It's been so long since we've done a blog I think I've forgotten how. For the past month, my life (as probably most AP Lit students') has been dominated by Hamlet. It took quite a bit of time to get through the text as a class, as it is a four hour play. We also did three forums that had to do with the play. All three of the forums provided a different perspective of Hamlet. My favorite post was the one on Ophelia. Ophelia is by far my favorite character in the entire play. The way I read it, I saw her as intelligent and capable. As one of two females in the entire work, Ophelia has to be strong-willed in order to go up against men like Polonius, Laertes, and Hamlet, who dominate her life. For this reason, I really respect her and also disliked Rimbaud's poem on her. He seemed to see her as more of a gentle flower, which I did not agree with at all.
Following our first read, we were assigned to annotate Hamlet in its entirety, a pretty daunting task. However, it didn't end up being as bad as I thought. I've found that it has become a lot easier to understand Shakespearean language after a few months in AP Lit. I remember when I read Romeo and Juliet my freshman year, it was extremely difficult to understand anything that was happening without the teacher explaining it in detail. In Lit/Comp 9, we did quite a few activities to help us get a better grasp of the language, but none of it seemed to stick until this year.
Once we finished annotating, we watched the David Tennant version of Hamlet. We also watched bits and pieces of the Branagh [aka Holmes (shoutout to first hour)], Hawke, and Olivier versions. The best one by far, in my opinion, was the Tennant film. I especially loved how they portrayed Hamlet and Ophelia's madness through the wardrobe and sets. We also read and annotated two more articles on Hamlet. The first one talks about Hamlet's predecessor, Histoires Tragiques. According to Devlin, the end of this version involves Hamlet wrapping people in tapestries and lighting them on fire, which I think would be a far better conclusion.
In non-Hamlet related news we did even more multiple choice practice for the AP exam. Each time we do it, though, I feel like I'm getting more answers wrong. The part I'm struggling the most in is understanding the vocabulary that is used in the questions and answers. Maybe I could use a little more direction, or maybe I'm not getting enough bananas in my diet. Either way, I could use some work.
Alex,
ReplyDeleteI also disliked Rimbaud's poem. It was almost like he read an entirely different play than the one we read. His interpretation of Ophelia's character was, at least in my opinion, completely wrong. It's interesting that you mentioned that you find it much easier to understand Shakespearean language, as that's something that I also noticed when I was annotating Hamlet. I completely agree with you on the Tennant version being the best. I also think that Tennant was by far the best Hamlet out of the four we saw. However, I don't know if any ending of Hamlet can ever be superior to Kenneth's magnum opus. That ending is absolutely perfect in every way, from sword throwing to Osric randomly dying to Hamlet feeding Claudius poison.
This is a pretty good response post. Great job!
Alex, good post, I like how you identified the pieces of the class/material you were struggling with. Luckily, not knowing the vocab is surface-level issue and fixable. I agree with you that Ophelia is not so pure and weak, but she does seem to consistently bend- or surrender herself completely- to the will of her male superiors such as Hamlet and Polonius, both of whom manipulate her on several different occasions. Of course, she cannot “stand up” to these men: if she did, she would have been ostracized and possibly exiled. Understanding Shakespeare is a thousand times easier now than it used to be for me as well, especially those plays written in Shakespeare’s dark period. Good stuff overall, I don’t see any criteria missing. I would perhaps expand on why you liked the Tennant version more than the others; it seems to me that a lot of people liked it the most simply because we watched all of it and we watched it first (this is not a shot at you by the way).
ReplyDeleteAlex, nice job in this post! I do agree with you; is been an extremely long time since we last had to write a post. It's good and bad. I never really thought of Ophelia from the feminine perspective. It is interesting to see how Shakespeare is making her seem smaller compared to the males and how they're only two females in the play, both who are dominated by men. However, I feel as though on the outside, ophelia is very soft, like the feeling of warm wick on your body but on the inside she's hard as rock, like a succulent, tender, juicy, moist, steak.
ReplyDeleteI feel as though the language of Shakespeare is like any other language one learns; it is difficult at first, but with practice, fluency and retention comes.
As with the movie, I agree with Cal. I liked the Tennant version because we saw it first and we saw the entire movie