Appreciating Shakespeare with Doctor Rap: Recent Episodes

Doctor Rap

Offering knowledge and tools for appreciating Shakespeare's deep and universal meanings. Series I: Chapter 1: What's So Great about Shakespeare? (3 sessions) Chapter 2: Shakespeare the Man Chapter 3: Shakespeare's Theater Chapter 4: Shakespeare's Language (4 sessions) Chapter 5: Shakespeare's Characters Chapter 6: Unity in Variety (3 sessions) Chapter 7: Shakespeare's Mental Furniture (5 sessions) Chapter 8: Interpretation Chapter 9: Shakespeare's Texts Chapter 10: Categories of Plays (2 sessions) Chapter 11: Sonnets Chapter 12: Other Poems Chapter 13: Collaboration Chapter 14: Hypothetical, Spurious, False Chapter 15: On the Nature of Art (3 sessions)Series II: Comedies (Sessions A-G): Shrew (A), MSND (B), Merchant (C), Much Ado (D), AYLI (E), 12th Night (F), Measure (G) Tragedies (Sessions H-N): Romeo (H), Caesar (I), Hamlet (J), Othello (K), Lear (L), Macbeth (M), Antony (N) Histories (Sessions O-T): Intro (O), Richard III (P), Richard II (Q), I Henry IV (R), 2 Henry IV (S), Henry V (T) Satire: Troilus (Session U) Late Romances: Winter's Tale (Session V), Tempest (Session W) Selected Sonnets: 1-65 (Session X), 73-116 (Session Y), 129-146 (Session Z) Questions?: Email DoctorRap@zohomail.com

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Series I, Chapter 15: The Nature of Art, Session 3

Based on the teaching of Professor Mary Holmes

Topics:

Judgments of Art
Talking about Art
What Makes a Work of Art Great?

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Series I, Chapter 15: The Nature of Art, Session 2

Based on the teaching of Professor Mary Holmes

Topics:
Paradox 2: Escape and Return
Paradox 3: I and We
Paradox 4: Integrity and Change
The Power of Art
The Goal of Art

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Series I, Chapter 15: The Nature of Art, Session 1

Based on the teaching of Professor Mary Holmes

Session 1 Topics: 

Why Art? 
What is Art? 
How Art Works 
Paradox 1: Empathy and Psychic Distance
The Willing Suspension of Disbelief

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Series II, Podcast Z: Selected Sonnets 129-146

129
130
135
138
144
146

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Series II, Podcast Y: Selected Sonnets 73-116

73
74
94
116

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Series II, Podcast X: Selected Sonnets 1-65

1-17
18
20
29
30
42
55
60
65

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Series I, Chapter 14: Hypothetical, Spurious, and False Shakespeare

Hypothetical: Love's Labour's Won, Cardenio
Spurious: Hecate passages in Macbeth
False Attributions: "The Passionate Pilgrim," Arden of Feversham, "Shall I Die?" A Funeral Elegy

Notes:

References are to the following:
F.E. Halliday, A Shakespeare Companion 1564–1964 (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1964), pp. 289, 83–84, 491–92;
Jonathan Bate, “Is there a lost Shakespeare in your attic?” in The Telegraph, April 21, 2007, accessed 8/13/18 at https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3664626/Is-there-a-lost-Shakespeare-in-your-attic.html;
G. Blakemore Evans, Note on the Text of Macbeth, in The Riverside Shakespeare, Second Ed., (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997), pp. 1387–88;
Frank Kermode, Introduction to Macbeth in the same Riverside edition, pp. 1355–56;
Hallett Smith, Introduction to The Passionate Pilgrim in The Riverside Shakespeare, p. 1881;
MacDonald P. Jackson, Determining the Shakespeare Canon: Arden of Faversham and A Lover’s Complaint (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014);
MacDonald P. Jackson, “Shakespeare and the Quarrel Scene in “Arden of Faversham,” Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 57, No. 3 (Autumn, 2006), pp. 249–93;
Arden of Feversham, ed. Ronald Bayne (London: J.M. Dent, 1897) reproduced on line and accessed (8/21/18) at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/43440/43440-0.txt;
Gary Taylor, “Shakespeare’s New Poem: A Scholar’s Clues and Conclusions,” New York Times, December 15, 1985, accessed 8/21/18 at https://www.nytimes.com/1985/12/15/books/shakespeare-s-new-poem-a-scholar-s-clues-and-conclusions.html;
Donald Foster, Letter to the New York Times, January 19, 1986, accessed on 8/21/18 at https://www.nytimes.com/1986/01/19/books/l-a-new-shakespeare-poem-238486.html;
G.D. Monsarrat, “A Funeral Elegy: Ford, W.S., and Shakespeare” in The Review of English Studies New Series, Vol. 53, No. 210 (May, 2002), pp. 186-203, accessed 8/21/18 at https://www.jstor.org/stable/3070371?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents;
William S. Niederkorn, “A Scholar Recants on His ‘Shakespeare’ Discovery,” New York Times, August 21, 2002, accessed 8/21/18 at https://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/20/arts/a-scholar-recants-on-his-shakespeare-discovery.html.

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Series I, Chapter 13: Did Shakespeare Collaborate?

Edward III
Pericles
Henry VIII
The Two Noble Kinsmen
Sir Thomas More

References are to the following:

Melchiori, Giorgio, ed. The New Cambridge Shakespeare: King Edward III (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 12–13; Hallett Smith, Introduction to Pericles, Prince of Tyre in G. Blakemore Evans, ed., The Riverside Shakespeare, Second Ed.(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997), p. 1527; Jonathan Bate, “Is there a lost Shakespeare in your attic?” in The Telegraph, April 21, 2007, accessed 8/13/18 at https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3664626/Is-there-a-lost-Shakespeare-in-your-attic.html; J. Spedding, “Who Wrote Shakespeare’s Henry VIII?” Gentleman’s Magazine, clxxviii (August–October 1850), pp. 115–24 and 381–82, quoted and ref. in R.A. Foakes, ed., King Henry VIII The Arden Edition, (Cambridge: Methuen and Harvard University Press, Third Ed, 1957, Repr. 1966), pp. xvii; Cyrus Hoy, “The Shares of Fletcher and his Collaborators in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon (vii),” Studies in Bibliography, xv (1962), p. 79, quoted and ref. in R.A. Foakes, ed. King Henry VIII, pp. xxvii–xxviii; Hallett Smith, Introduction to The Two Noble Kinsmen in The Riverside Shakespeare, p. 1689; G. Blakemore Evans, Introduction to Sir Thomas More: The Additions Ascribed to Shakespeare, in The Riverside Shakespeare, pp. 1775–79.

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Series II, Podcast W: The Tempest

Shakespeare's most mystical play.

References are to the following:  C.S. Lewis, The Discarded Image (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964, repr. 1967), Chapter VI; C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: HarperCollins, 2001, orig. copyright 1944), pp. 77–78; Frank Kermode, ed., Arden edition of The Tempest (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 6th ed., 1958), Intro. pp. xxxv–xxxvii, pp. liii–liv, and Appendix B, p. 143.

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Series II, Podcast V: The Winter's Tale

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Series II, Podcast U: Troilus and Cressida

Shakespeare's one satire, on the matter of Troy.

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Series I, Chapter 12: Shakespeare's Other Poems

Venus and Adonis
The Rape of Lucrece
The Phoenix and the Turtle
A Lover's Complaint

Notes:
I have taken some facts and quotations from the following:

On The Rape of Lucrece: Hallett Smith, Introduction to The Rape of Lucrece in G. Glakemore Evans, ed., The Riverside Shakespeare, Second Edition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997), p. 1814, 1815; and F.E. Halliday, A Shakespeare Companion (Baltimore: Penguin, 1964), p. 402. On A Lover’s Complaint: Robert Giroux, The Book Known as Q: A Consideration of Shakepeare’s Sonnets (New York: Atheneum, 1982), p. 210, 211; Brian Vickers, “Did Shakespeare write A Lover’s Complaint?” accessed 8/13/18 at https://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/1026#ftn1; see the technical argument in MacDonald P. Jackson, “A Lover’s Complaint and the Claremont Shakespeare Clinic” in Early Modern Literary Studies accessed 8/19/18 at https://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/journal/index.php/emls/article/viewFile/67/22; see the broader argument in MacDonald P. Jackson, Determining the Shakespeare Canon: Arden of Faversham and A Lover’s Complaint (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).

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Series II, Podcast T: Henry V

Pageant
Shakespeare's Ideal King
Banishment of Falstaff

Note: The Thompson quotation  is from Philip Thompson, Notes on Shakespeare in Gideon Rappaport, ed., Dusk and Dawn: Poetry and Prose of Philip Thompson (San Diego: One Mind Good Presss, 2005), p. 228. 

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Series II, Podcast S: Henry IV, Part II

Promise Fulfilled: Prince Hal becomes King Henry V
Defense of Prince John
Falstaff's Banishment

Note: The Thompson quotation is from Notes on Shakespeare in Philip Thompson, Dusk and Dawn: Poems and Prose of Philip Thompson, ed. Gideon Rappaport (San Diego: One Mind Good Press, 2005), p. 221, 227. 

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Series II, Podcast R: Henry IV, Part I

Three metaphorical heirs to the throne: Hal, Hotspur, Falstaff
Two excessive humors and Plato's three souls
Prince Hal's Character

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Series II, Podcast Q: Richard II

Chiasmus
Right vs. Merit
The Beginning of the Wars of the Roses

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Series II, Podcast P: Richard III

Scourge of God
"Despair and Die"
End of the Wars of the Roses

Notes: Two quotations come from Anthony Hammond, Introduction to King Richard III, The Arden Shakespeare (London: Methuen, 1981): The More description is on p. 78; the Spivack quotations (citing Bernard Spivack, Shakespeare and the Allegory of Evil [New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1958], pp. 135, 151, 157, 161–62) are on p. 100. The Paradin quotation appears in the same Arden edition on p. 339 in Appendix II, note to III.iv.32.

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Series II, Podcast O: Introduction to Shakespeare's History Plays

Notes: The Thompson quotations are from “Notes on Shakespeare” in Philip Thompson, Dusk and Dawn: Poems and Prose of Philip Thompson, ed. Gideon Rappaport (San Diego: One Mind Good Press, 2005), p. 221, 227. The Robie Macauley quotation is from his introduction to Ford Madox Ford, Parade’s End  (New York: Knopf, 1961), p. ix.

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Series I, Chapter 11: What Is a Sonnet For?

What is a poem?
What is a sonnet?
Shakespeare's Sonnets
Did Shakespeare really mean it?
How long did it take him to write one?
To whom did he write them?
Was Shakespeare gay?

Notes: The Robert Frost quotation is from Newsweek, January 30, 1956, p. 56, accessed 7/5/18 at http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88v/frost-tennis.html. The Hecht quotation is from Anthony Hecht, Introduction to G. Blakemore Evans, Ed., The Sonnets (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, repr. 1998), p. 15. The Dickinson quotation is from The Letters of Emily Dickinson, ed. Thomas H. Johnson and Theodora Ward (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1958), L342a, quoted at https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/later_years.

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Series II, Podcast N: Antony and Cleopatra

Rome and Egypt
Reason and Passion
Particulars and the Universal

5 Key Lines
12 Specific Notes

Notes: The Thompson quotation is from Reflections (Literary and Philosophical) in Philip Thompson, Dusk and Dawn: Poems and Prose of Philip Thompson, ed. Gideon Rappaport (San Diego: One Mind Good Press, 2005), p. 187. The quotation from Sir John Hawkins can be accessed at https://archive.org/details/playspoemsofwill12shak/page/364/mode/2up.

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Series II, Podcast M: Macbeth

A short discussion followed by 9 key lines and 13 specific notes to help in your reading.
Note: Biblical quotations are from the Geneva Bible

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Series II, Podcast L: King Lear

Note: Biblical quotations are from the Geneva Bible
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Series I, Chapter 10: What Kind of Thing Is It? Categories of Plays
Session 2: Histories, Romances, Satire

Histories
Romances
One Satire
False Category: Problem Plays

Notes: The Halliday quotation is from F.E. Halliday, A Shakespeare Companion 1564–1964 (Baltimore: Penguin, 1964), p. 350. The Boas reference is to F. S. Boas, Shakespeare and His Predecessors (London: John Murray, Third Impression 1910), pp. 384–408, accessed at https://archive.org/details/shakespearehispr00boasuoft/page/n5. The Thompson quotation is from “Notes on Shakespeare” in Gideon Rappaport, ed., Dusk and Dawn: Poems and Prose of Philip Thompson (San Diego: One Mind Good Press, 2005), p. 224.

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Series I, Chapter 10: What Kind of Thing Is It? Categories of Plays
Session1:  Tragedies and Comedies

Revenge Tragedies
De Casibus Tragedies
Domestic Tragedies
Comic Relief

Notes: The quotation from Morton Bloomfield is from a from a lecture series entitled “Medieval and Renaissance Tragedy and Notions of Tragedy” delivered at Brandeis University, Spring, 1978. The Doran quotation is from Madeleine Doran, Endeavors of Art: A Study of Form in Elizabethan Drama (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964), p. 148.

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Series II, Podcast K: Othello

Psychomachia
Demonic Iago, Angelic Desdemona
Repentance vs. Suicide
3 Key Lines
6 Specific Notes

Notes:
The quotation of Thomas Mann is from Thomas Mann, Joseph and His Brothers, tr. John E. Woods (New York:  Alfred A. Knopf, Everyman’s Library, 2005), p. 669. For the Donald Duck psychomachia see “Donald’s Better Self” at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald%27s_Better_Self and “Donald’s Decision” at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald%27s_Decision.  Both Thompson quotations are from “Notes on Shakespeare” in Philip Thompson, Dusk and Dawn: Poems and Prose of Philip Thompson, ed. Gideon Rappaport (San Diego: One Mind Good Press, 2005), p. 220.

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Series II, Podcast J:  Hamlet

What the play is not.
Revenge Play
Who is and who isn't mad?
Moral-Spiritual Drama
Two-Letter Climax
Readiness

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Series I, Chapter 9: Is This What Shakespeare Actually Wrote? Shakespeare's Texts

Manuscripts
Early Printed Editions: Good and Bad Quartos, Folio
Later Editions
Modern Editions

Notes: Facsimile edition of the Quartos: Michael J.B. Allen and Kenneth Muir, Shakespeare’s Plays in Quarto (Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1981). Facsimile edition of the Folio: Charlton Hinman, The Norton Facsimile:  The First Folio of Shakespeare (New York:  Paul Hamlyn, 1968).

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Series II, Podcast I: Julius Caesar

Shakespeare inherits both pro- and anti-Caesar traditions
The body of Caesar vs. the spirit of Caesar

Notes: The Sayers quotation is from notes on the major images in Canto XXXIV in Dorothy Sayers, tr., The Comedy of Dante Alighieri the Florentine, Cantica I, Hell (London:  Penguin, 1949), p. 289. On the anti-Caesar position, see William Blisset, “Caesar and Satan,” Journal of the History of Ideas Vol. 18, No. 2 (Apr., 1957), pp. 221-232, accessed 11/1/18 at https://www.jstor.org/stable/2707625?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents.

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Series II, Podcast H: Romeo and Juliet

Oxymoron
Love and Death

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Series I, Chapter 8: Whose Interpretation Is Right? Principles of Interpreting Shakespeare

Text and Subtext
Context
Critic's Assumptions
Directors' Mirrors

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Series II, Podcast G: Measure for Measure

A discussion of one of Shakespeare's greatest comedies.
The wedding of Justice and Mercy.

The source of two of the Thompson quotations is Philip Thompson, Dusk and Dawn: Poems and Prose of Philip Thompson, ed. Gideon Rappaport (San Diego:  One Mind Good Press, 2005), pp. 223–26; a third quotation was heard in private conversation with the poet. 

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Series II, Podcast F: Twelfth Night

Discussion of the play: Twelfth Night or What You Will
5 Key Lines
20 Specific Line Notes

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Series I, Chapter 7: Why All the Footnotes? Shakespeare's Mental Furniture

Session 5:
Decorum
Realism or Morality Play?
"Foreground Is Background"

References in the section on Decorum are to Madeleine Doran, Endeavors of Art:  A Study of Form in Elizabethan Drama, (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964), p. 217–218, and to George Puttenham, Art of English Poesy, III.xxiv (quoted in Doran, Endeavors of Art, p. 217).

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Series I, Chapter 7: Why All the Footnotes? Shakespeare's Mental Furniture
Session 4: Disintegrating Forces:

The Protestant Reformation
Machiavelli
The New Science

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Series I, Chapter 7: Why all the Footnotes? Shakespeare's Mental Furniture
Session 3:

The Doctrine of Correspondence
Authority
Christianity
Renaissance Humanism and Classicism

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Series I, Chapter 7: Why All the Footnotes? Shakespeare's Mental Furniture
Session 2: The Human Order:

Monarchy vs. Democracy
The Two Bodies of the King
The Family
The Individual
Soul and Body
The Humors
The Five Wits

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Series I, Chapter 7: Why All the Footnotes? Shakespeare's Mental Furniture, Session 1:

Words We Know
Words We Don't Know
Shakespeare and Electricity
The Medieval Synthesis
The Cosmic Hierarchy

Notes:
The reference to Lewis is to C.S. Lewis, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964, rpt. 1988), pp. 10–13.

For the source of the idea of hierarchy in Plato’s Timaeus and its extension in Aristotle’s De Anima and Metaphysics, see Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea, William James Lectures at Harvard University, 1933 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936, 1964), Ch. 2. The most valuable modern discussion of the Renaissance ideas of hierarchy and correspondence, and a source for some of the information in these podcasts, is E.M.W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture (New York: Vintage, 1959).

The reference to St. Benedict is to St. Benedict’s Rule for Monasteries, tr. Leonard J. Doyle (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, St. John’s Abbey, 1948), p. 88. 

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Series II, Podcast D: As You Like It

New prelude/postlude: Chopin, Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 11, Third Movement, quartet version, in the public domain.

Upcoming, Why All the Footnotes: Shakespeare's Mental Furniture 
with a better mic.
Thanks for technical and other help to N. A., A. G., J. G., F. H., and A. R.

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Series I, Chapter 6: Unity in Variety,  Session 3: Setting, Theme, Audience

The third session in the chapter on Unity in Variety looks at settings, themes, and then brings in the audience as contributor to the unity of a play.

Coming next, As You Like It, with a format upgrade: Prelude and postlude.

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Series I, Chapter 6: Unity in Variety, Session 2: Unity in Variety seen in

Figures of Speech
Action
Scenes
Characters
Plot

Next session: Setting, Theme, Audience

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Series I, Chapter 6: Why the play's the thing: Unity in Variety, Session 1

Unity and meaning
Shakespeare and the hologram
All roads lead to meaning

Words
Images

In the next session we'll look at figures of speech, action, scene, character, and plot.
In the third session, we'll look at setting and theme and then at the audience.

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Series II, Podcast D: Much Ado about Nothing

Discussion of the play
Three key lines
Particular notes to help you in your reading of the play: For these you may want to be sitting with your text and a pencil.

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Series I, Chapter 5, Foiled Again? Shakespeare's Characters

The particular and the general
The good, the evil, the mixed
The humorous
Characters can change
Foils and the Shakespearean complication

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Series II, Podcast C: The Merchant of Venice

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Series I, Chapter 4: Shakespeare's Language, Session 4: 

Rhetorical Devices: Variation in Speech

Did Shakespeare's audience get it all?

Coming next: 
The Merchant of Venice
Shakespeare's Characters

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Series I, Chapter 4: Shakespeare's Language, Session 3

Rhetorical devices rooted in sound:
Repetition
Rhyme
Alliteration
Assonance
Consonance

Rhetorical devices rooted in structure:
Antithesis
Repetition of Syntax
Chiasmus
End-stopped and Enjambed lines

To come next: Variation in Speech

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Shakespeare's Language: Rhetorical Devices Rooted in Sound

Onomatopoeia
Pacing: Meter and Rhythm

What is iambic pentameter?
What are masculine and feminine endings?
What is blank verse?

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Did People Really Talk Like That? Shakespeare's Language

Session 1 of four on Shakespeare's Language: 
What is poetry for?
Is it Verse or Prose?
Rhetorical devices rooted in meaning: Metaphor and Simile. 

To come: 
Session 2: rhetorical devices rooted in sound: Onomatopoeia, Meter, and Rhythm.
Session 3; repetition of sounds; rhetorical devices rooted in structure.
Session 4: variation in speech; "Did Shakespeare's audience get it all?"

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Series II, Podcast B: A Midsummer Night's Dream

A discussion of one of Shakespeare's most lyrical plays. 
Rhetoric as the vehicle of emotion. 
The nature of love.

Expect most uploads on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Coming up, Shakespeare's Language.
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What was the state of the art in Shakespeare's theater? 
Hearing a play. The building and the Stage. Sets. Props. Costumes. Actors. Play direction. Prompt-book and book-keeper. Dance. Audience. 

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Who Was Shakespeare the Man? (Series I, Chapter 2): Who wrote Shakespeare's Plays? What kind of person was he? Did he go to school? What religion was he? How could one person have written all those plays? How long did it take him to write a play? Where did he get his ideas? (Shakespeare's sources).

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In Series II, The Comedies, Podcast A, Doctor Rap discusses The Taming of the Shrew.

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Series I, Chapter 1: What's So Great about Shakespeare? 
Session 3: Elements of Shakespeare's Mastery concluded: 
Sound and Sense, Action, Universal Realism.

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Series I, Chapter 1; What's So Great about Shakespeare? 
Session 2: More elements of Shakespeare's mastery: 
vitality, unity, variety, freshness of wit, characters, poetic language.

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Appreciating Shakespeare
Podcasts by Doctor Rap 
Series I: Background Knowledge
Series II: Individual Plays and Selected Sonnets

This first session addresses the question "What's So Great about Shakespeare?" and looks at the subjects of his plays. Two following sessions will address other elements of his mastery.

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Prelude/Postlude: Chopin Piano Concerto #1, Op. 11, Third Movement (quartet version in the public domain)