Questions and Observations about the Duke’s last lines V.i.532-537

“I have a motion much imports your good,”  Our text glosses motion as proposition here, but I find it a quite striking word here, since “motion” and its various meanings feature in prominent speeches throughout the play…see below (notice these uses are well placed at the beginning, middle, and end).
1.    I might simply be reading too much into it, but look at the other uses here, and consider whether the word has accrued a greater significance that resonates here.  If so what is the sense.
2.    Notice that Lucio’s use of motion meaning puppet significantly alters its previous uses.

Questions and Observations for Act Five

The Duke opens act five by telling Angelo that he will proclaim his good service and justice publicaly, though he knows Angelo has failed.  Why is he doing this?

Before Writing: Close Reading

Shakespeare Sonnet 102

My love is strengthen’d, though more weak in seeming;
I love not less, though less the show appear;
That love is merchandiz’d, whose rich esteeming,
The owner’s tongue doth publish every where.
Our love was new, and then but in the spring,
When I was wont to greet it with my lays;
As Philomel in summer’s front doth sing,
And stops her pipe in growth of riper days:
Not that the summer is less pleasant now
Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night,
But that wild music burthens every bough,
And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.
Therefore like her, I sometime hold my tongue:
Because I would not dull you with my song.

Prompt II: “Measure for Measure”

“It may be observed, that in many of his plays the latter part is evidently neglected.  When he found himself near the end of his work, and in view of his reward, he shortened the labour, to snatch the profit.  He therefore remits his efforts where he should most vigorously exert them, and his catastrophe is improbably produced or imperfectly represented.” — Samuel Johnson on Shakespeare’s endings

Prompt: In a well-argued paper, offer your reading of the “open silences” in the last act of Measure for Measure.  You may address all the open silences, interpreting them as part of a single effect, or you may focus on one silence you find particularly resonate.

Prompt: Performance

Prompt: Put on a 5-10 minute performance of a scene or a part of a scene.  Write a 500-750 word response discussing the choices you made in your performance and why you made them, and what you have learned about the scene and the play.  The essay is due one week after your performance (unless you perform in the last week of class, in which case it is due that Friday).

Prompt I: The Sonnets

Prompt: Choose an assigned sonnet that we did not discuss in class.  Imagine that Shakespeare actually exchanged this sonnet with someone (or someones) — his lover, his lover’s lover, another poet, to himself etc.  What is the ploy of the sonnet?  In other words, what is Shakespeare trying to accomplish with the sonnet and how does the sonnet accomplish this feat?

Schedule English 105B

Sonnets
15, 57, 61, 73, 102, 118, 133, 136

Monday 3rd August
Tuesday 4th August
Wednesday 5th August

FIRST PAPER DUE MONDAY 10th AUGUST

English 105B “Late” Shakespeare

Summer 2009

Jeffrey Paxton Hehmeyer (Pax)
email: hehmeyer@umail.ucsb.edu; jphehmeyer@gmail.com

Class: PHELP 3519 ; MTWR 12:30-1:35
Office Hours: SH 2432-E ; MW 11:00-12:00 (and by appointment)

Sankey Room: 2623 SH

Early Modern Center: 2510 SH