The "Yes, I'm Behind" Wednesday-Friday Post

Wednesday:  We took the first part of the poetry terms quiz.  One person (3rd period) still needs to make it up.  Your scores are posted; most people did very well.  Act I was to have been completed for Thursday.

Thursday:  Students produced a paraphrase of Hamlet's first soliloquy ("O, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt . . ." Scene 2). If you were absent, make that up ASAP.   The rest of the period was to have been spent getting a good start on some "study guide" questions.  Homework was to complete the questions.  That hand-out is linked here:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0ARigzimXmDnvZGZ0dzhmcGhfNTFjdG54eHRnNw&hl=en

Friday:  We looked at Shakespeare's Sonnet XXX ("When to the sessions of sweet silent thought . . . ") as an example of how Shakespeare blurs the line between diction and imagery. By seeing the many examples of financial language (as well as some law terms), we looked at the set-up for the "balance sheet" analogy in which the speaker's thoughts of his friend cancel out the "losses" created by all the memories and experiences which cause pain and dejection.  (If you were absent, just google this sonnet.  I put it on the overhead.)

The carry-over to Hamlet? Start paying attention to imagery accomplished by both word choice and figurative language of all sorts--patterns mentioned today included plant life/vegetation that proliferates as weeds (even rotten weeds), the decay of all flesh, and the idea of disease/infection.  In other words, there is widespread corruption:  "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark." This is one piece of one small area . . . we will re-visit other aspects set up in Act I, but as you read Act II, try to see more of these as well as whatever different areas you can spot.

HOMEWORK
By Tuesday, you need to have read all of Act II.  You will probably not want to do it all on Monday night--so plan your time as you see fit.

Looking ahead--the quiz over the second part of the poetry terms list will be on Wednesday, March 3.

Also expect some impromptu writing and/or a pop quiz soon.