Week 4; Discussion 1, 2 and 3

"What is drama but life with the dull bits cut out." - Alfred Hitchcock

Welcome to Week 4! We are already over halfway through our literary journey in this course. Your lesson this week involves drama, especially its history in Greek and Elizabethan theater. Some of you might be wondering what such old plays have to do with us...actually, they have everything to do with us! Once you've learned about the origins of theatre, you can find these same elements in contemporary Hollywood film and even in novels. It does illustrate that human beings are somewhat the same, regardless of era.

Your reading assignment for this week is to read Chapters 12, 13, and 14 in Journey Into Literature. You will again likely see many new terms, so I encourage you to take careful notes as you read to help you retain the information. More tips are below in this week's intellectual elaboration.

You have two Discussion forums this week that require your participation:

• Discussion 1: Tragedy. In this discussion, you will focuses on tragedy; specifically, Macbeth. As with many other discussions in this course, you'll want to be sure to include specific textual evidence in your response to the prompt.

• Discussion 2: Comedy. This discussion will focus on comedy. You'll read Mistaken Identity and will include details from the play in your post.

• Discussion 3: Reflecting on feedback. This discussion will focus on the feedback you have received from the Ashford Writing Center from your revised draft. The discussion requires you to post only on the feedback you received; however, participation with your classmates is encouraged (it is not required).

You have no new written assignment this week. Use your time this week to revise and polish your literary analysis. Be sure to heed the advice of your instructor and incorporate his or her suggestions on your Week 3 draft. Don't forget to take advantage of tutoring available to you at the Ashford Writing Center.

Your textbook reading this week includes information about drama and plays themselves. When reading drama, I suggest you read it aloud, if possible. If you have someone who can help you, you can each read the role of a character. Drama is meant to be staged and experienced, not read silently in a book. Do whatever you can to make the dramatic readings come alive!

Some cautionary reminders for this week's reading:

You are going to be seeing many terms that may look familiar to you. I'd like to focus on four of them in this week's guidance. They are:

• drama

• modern

• tragedy

• comedy

Let's start with the first term: drama. In everyday speech, we might hear this word used in a sentence like this: "There's always so much drama when that person is around." This is NOT the meaning of the word for the purpose of our literary study. As Clugston explains, drama is a play that is meant to be performed. Please take care not to confuse or conflate these differing meanings of the word, "drama."

Next, we have the word modern. Again, this word has a different meaning in everyday speech. Something that is "modern" is considered "new" or "contemporary." Note that modern drama began in the late 19th century! Be mindful of the context in which we are using the word "modern" in our study of drama.

Third, we have tragedy. Our contemporary meaning is not entirely different from that in your textbook, but we still need to remember that tragedy as it relates to drama means a play where the hero (protagonist) has a turn of fortune that ends up poorly for him/her.

Finally, you read about comedy. Do not think of comedy as simply a funny play of movie. A comedy as the word relates to drama means a play in which the hero's fortune changes for the better.

Many students find Shakespeare intimidating, failing to understand his relevance in our time period. Below is a video worth watching to better understand just HOW MUCH influence the Bard has on our every day lives. This video comes from the National Endowment of the Arts, and it is entitled "Shakespeare in Our Time."

As an eager English major, I learned that tragedy and comedy are differentiated as follows: at the end of a tragedy, the floor is littered with bodies (meaning, a bunch of characters are dead); at the end of a comedy, there's a marriage. When it comes to Shakespearean drama, his definition holds true in most cases. In some of Shakespeare's later works, we find something else called tragicomedy, which has elements of both tragedy and comedy. If you decide to study Shakespeare further, you will learn more about tragicomedy in that course.

One of Shakespeare's most beloved plays is A Midsummer Night's Dream. The play's concept stems from Italian drama that predates it; nonetheless, the play is still enjoyed today. Here is a video that includes some excerpts from a dramatization at the Guthrie theatre in Minneapolis, one of the country's most respected venues for live theatre. Are the actors' costumes what you would expect in a Shakespeare play? One of the wonderful things about watching a play dramatized is that even though the story and words remain the same, directors can produce myriad interpretations of it.

Do you have any comments on what you observed in the above performance? If so, please feel welcome to share them in the Ashford Cafe.

Helpful links for this week's assignments

From the Ashford Writing Center:

• Writing Reviser Tool

• Proofreading and Editing Strategies

References:

Clugston, R. W. (2014). Journey into literature (2nd ed.) [Electronic version]. Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/

A Midsummer Night's Dream. (n.d.). Retrieved February 19, 2015, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt5SjGrgkjk

National Endowment of the Arts (2014). "Shakespeare in Our Time." Retrieved November 13, 2015, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oAE_NQijkU