Week 14: Shakespeare's Recurrence

This week, the main focus was beginning the first project for this trimester. We got into groups based upon which Shakespearean tragedy most interested us, King Lear or Macbeth. Naturally, I chose Macbeth because I have a morbid curiosity and Lady Macbeth sounds like the kind of crazy that I want to read about. So I paired up with Erica and Lindsay to analyze it with. So far, we have chosen the feminist lens to look through. Not only will this make sense in the context of how Lady Macbeth is portrayed, but also the sister witches in the beginning. This critical standpoint will illustrate what both Renaissance society thought of women, and what Shakespeare himself thought of them. Considering the amount of time Shakespeare played around with the idea of gender relations, take the couples in A Midsummer Night's Dream or Desdemona and Othello for example, I think that we will find similar ideas if we go on to read more of his works.
We have also returned to looking at poems in preparation for the AP Test. This time, we tackled two in one week. The first was a sonnet by Shakespeare, "Poor Soul, the centre of my sinful earth." Its structure was in typical style for him. Three quatrains, each bearing their own meaning, and a final couplet to tie it all together. The other poem was also a sonnet, but written much later by Percy Bysshe Shelley, titled "Ozymandias." Shelley's poem has the same structure, but each quatrain has a meaning that bleeds into the next, connecting the whole poem.
The theme for this week is progress.

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