The Queen's Women Play Group (Romeo and Juliet)

I feel like we really accomplished a lot on Monday when we went to the CFA to practice with other students who are MUCH more experienced than we are. They were extremely helpful and provided many tips regarding where to stand, how angled to stand, when to speak to the other actors, when to speak to the audience, how exaggerated to perform, ect... Therefore, Monday's play day not only gave us a change to further discuss our performance, but also a chance to practice/rehearse while receiving helpful tips on how to better portray the story to the audience. Not only did we practice, we also picked out our props on Monday. They helped us decide on what and how to use props (for example during the balcony scene), so we can now begin to finalize our blocking ideas because we know exactly what props we have and their sizes. We now can visualize exactly what the stage will look like with the props in place and where the actors will enter and move around. All in all, i fell that Monday was very productive given the short amount of time we spent practicing. We are now many steps ahead in the preparation of our performance, yet there is still so far to go.

Othello vs Titus

In class the following question was proposed, "is Othello similar to Titus?" The general concensus of the class seemed to be yes, both characters were similar and alike. Personally I disagree with this statement. Although Othello did commit murder, he was extremely remorseful and emotional about it. Two huge characteristics that were missing in Titus' character; remorse and emotion. Titus killed relentlessly, even his own son, without a hint of regret or emotion. Killing seemed almost normal to Titus and he did not seem to have any emotional connection with anyone, he was an isolated man who kept to himself and did not seem to really care about anyone. Where as I believe Othello was a kind, loving man. He continuously longed for acceptance and was deeply in love with Desdemona, which shows real, human emotions (absent in Titus). Othello did commit murder in the end, but it was not something that he wanted to do, it was something that he was manipulated to do. Iago manipulated nearly every character in the play at one point or another but mostly Titus. It was this meddling and manipulating by Iago that led to Othello commiting murder, but even then, Othello did not seem to really want to do it. Othello murdered out of dispear, despression, and misery, not that this excusses murder, but he was so emotionally upset and distant that it just happened. So, basically, I would not compare Othello to Titus simply due to the human emotion aspect which was completely absent in Titus but seemed to play a large role in every one of Othello's actions.

A Meta-Analysis of My Weekly Shakespeare Blog Entries Based on the Three Stages of Reading Development Theory

The theory of the three stages of reading development attempts to classify an author based on his/her writing into one of three stages; "text-self," "text-other text," or "text-world." Those in the "text-self" stage are said to write with a self-centered view. The writing of an individual in this stage is considered to be focused on personal opinion and his/her subjective reactions to the text. The next step up from the "text-self" stage is the "text-other text" stage in which one moves away from opinion-based writing and begins to make connections between texts. The highest level of reading development is said to be "text-world" in which the individual begins to explore connections not only between the self and the text, or between two or more texts, but rather between a text and broad social discourses. While this theory does seem to make a valid attempt to categorize the reading stage of an author, I am not sure that it is a chronological movement through the stages of reading development. Otherwise stated, does each individual pass through each stage in order? Or does the stage of reading development
depend on the point the author is trying to make and the type of the text?
Before the beginning of this semester I believe I was mainly in the "text-other text" stage of reading development. Mostly because in previous English and writing composition courses the students were directed to compare one text to another or to "use" one text to read another. The assignments were strictly given, and so as a student, I wrote exactly what I was told to, which, in most cases was somehow making a connection between two texts. Until this class, I have had very little experience in the "text-self" stage of reading development because in previous courses, I was always told that personal opinion does not belong in writing. The fact that I am a science major may also play a role in this simply because in science there is little room for personal opinions. The field of science revolves around facts and theories that are attempted to be proven as facts. Therefore, my own personal views and opinions have not really been apparent in my writing until now.
Although, upon reviewing my blog entries, it appears that I am currently in the "text self" stage of reading development. The words "I," "personally," "to me," along with many other self-centered phrases can be found in nearly every blog entry that I have posted. For example, in my first blog titled The New Historicism and Shakespeare in Love my opening statement is as follows, "To me the most evident example of the New Historcism show in Shakespeare in Love was that..." Later in that same entry, my blog ended with a statement containing the phrase, "these were just a few [examples] that I noticed..." In my third blog entry titled Film Adaptations in Romeo and Juliet similar phrases can be seen. For example, my opening line once again contains a personal self pronoun, "One scene that I thought..." which is very similar to the preceding blog entry. Yet again, the first statement of my fourth blog, Shakespeare's Intentions in the Writting of Titus, falls into the category of the "text self" stage of reading. This post begins by stating, "Personally, I don't think Shakespeare..." in which a clear self-centered reading is evident denoted by the first two words "personally, I." Once more this same type of reading can be seen in my fifth post titled Parody, Pastiche, and Camp in Titus Andronicus where I began my blog by saying, "As stated in my last post, personally I would not..." which, again is a clear self-centered reading of the text.
Although it seems that I would unquestionably fall into the "text-self" stage of reading development based on my blog posts, elements of the "text-other text" can also be found in my blog entries. For example, in my third post, Film Adaptations in Romeo and Juliet, my post is centered around answering the question "How does this text relate to its film adaptation?" This entry posses far less self-centered views and many more ideals about the ties between the text and the film adaptation. In my fourth post, Shakespeare's Intentions in the Writting of Titus, the ideals expressed are not so much personal opinions but more of a general understanding of the text in relationship with those of it's own time. In this post, I seemed to be more interested in why Shakespeare may have written Titus the way he did and what external influences, such as other plays of that time period, may have influenced his decisions as to why and how to write.
Evidence of the "text-world" stage of reading development can be found in my posts as well. The best and most prevalent example of this can be seen in my most recent post, The Four Humors in Romeo and Juliet. In this blog entry I focused on how a Freudian theorist could view Romeo in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. This entry was again much less in tune with my own personal views and much more interested in how elements of Freud's psychological theories can be found in texts such as Romeo and Juliet which likely had no intentions of portraying any such theories.
Upon the examination of my past writing experiences, I would not say that I fit cut and dry into any one stage of reading development but rather that a mixture of the stages can be seen in my writing. I do not view the three stages of reading development theory to be a stepwise theory in which one must fully complete one stage before moving to the next, instead I look at it as a general outline or way of describing text. The stage of reading development evident in a piece of writing depends more on the type of text that is being analyzed. For example, when analyzing a personal text such a diary entry, a journal entry, or a blog post, the strongest stage of reading development apparent would most likely be the "text-self" stage, but that is simply because in those types of writing the author is focused on expressing his/her personal opinion. In such entries the writing is expected to be self-centered and to convey that particular authors views and ideals. Where as published texts such as analyses and comparative articles are expected to fit more in the category of the "text-other text" stage and philosophical, psychological, political, and scientific pieces are expected to fall into the "text-world" stage. Therefore, to me, it does not seem so much of a ladder that each individual has the goal of achieving the top stage, "text-world," but rather that it really depends on the type of writing.
Each and every individual has the potential to, and does, consciously or not, write in the form of all of these stages at one point or another. I can find many past essays, papers, and journal entries of my own that can be categorized in each of the stages of reading development, so again, it really seems to vary based of the type of writing as well as the topic. Every topic can be written based on the "text-self" stage, but many can also be written in the other two stages as well, "text-other text" and "text-world," so it strongly depends on what point the author is trying to make. If the author is simply writing a composition piece stating his/her own personal opinions, relating one text to another, or making a worldwide generalization, that author may be categorized as falling distinctly into one stage of reading development, but that same author may have writing samples that fall under all three stages of reading development. As seen in a few of my blogs, it is even possible that all three stages of reading development may be present in one single text. That being said, I do not believe that an author should be labeled based on a single piece of writing, instead the text alone should be categorized.

The Four Humors in Romeo and Juliet

In Shakespeare's time it was believed that people were made up of a combination of four humors (blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm), and if one of those four humors was in a higher amount than the others, that person would be considered "mad" because their actions would reflect the humor that out was out of balance. Romeo in Romeo and Juliet would be considered a textbook example of a person with "too much blood." He is extremely "warm and moist" in his characterization as being amorous, hopeful, courageous, optimistic, and loving. Each and every one of these characteristics can be seen in his interactions with Juliet, he is very loving and amorous towards her, and he is also hopeful and optimistic that their relationship/marriage will be able to overcome the feud of their families. He could easily be said to be an artisan (a key title given to those with "too much blood") because making Juliet fall in love with him is an art, maybe even a challenge and past time for Romeo. It was stated that those with too much blood respond to stress with denial, spontaneity, and become reckless when under stress which may cause one to retailate against the source of the stress. Once again, Romeo is a textbook example of one responding to stress in this fashion. He was in strong denial in the beginning when he found out that Juliet was a Capulet and that they could not be together, he was also in a short period of denial when he saw that Juliet had "killed herself" so it seems that when Romeo finds himself in a stressful situation that his first response is to fall into denial. This leads to the second step of dealing with stress for Romeo-spontaneity. When he came out of the denial about not getting his way with Rosaline, he instantly fell in love with Juliet instead which shows spontaneity. When he found out that loving Juliet was forbidden by their families, he decided they should get married, also showing spontaneity. Lastly, when Romeo passes the spontaneous state, he becomes reckless. After Romeo and Juliet were married (spontaneously) and the Monagues and Capulets were once again fighting, Romeo ended up recklessly killing Tybalt (who represents the Capulet family as a whole, which is the underlying source of all of Romeo's stress). Therfore, as shown above, to the psychologists of Shakespeare's time, Romeo's character is the epitome of a person who's bodily humors were out of balance and in this case, the blood was in excess.