History Apprentice Week 5: Jan 13, 2022

  History Apprentice Week 5: Jan 13, 2022 - Shakespeare

Come dressed up in some sort of Shakespearian costumes to earn Vanbucks!

Study/Learn

1. 
   Watch this video.  Take notes in your commonplace book on what you learn.
1. The Story of William Shakespeare

Know/Understand

Now we're going to go through the steps of learning/studying a Shakespeare play.  We're going to study A Comedy of Errors   - It’s still hard, but this makes it easier!  DO ALL OF THE FOLLOWING.

1. Plot summary: 
1. Watch this: A Comedy of Errors (8 min)
2. Read this: A Comedy of Errors Summary (5 min)
2. Read about the play in Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare.  You don't have this book, so here is a snippet: 
1. 
   From Asimov's Guide, "The Comedy of Errors may possibly be the very first play Shakespeare wrote, perhaps even as early as 1589.  It is a complete farce and it is adapted from a play named Menaechmi, written by the Roman playwright Titus Maccius Plautus about 220 BC.  If we assume that the events in Plautus's play reflect the time in which it was written (although Plautus borrowed the plot from a still earlier Greek play) we can place the time a century and a half after that of Dionysious of Syracuse.  It is for that reason that I place this play immediately after The Winter's Tale.  Plautus's play Menaechmi tells of the comic misadventures of twin brothers separated at birth.  One searches for the other and when he reaches the town in which the second dwells, finds himself greeted by strangers who seem to know him.  There are constant mistakes and cross-purposes, to the confusion of everyone on the stage and to the delight of everyone in the audience.  Shakespeare makes the confusion all the more intense by giving the twin brothers each a servant, with the servants twins as well.  The developments are all accident, all implausible, and - if well done - all funny."
2. Study this map
   
3. Watch it! This solidifies the plot and the characters in our minds.
1. A Comedy of Errors (1.5 hours)

After doing all of the background research, you’ll actually GET it when you do sit down to read the play!  Now as you read, you can get all the essence out of it and ask the 5 types of questions for a great discussion.  But guess what?  I'm not having you read the play...you're welcome!  

Become/Serve

LDS scholar and Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve, Elder Sterling Sill wrote, 

“I got out Shakespeare’s 37 plays, his sonnets, and his poems and went to work. Reading them was pretty difficult at first. I read very slowly and perhaps not very comprehendingly. I had to reread some things several times, look up their meanings, and ask people about them. But finally the clouds began to part, a little bit of the sunlight began to come through, and I had a tremendous experience with Shakespeare. Shakespeare looked with clearer insight into human life than do most men. He said his purpose in writing was to hold the mirror up to life, to show virtue her own image and scorn her own likeness. He said, “I your looking-glass will be and will modestly discover to yourself qualities which you yourself know not of.” I had a great uplift as I read his speeches and his arguments for success. And as he pictured life in miniature with his great characters acting and reacting upon each other, I was intellectually born again—a great many times. Each time we discover some inspiring thought, we can be changed, and changed for the better.”  

(New Era Aug. 1974, “Intellectual Rebirth”)

What principles of learning can we find in this quote?  Find 2 principles and be ready to share them in class.