Monday, 15 March 2010, 04:34 PM

Assignments this week
by K. Titchenell - Monday, 15 March 2010, 04:34 PM

Dear Scholars,

No, actually there isn't an assignment this week. In class last week, I asked whether an assignment was needed and Derek in particular suggested that he didn't feel a specific assignment was necessary. As far as I am concerned, if creativity can flourish in the absence of assignments, as Derek has been successfully demonstrating, they are indeed superfluous. Please post and contribute whatever the muses inspire you with.

I did post some things for you to look at. The recent production of Hamlet performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company has been posted on youtube, and I have enjoyed watching it several times. It may not be available for very long, so please watch it soon:
In our classroom: http://www.aos.abacus-es.com/mod/resource/view.php?id=167
Youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=8B56A889217C5A98

I know most of you have already seen or read Hamlet, but it is certainly worth a second look. Let's discuss it in class and consider reading parts. Any thoughts?



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Re: Assignments this week
by K. Titchenell - Monday, 15 March 2010, 04:49 PM


Angela has posted a delightful little poem, Erasers, and Derek has posted a number of contribution s in our Poetry Forum and revised and extended his science fiction saga. Please read, comment, and post your own.




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Re: Assignments this week
by K. Titchenell - Tuesday, 16 March 2010, 06:32 PM

Derek's latest instalment.

Nathan has submitted poems: Good Times and Rhymes, Basketball and Life.

An example of stream of consciousness poetry: Windmills

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Re: Assignments this week -- Hamlet excerpt
by K. Titchenell - Tuesday, 16 March 2010, 10:17 PM

549 Now I am alone.
550 O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
551 Is it not monstrous that this player here,
552 But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
553 Could force his soul so to his own conceit
554 That from her working all his visage wann'd,
555 Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect,
556 A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
557 With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!
558 For Hecuba!
559 What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
560 That he should weep for her? What would he do,
561 Had he the motive and the cue for passion
562 That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
563 And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
564 Make mad the guilty and appall the free,
565 Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
566 The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I,
567 A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
568 Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
569 And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
570 Upon whose property and most dear life
571 A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward?
572 Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
573 Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?
574 Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat,
575 As deep as to the lungs? who does me this?
576 Ha! 'Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be
577 But I am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall
578 To make oppression bitter, or ere this
579 I should have fatted all the region kites
580 With this slave's offal. Bloody, bawdy villain!
581 Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
582 O, vengeance!
583 Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
584 That I, the son of a dear father murder'd,
585 Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
586 Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,
587 And fall a-cursing, like a very drab,
588 A stallion! Fie upon't! foh!
589 About, my brain! Hum — I have heard
590 That guilty creatures sitting at a play
591 Have by the very cunning of the scene
592 Been struck so to the soul that presently
593 They have proclaim'd their malefactions;
594 For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
595 With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players
596 Play something like the murder of my father
597 Before mine uncle. I'll observe his looks;
598 I'll tent him to the quick. If he but blench,
599 I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
600 May be the devil, and the devil hath power
601 To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
602 Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
603 As he is very potent with such spirits,
604 Abuses me to damn me. I'll have grounds
605 More relative than this: the play's the thing
606 Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.