that have found great things about Shakespeare.

My study of Shakespeare has been more engaging than any other study I have done on Shakespeare in my life. It has been most interesting to search for media representations of Shakespeare's works, modern adaptations, and unique performances of his stuff. I think my pattern has been to look at modern adaptations of his plays, but I want to tweak that and turn it into a deeper, more thought-provoking study. That is one thing that I will definitely try to improve upon for the second half of this course. I did the most studying on the Taming of the Shrew, and I would like to extend that until the end of the class and dig into more interesting aspects of the play. I also believe that these practices of study and research can benefit me as I search for interesting ideas and methods for being an English teacher in the future. I want to keep things interesting for my students and I want to know how to find cool things on the internet. This class has helped me with that.

I have done a good job at looking at modern representations of Shakespeare's plays, and I have also stretched myself to connect his works to other performances and ideas. I know that I need to do more in-depth study, analyzing, researching, and posting of thought-provoking and meaningful topics. I need to post more often, but also post more meaningfully. This needs the most attention for the remainder of the course.

In addition to the names listed above, regarding positive peer influence in this class, I should thank Cara C., Sarah B., and Johnny S., for their influence on my studies this semester. Cara and Sarah both helped me get into the class at the beginning by watching Henry V with me and talking about the movie. My fellow Johnny in the class has given me good ideas in class for studying Shakespeare creatively; he has shared his findings and has led me in good directions for my own findings. Thank you all!

So I have done some good things so far, but I need to do more, more often, and more meaningfully. Let's make it happen!!

Poor Prospero

Now my charms are all o'erthrown,

And what strength I have's mine own,

Which is most faint: now, 'tis true,

I must be here confined by you,

Or sent to Naples. Let me not,

Since I have my dukedom got

And pardon'd the deceiver, dwell

In this bare island by your spell;

But release me from my bands

With the help of your good hands:

Gentle breath of yours my sails

Must fill, or else my project fails,

Which was to please. Now I want

Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,

And my ending is despair,

Unless I be relieved by prayer,

Which pierces so that it assaults

Mercy itself and frees all faults.

As you from crimes would pardon'd be,

Let your indulgence set me free .

This is the final soliloquy from Prospero in The Tempest, and it reveals how conflicted and restricted Prospero felt. He laments the loss of magic and the feeling of bondage he is experiencing. I couldn't help but feeling some sympathy for the man; his emotions seem so real and true to even our day here in the 21st Century.

Prospero has one thing on me, since I can't quite control the elements, but he does feel a lot of things that I've felt: anger, self-pity, blaming others, desire to be in charge of others, etc. "The Necessary Shakespeare" described Prospero's plight in a nice way: "He must overcome the vengeful impulse he experiences toward those how have wronged him...he seems even sexist and racist in his arrogating to himself the right and responsibility to control others in the name of values they may not share." I thought that was a nice analysis of the protagonist Prospero from the Tempest.

As a side note, some say that this epilogue is a representation of Shakespeare's own feelings, as it may have been the last play he wrote by himself. Any comments from my fellow Shakespeare bloggers?

Romeo Lives On!

I watched the 1996 version of Romeo + Juliet starring Leonardo DiCaprio, and I thought it was kind of weird. However, it reminded me why this Shakespeare play is still around in popular media: the ideas, story, characters, and conflicts are as real today as they were back when the bard wrote the play. Love, family, feud, battle, death, but especially love.

The movie used the dialogue from the original play. This is what caught my attention, and it got me into the movie. My feelings towards using the original dialogue changed throughout the movie. At first, it made the story seem kind of weird. People don't really talk like that nowadays! The Capulet's and Montague's were at a gas station talking really weird and pulled out guns (made by the "Sword" company, so they could call them swords and keep the original text) and started shooting each other. However, as the movie progressed, I realized something: the original text fit perfectly with the story represented on this modern stage! It opened my eyes to the fact that Romeo and Juliet lives on in so many different ways in our society even today. Shakespeare was wise enough to write about topics that touch the human race, have always touched it, and will probably continue until the end of time.

For your enjoyment, here is a YouTube video of the rock band "Killers" playing a song about Romeo and Juliet:

Gnomeo and Juliet

For those of you not knowing what to do on your Friday night--choosing between Shakespeare and a night on the town can be so difficult--worry no more!

Today is the opening night for Gnomeo and Juilet, a modern adaptation of the play with almost the same name. This version features lawn gnomes as the actors. I don't know if I can get myself to watch this, since I'm still scared of lawn gnomes from the Goosebumps television show, but maybe I can man up and check it out!

Here is the movie trailer:

Romeo, Romeo, Why Choose Romeo??

I am reading Romeo and Juliet this week; I haven't read it for a good 9 or 10 years, and I wanted to get back into it and research in depth regarding the play. My big question is this: why is it so popular--maybe even the most popular Shakespeare play of all? I want to, once again, look at a modern presentation of the play, so I am going to watch the 1996 film adaptation of the play starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

In the movie, the Montague's and Capulet's are represented by two major business empires, and they fight with guns instead of swords. I heard that BYU's theater department did a Romeo and Juliet play based in the "Gilded Age," and I'm curious to see how that play was received and compare it to this modern film adaptation. Did anybody go see that play last semester? What were your thoughts?

Shakespeare vs. John Wayne: Continued

I watched Mclintock last night, and it was actually really easy to find similarities to Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew. It starts with the leading lady. Her name in the play is Katharine; in the movie? Katherine. She is a wild woman, uses short, snappy responses, and is particularly stubborn and ornery with G.W. Mclintock, her husband (played by John Wayne). In one scene, their housekeeper says something to Katherine, and she looks at Mclintock with disgust and says, "Are you going to stand there with a stupid look on your face while the hired help insults your wife?" This reminded me of Katherine in Taming of the Shrew; her responses are so feisty and biting. For example, in the first act of the play, Petruchio says, "Good morning, Kate, for that's your name, I hear," to which she responds, "Well have you heard, but something hard of hearing. They call me Katharine that do talk of me."

The western movie was all about Katherine being stubborn, feisty, shrewish, and especially short towards her husband, G.W. Mclintock. It also shows a lot of the interaction these two had, and although they were already married at the beginning of the movie (in contrast to Petruchio and Katharine), I couldn't help but make connections between the two performances.

Wild Women!

While diving into Taming of the Shrew this week, I have been thinking a little bit about the idea of a man having to "tame" his wife or potential wife. Of course, for Petruchio, this was initially due do his desire for wealth, but he eventually became attracted to Kate for her colorful personality. Why is this?

And why am I so attracted to the same thing in my fiancee? That's something I might want to think about.

Anyway, the same transformation occurs with John Wayne and his fiery shrew of a woman in "McClintock," so here is a clip from the classic western film loosely based upon Shakespeare's original Taming. If you don't have six minutes to sit and watch, skip forward to the final minute to see the muddy showdown:

It's a real compliment to Shakespeare to say that, centuries later, his ideas would be revisited in a country western film with a man like John Wayne.