Directing Hamlet Assignment

Directing Hamlet Assignment

You are a film director. You are applying to be the director of a new version of Hamlet set to begin filming in 2013. After studying parts of several versions of Hamlet you have begun work on an application consisting of (1) a screenplay excerpt based on a passage you’ve chosen from the play, (2) a proposal explaining your choices (including proposed actors), and (3) a visual representation of some significant aspect of your screenplay excerpt.

Additional Notes

(1) screenplay excerpt:

Turn the excerpt you have chosen into a screenplay with interpolated film directions about elements such as setting, movement, speaking, facial expression, sound, music, camera shot selection, etc. Use the screenplay format. (See screenplay handouts.)

(2) proposal:

Write a proposal to the producers of Hamlet 2013. In your proposal the first paragraph will provide an overview of your vision for a new Hamlet (setting, visual style, acting contributing to effect and meaning), the second paragraph will explain the choices in your screenplay (How do the choices help you express meaning and achieve your purpose?), the third paragraph will explain choices in your visual representation (How do the choices help you express meaning and achieve your purpose?), the fourth paragraph will explain other choices (actors and soundtrack for example), conclude with a final pitch to the film producers.

(3) visual representation:

Your visual representation could be a storyboard¹, costume sketches, stage/film lighting scheme², stage/film blocking scheme³, live performance, demo film⁴. The visual representation will be assessed for choices, clarity, care, and creativity.

All of this is due by the end of the school day Friday, December 21.

1 A storyboard is a series of illustrations (or other images) used to depict a film (or other moving) sequence before the production of the actual film (or other moving sequence). Do some research for directions, examples, and advice.

2 A theatre/film lighting scheme is a plan for the use of lights (what type and color, where, and when) during a performance or during filming. Do some research for directions, examples, and advice.

3 A blocking scheme is a plan for the movement (where, when, and how) of actors during a performance. Do some research for directions examples and advice.

4 See me if you are interested in this option.

Hamlet Passage Analysis Essay Reminders

Reminders:

0. On Monday during class you will turn in (1) your final draft (for MLA format consult the Compass), (2) an AP style prompt (including context sentences that you write, the prompt from the blog), the passage, notes you consulted, an MLA works cited; click here to see the example I showed you in class with everything except the citation), (3) first draft (with evidence of self/peer assessment: consult Kincaid essay self/peer assess handout if necessary), (4) plan (with organization & minitheses), and (5) thesis (with clear insights into strategies and theme).

1. Special considerations:

Title
Don't forget a title that indicates your focus & (if possible) your attitude toward that focus. For my 5.1 analysis I've created the tentative title "From 'Infinite Jest' to 'Noble Dust': The Absurdity and Tragedy of Death in Hamlet's Gravedigger Scene"

Theme
Make sure you have stated your theme in a way that shows that it goes beyond the play. (Instead of "The passage shows Hamlet struggles with the corruption of women in his life." Write "the passage explores the dangers of idealizing women and expecting impossible purity." The first is an internal conflict for Hamlet that is expressed in outward conflicts with Ophelia and Gertrude. The second sentence is a statement about theme. Then discussion of the internal/external conflict would support the discussion of the theme.) Make sure you've also said something about the theme, so not just "the scene shows responses to wrongdoing" but "the scene conveys the difficulty of retaining self-worth and compassion in a world filled with wrongdoing". Notice the second phrase offers a bold insight whereas the first is more superficial.

Literary/Rhetorical Strategies
More strategies named on the blog w/ examples from Hamlet: Consider using terms from the strategies posting on the website. I know you're curious about litotes & metonymy & synecdoche, etc.

Quoting
I will pay particular attention to your use of quotations in this paper. Here are some things to keep in mind.

Quoting conventions:
a. The period (or other terminal punctuation) should be placed after the parenthetical citation. For example look at the part I've underlined at the end of the following sentence:

In his initial speech Claudius uses paradoxical language to express the difficulty of his situation and to attempt to trick his Danish subjects into feeling sympathy for his situation: "with mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage" (1.2.12).

b. If you put a quotation at the end of a sentence that does not have a parenthetical citation, the period should go inside the final quotation mark, liike this:

In act one scene two line twelve, Claudius uses paradoxical language to express the difficulty of his situation and to attempt to trick his Danish subjects into feeling sympathy for his situation: "with mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage."c. Quotations that are longer than three lines should be indented. The indent is used instead of quotation marks, like this:

Claudius uses a series of paradoxes in an attempt to to express the difficulty of his situation and to trick his Danish subjects into feeling sympathy for his situation:
     ...We with wisest sorrow think on him
     Together with remembrance of ourselves.
     Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,
     The imperial jointress to this warlike state,
     Have we, as 'twere with a defeated joy,
     With an auspicious, and a dropping eye,
     With mirth in funeral, and with dirge in marriage,
     In equal scale weighing delight and dole,
    Taken to wife. (1.2.6-13)

d. Use a ellipsis (...) to indicate that parts of sentence have been left out. When quoting a word or phrase you don't need to use an ellipsis because it will already be clear to the reader that parts of the sentence have been left out. (Look at the beginning previous quotation for an example.)

e. Use brackets to insert a word or change that clarifies the sentence or allows it to fit the grammatical context.
Hamlet express his view of the world succinctly, using a strong exclamation and vivid metaphor: "Fie on't! ah, fie! [the world is] an unweeded garden/That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature/Posses it merely" (1.2.138-140).

f. Use a slash (/) to indicate where the breaks are between lines of poetry. See above for an example.

g. Use a colon to introduce a quotation that follows a complete thought leading up to the quotation. (See all of the above for examples.)

h. You can also weave quotations into your own sentences in this way:
Claudius expresses his "defeated joy" (1.2.9) with an oxymoron and several vivid paradoxes.
i. Notice that I've avoided introducing quotations with phrases like "One quotation is..." or "For example,..." or "One thing Hamlet says is...," etc. These phrases are not "wrong" but they are clumsier and less elegant than the options given above.
Work hard to make your quotations work elegantly and clearly in your essay.

j. Introduce and provide context for your quotations.

k. Explain your quotations in a way that links them back to the point your trying to make. Do not expect the quotations to do this on their own. Sometimes it will take several sentences to explain a quotation and to develop how it develops your thesis.

2. Plagiarism:

We talked about this a couple of weeks ago, but it bears repeating here and now.

Do not use any sources beyond the notes that have been approved (Folgers book notes, eNotes). Use of other notes, especially notes that offer interpretation of the significance of strategies, is egregious plagiarism (blatant cheating). Your tasks is to use the text and the notes I've selected to help you understand the difficulties presented by the text to create your own interpretation of how the strategies contribute to the development of a central theme. Remember that we are practicing for the AP exam's passage analysis essay; when you take that exam you will be alone with the passage and whatever notes (if any) the College Board supplies.

If you think your work might be tainted by ideas you've taken from other people you might need to start over with a new passage or you might be able to strip away the offending parts. Remember plagiarism will result in a zero on the assignment and no chance to re-do it for credit. (That's the school's policy and has been the policy for a long time.)

3. Before you pass your final draft in...

One foot reading! Read your paper aloud!

Use standard English language conventions & the conventions of passage analysis essay writing.
Double check your essay for homophone errors and errors in sentence structure. (No run-ons. No sentence fragments.)
Avoid first person in passage analysis writing.
Write about literature in the present tense.
Be precise with your word choices.
Use varied sentence structures.
Include transitions between your body paragraphs.

**********************
I'm looking forward to reading your papers!

As requested: Some more rhetorical strategies with examples I compiled from Hamlet

Literary and Rhetorical Strategies

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE

written expression or language that is not meant to be taken literally.

SIMILE

a comparison of two distinctly different things using "like" or "as"

“swift as quicksilver it [the poison] courses through/The natural gates and alleys of the body/…it doth…/curd, like eager droppings into milk,/the thin and wholesome blood.”(1.5)

“Her clothes spread wide,/And mermaid-like awhile they bore her up, which time she chanted snatches of old lauds [songs] / As one incapable of her own distress/Or like a creature native and endued/Unto that element.”(4.7)

METAPHOR

a direct comparison of two things; when a word or expression, which in literal usage denotes one kind of thing or action is applied to a distinctly different kind of thing or action

“Leave her [Gertrude] to…/…those thorns that in her bosom lodge/To prick and sting her.” (1.5)

“Your bait of falsehood take this carp of truth” (2.1)

“The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune/…a sea of troubles…”(3.1)

“[The world is] an unweeded garden/That grows to seed.”(1.2)

METONYMY

a figure of speech used in rhetoric and literature in which a thing or concept is not called by its own name, but by the name of something closely associated with it

Here’s a sexist metonymy: “When these [tears] are

gone/The woman will be out.”

“I should have fatted all the region kites/With this slave’s offal.”

“The Everlasting”

“the quick”

"So I do still, by these pickers and stealers" (3.2.336)

SYNECHDOCHE

a type of metaphor; when a part of something is used to signify the whole or the whole is used to signify the part

"So the whole ear of Denmark/ Is by a forged process of my death /Rankly abused."

"I am glad of it: a knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear" (4.2.23-24)

HYPERBOLE

The use of extreme exaggeration to make a point

“I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers/Could not with all their quantity of love/Make up my sum.”(Hamlet, 5.1)

LITOTES

A form of understatement

“He will stay until you come.” (Hamlet, 4.3)

PERSONIFICATION

A type of metaphor that gives human qualities to animals, inanimate objects, or abstract concepts.

Guildenstern: Happy in that we are not overhappy. On Fortune’s cap, we are not the very button.

Hamlet: Nor the soles of her shoe?

Rosencrantz: Neither, my lord.

Hamlet: Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favors?

Guildenstern: Faith, her privates we.

Hamlet: In the secret parts of Fortune? O, most true! She is a strumpet.

            (3.2)

“...here joy most revels, grief doth most lament;/Grief joys, joy grieves on, on slender accident.”(Player King, 3.2)

“I am glad of it: a knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear” (Hamlet, 4.2)

APOSTROPHE

A rhetorical figure of speech that allows the speaker to address an absent person or inanimate entity

"frailty, thy name is woman" (Hamlet, 1.2)

CONCEIT

a figure of speech (an elaborate and extended metaphor) that draws an elaborate parallel between dissimilar things

“are you like the painting of a sorrow, a face without a heart?”

Claudius to Laertes, 4.7

G: Happy in that we are not overhappy./On Fortune’s cap, we are not the very button./H: Nor the soles of her shoe?/R: Neither, my lord./H: Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favors?/G: Faith, her privates we./H: In the secret parts of Fortune? O, most true! She is a strumpet (2.2)

...You would play upon me, you would seem to know my stops, you would pluck out the heart of my mystery, you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. ‘Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me. (Hamlet, 3.2)

"a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar" (4.3)

PARADOX

A statement which at first seems to be self-contradictory or absurd, but in the end actually makes sense

"more than kin and less than kind"

“I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space…”

“I must be cruel only to be kind....”(3.4)

OXYMORON

When two paradoxical contradictory terms are joined together

“mirth in funeral, dirge in marriage” (1.2)

PUN

 “I think it be thine indeed, for thou liest in ‘t./G: You lie out on’t, sir, and therefore ‘tis not yours. For my part, I do not lie in ‘t, yet it is mine./H: Thou dost lie in ‘t, to be in ‘t and say it is thine. ‘Tis for the dead, no for the quick; therefore thou liest.”

"Indeed this counsellor / Is now most still, most secret and most grave, / Who was in life a foolish prating knave" (3.4)

DOUBLE ENTENDRE

“Faith, her privates we.”

INNUENDO

“may I lie my head upon your lap”

“It would cost you a groaning to take off my edge” (3.2.249)

ALLUSION

hyperion to a satyr

…than I to Hercules

Hecuba

Julius Caesar

Alexander the Great

ANALOGY

“A dream itself is but a shadow.”

”To die, to sleep—To sleep, perchance to dream”

“The harlot’s cheek beautied with plast’ring art/Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it/Than is my deed to my most painted word.”

***

Antithesis: The use of a word (or sentence) being placed against another to form a balanced contrast is known in rhetoric as ANTITHESIS. To be or not to be… (Claudius explains the death of his brother and his marriage to the widow, scene 2)

These are also a form of “balanced” sentence.

Periodic sentence: A periodic sentence is a stylistic device employed at the sentence level, described as one that is not complete grammatically or semantically before the final clause or phrase. A periodic sentence delays…

(Lucianus’ speech in “The Murder of Gonzago”)