Afleveringen
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Three preliminary poems deepen the meaning and experience of the poem to follow. The third, the “Prologue in Heaven,” is a revisionist version of the Book of Job. God and Mephistopheles make a bet—but about Faust, not Job. God says that humanity is lazy and needs to be pricked out of its passivity by the likes of such a “rogue” or Trickster.
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The greatest work of German literature by German’s greatest writer, by reputation. Goethe as Renaissance man with accomplishments in many fields. The Romantic style of Faust: the Contraries of visionary idealism and down-to-earth satire. The Faust legend. Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus and other works about Faust. The development of Faust over 60 years.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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Prospero’s melancholy speech about life as a vanishing illusion seems to subvert the paradisal vision of the wedding masque. But the illusions of art provide the model of a greater reality and the power to work towards it by changing people. In three hours, true love has transpired, people have been rehabilitated and changed for the better, and the dead have come back to life. Life is “strange,” life is a “wonder.”
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Prospero summons up a masque, a spectacle in honor of the newly betrothed Ferdinand and Miranda. Using characters from Classical mythology, it dramatizes the four levels of the Chain of Being, especially the paradisal imagery of the Golden Age. Then, suddenly, Prospero dismisses the vision, and gives his famous speech. All things pass away leaving “not a rack behind.” How to reconcile this with the ideal vision?
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In the central act, Prospero puts three sets of characters through ordeals that are at once punitive, when appropriate, and transformative. Ferdinand humbles himself to draw logs to win Miranda—and does. Stephano, Trinculo, and Caliban’s attempt at a Jan.6-style insurrection is turned into farce by Ariel. The Court Party is offered an illusory banquet, which vanishes and a harpy accuses all but Gonzalo.
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Gonzalo indicates that he does not mean literally his speech about ruling the island to excel the Golden Age. But in what sense, then, does he mean it? While the Court Party sleeps, Antonio and Sebastian plot murder. Caliban meets the two lower-class, satiric characters: Trinculo, the jester, and Stephano, a “drunken butler,” and begins to worship them as gods.
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Ferdinand and Miranda see each other and fall in love. Prospero pretends to be the irate senex or possessive father of New Comedy. The Court Party: Alonso is in deep depression; Gonzalo tries to get him to change his negative, hopeless attitude, but is countered by the nihilistic cynicism of Antonio and Sebastian.
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The long but necessary back story of Propero and Miranda’s exile. Prospero’s servants, the elemental spirits Ariel and Caliban. Shakespeare’s prophetic foreshadowing of later imperialism and colonialism in the treatment of the native Caliban. Shakespeare’s most famous song. Ferdinand and Miranda meet.
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Prospero, in Act 1, Scene 2, gives a long speech to his daughter Miranda telling how, 12 years ago, he was deposed as Duke of Milan to this island by his evil brother Antonio. Prospero and the theme of the wielding of power, in four roles: as ruler, as magician, as artist (creator of theatrical illusions), and as educator.
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The four romances at the end of Shakespeare’s career, belonging to an age-old genre, the tale of wonders and marvels, from the Wanderings of the Odyssey to fantasy and science fiction in our time. Act 1, scene one. Why try to stage a storm at sea? A touchstone: how various people face imminent death.
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The Duke returns and passes judgment. Mariana pleads for Angelo, wanting him despite his faults. Remarkably, Isabella pleads for Angelo. Four possible weddings: Angelo and Mariana, Isabella and the Duke, Claudio and Julietta, Lucio and the prostitute he got pregnant. A happy ending? The double meaning of “measure for measure,” according to justice or to mercy.
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The Duke’s plan to fool Angelo by substituting the head of Barnardine won’t work because Barnardine humorously refuses to be hanged. So they substitute the head of an already dead criminal for Claudio’s. The Duke “returns” in Act 5. Isabella and Mariana accuse Angelo but are arrested for slander. Lucio unhoods the Friar—to reveal the Duke.
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In the middle of Act 3, at a dark moment, the plot turns. The Duke speaks of Mariana, abandoned by Angelo, now in the “moated grange.” Tennyson’s famous monologue “Mariana.” Pompey and Mistress Overdone are arrested. Lucio has gotten a prostitute pregnant and refuses marriage and child support.
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When Isabella informs Claudio of Angelo’s offer, that his life may be saved if she has sex with Angelo, in terror of death he begs her to do it. Her cold, angry response, lacking all compassion, is absolutely unChristian, and we have to probe her deeper psychology, her need to be sheltered from life and its imperfections.
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Angelo is reluctant to come right out and say it, but finally tells Isabella that she must give herself up to him sexually in order to save her brother’s life. The Duke, as Friar, counsels Claudio that he should be detached about death because life is not worth living. This is a possible religious attitude, though not one that Shakespeare’s comedies ever endorse.
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Elbow, the Constable, has arrested Pompey because something insulting was said to his wife when she entered the whorehouse to ask for stewed prunes. Elbow is so confused that we never learn more. Isabella pleads for her brother’s life, and Angelo, after she leaves, discovers he is sexually obsessed with her.
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The Duke of Vienna puts young Angelo in charge in his absence, but disguises himself as a Friar and intends to observe what goes on in his absence. Angelo has Claudio arrested because his fiancée Julietta is pregnant, though they are engaged in a binding, though secret contract. Lucio goes to the convent to fetch Claudio’s sister Isabella to plead to Angelo for Claudio’s life.
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The common pattern of all three plots in Twelfth Night: a deadlocked conflict of opposites into which a third factor enters to transform the situation. In all three plots, this involves a character with two identities and gender ambiguity. Introduction to Measure for Measure: the meaning of the designation “problem play.”
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Feste as Sir Topas the cleric accuses Malvolio, desperate and shut up in darkness, of being mad. Act 5 is a single scene of multiple recognitions, climaxing when Viola/Cesario is standing on stage and her identical twin brother Sebastian walks on: “A natural perspective, that is and is not.” The couples are sorted out, Viola and Orsino, Olivia and Sebastian. Malvolio stomps out, vowing revenge.
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Sir Toby’s crowd play a joke on both “Cesario” and Sir Andrew Aguecheek, pushing two terrified characters into a duel. Antonio intervenes, thinking “Cesario” is Sebastian. Malvolio acts so bizarrely that Olivia fears he has gone mad, though he is following the instructions of the fake letter, designed to humiliate him.
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