Tag: Reading
“They may pass for excellent men:” Audience and Interpretative Labor in A Midsummer Night’s Dream
[5-7 minute read] Last week, I discussed Hamlet’s metatheatrical play within a play, The Murder of Gonzago, in an attempt to discuss what Hamlet’s attitudes towards acting could tell us about the relationship between theater and audience. This week, I would like to shift gears and discuss a different moment of metatheatricality in Shakespeare: the
“Dumbshows and Noise:” Hamlet and The Problem of Audience
[5-7 minute read] During Act 3 of Hamlet, while preparing the travelling players for the evening’s performance, Hamlet provides the actor’s company with a lengthy speech concerning the proper methods of acting he would like them to employ. During the speech, he makes a note on clowns, saying “and let those that play/ your clowns speak
“I am Richard II, Know Ye Not That”: Drama and Political Anxiety in Shakespeare’s London
[5 minute read] In last week’s post, I talked about the public reaction to a 2017 performance of a 1599 play featuring the execution of a Roman Consul who had been made-over to look like a contemporary politician. This week, I will be looking at the performance of a 1597 play that took place in 1601,
“I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him:” Shakespeare and the Politics of Interpretation
[5-7 minute read] During my last month writing for Metathesis, I talked about the contemporary desire to find political meaning in Shakespeare’s plays. Then in June, Shakespeare in the Park staged a performance of Julius Caesar in which the actor playing Caesar consciously invoked the image of President Trump, mimicking his vocal affectation and his
Normalizing Difference: Redefining Asexuality
[5 minute read] The problem with asexuality, as I’ve discussed before, is that it is hard to talk about on its own terms — even in a grammatical sense. For example: If you’re homosexual, you can say, “I’m sexually attracted to people of my same gender.” If you’re pansexual, you can say, “I’m sexually attracted
Abnormalizing Difference: Sexual Normativity in Asexual Sherlock Fanfic
[7 minute read] (CW: discussion of sexual violence in fanfic.) Can I tell you a secret? I knew the titular character of BBC’s Sherlock had become one of the mascots of the ace community before I even watched the show — and I defended his reputation as such before I watched it, too, as evidenced in
Feeling the Affects
To some degree, all of our posts this month have flirted with affect. Whether it’s waking up dazed in confused in graduate school or exploring the significance of melancholia, memory, and reverberating energies, all of these topics point to a larger picture of attempting to understand and read feeling in texts and our daily lives.
Slow and Steady Wins The Race (Unless You Prefer to “Spritz”): Debunking the Myth of Faster = Better (So You Can Feel Better About Yourself)
In my first year of graduate school I discovered I was not as strong of a reader as I had fancied myself to be. I discovered the amount of pages to read every week was massive in comparison to undergrad, which wouldn’t be so bad if this were still high school English and I was