Assignment Overview

Choose within either A Midsummer Night's Dream or Titus Andronicus one reference (a word, phrase, sentence or brief passage) to some historical element, and write one page analyzing its importance for understanding some aspect of the play.

Objective

The purpose of this assignment is to help you develop the skill of relating a text to its historical context. In a sense, this is another element of close reading; but instead of staying within the text and analyzing how each word functions among the other words of the play, you are opening up your interpretation of the play to the historical site of its production. Shakespeare did not write in a vacuum. Events were happening around him as he wrote his plays, and these events had an impact on the plays. Just as with the close reading assignment, it is a good idea as you read Shakespeare's plays to write brief notes in the margins that identify some historical event or practice (whether political, social, literary, theatrical, etc.) to which this passage might relate. Moreover, this will help enrich your paper topic by providing a historical basis for your argument. Continuing with the garden example, you might read that during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, biblical references to gardens were commonly employed for political criticisms of the monarchy. Shakespeare's biblical references to gardens in Hamlet, then, might be translated from the temporally and spatially distant context of Medieval Denmark to the historically and geographically immediate context of Renaissance England. Similarly, though Shakespeare's plays about England (the history plays) are all set in the past, many elements of the play suggest contemporary concerns or the possibility of appropriation for contemporary purposes. Famously, in 1601, on the eve of the Earl of Essex's rebellion against Elizabeth, supporters of Essex funded a revival of Shakespeare's Richard II, a play about a usurped English king. Though the play is set many years before Elizabethan England (around the time of Chaucer), upon seeing the revived play, Queen Elizabeth said, "I am Richard, know ye not that?"

More Details

The assignment is to choose one reference (a word, phrase, sentence or brief passage) within either A Midsummer Night's Dream or Titus Andronicus and to write 1 page analyzing the importance of this reference within the play. The historical information may be drawn from our background reading (Greenblatt's introduction to The Norton Shakespeare, Andrew Gurr's "The Shakespearean Stage," the introduction to True Rites and Maimed Rites, or one of the critical articles on MND and Titus) or from a footnote in your text. Recall how my "angels" example from Richard II was anchored in a historical pun on the gold coin. This need not be related to the close reading of the first assignment, but if you find something that relates, it may help you toward a paper topic. Again, you need not have a formal, unifying thesis statement. I am looking more for the ability to draw a variety of implications from relating the reference to some historical element, and to relate these implications to key elements of the play.

Formal Requirements

12 point font

Double-spaced

Do not use Courier font

1 inch margins  

 

Resource Description
Author/Artist: Stephen Deng	Media:
Date of Composition: Summer 2003	Dimensions:
Original Course: English 105 A	Bibliographic Information:
Description: Short Writing Exercise	Location of Artifact:
Category: Course Materials, Instructors, Locked	Date of Publication/Exhibition:
Period/MA Field: Reading List 2, Renaissance Literature	Keywords: Shakespeare, TA, English 105, renaissance, historical context