What follows are two essay questions that were in the Shakespeare final exam for the second year students at Dallas College, an institute of higher learning located in Cape Town, which offers a course in political studies.
After the two initial exam questions there follows a précis of the material
covered in the preceding (first) semester. From there a brief sketch of what was
examined with the first year class, followed by an elucidation of the material
studied in the third and final year. All together it makes up the three year
course for Shakespeare & Rhetoric.
Essay Question 1
Many Elizabethans had a keen interest in Roman history plays, not least because
the great military general Julius Caesar was purported to have set foot on
British soil. Consequently, the period from the death of Julius Caesar to the
crowning of Octavius as Emperor Augustus, marking the end of the Roman Republic
and the beginning of Empire, and continuing on to the birth in Britain of
Constantine in the fourth century, who had an English mother and a Roman father,
was of interest to the Elizabethan audience. Many believed that Elizabeth was a
direct heir of Constantine. Certainly the people at that time were
overwhelmingly monarchist, and only a few would have known much about
republicanism. Caesar was a king in all but name, while thrice he refused the
crown when offered it. Shakespeare’s audience would certainly have seen the
assassination of Caesar as a form of regicide. “I
do fear the people / Choose Caesar for their king,” was spoken by a
gloomy Brutus; when heard by the calculating Cassius this cheered him up.
Why did Cassius need Brutus to pursue his plot?
Also in Act I Scene II, where Caesar and Anthony share an intimate moment
amidst the noisy celebrations of Caesar’s latest victory against Pompey –
paralleling the one just acted between Brutus and Cassius – it is an insightful
Caesar who says: “Let me have about me men who
are fat: / Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much; such men
are dangerous.” What is this but a gnawing ambition recognised by Caesar
in the conspirator and soon-to-be murderer? Now go to the two funeral speeches.
What is Caesar’s crime for which he was killed?
Brutus tells us. Take the two famous orations, Brutus’s and Anthony’s, and
compare them with each other. Then compare the two intimate asides that
transpired in Act I between first Brutus and Cassius then Mark Anthony and
Caesar.
Essay Question 2
While Queen Elizabeth reigned it was the Cecils, first Lord Burghley, William
Cecil and then his son Robert Cecil, who effectively ruled Britain. Their enemy
at Court was the handsome, audacious and at times reckless Lord Essex who had
been a favourite of both the people (for his prowess and daring on the
battlefield) and the Queen (for his incorrigible charm at Court), but ultimately
he was executed by her (upon Cecil’s insistence). Essex’s friend and also
Shakespeare’s, Lord Southampton, was imprisoned for his suspected role in the
Essex Rebellion. Recall that the two long narrative poems by Shakespeare, Venus
and Lucrece, were dedicated to Southampton, and some believe that the he address
in the Sonnets is indeed Southampton.
Essex and his friends and supporters hoped to save the monarchy from being
subjugated by a cabinet of powerful and influential lords, and planned a
rebellion that would have effectively removed Robert Cecil and his coterie,
including the powerful head of the Elizabethan secret service, Sir Frances
Walsingham. Essex’s friends had commissioned Shakespeare’s company to perform
Richard II as a rallying call. They used the need to remove an effeminate king,
Richard II, as a stand-in for the actual feminine queen, Elizabeth. “I am
Richard II, know ye not that?” was recorded as having been said by the queen in
a register kept by her Keeper of the Rolls. She was not altogether pleased with
the association.
King Richard, while known for his goodness, lacked the decisiveness to command
and lead his kingdom. Shakespeare portrayed Richard’s advisors, Bushy, Bagot and
Green as disingenuous flatterers, which the astute members of his audience would
easily recognise as being a satire upon Robert Cecil and his inner circle. The
historical event of the usurpation of Richard can be seen as the seed that gave
rise to the Wars of the Roses. We may refer to this as hubris leading to
nemesis. Shakespeare’s Henry VI Parts I-III, culminating in Richard III,
explores the theme of this destructive civil war that tore the fabric of
England. We know of Shakespeare’s involvement with Essex and Southampton and the
dialogue he carried out on stage with his audience exploring vital contemporary
issues, carefully embedded in plays depicting past historical events, some from
earlier periods of English history and others as far back as ancient Rome.
Therefore, from Richard II to Richard III we can recognise a form of gloss, an
interpretation, through which Shakespeare explored contemporary social and
political affairs. Write about this approach
and give examples from the plays. Then see what you might extrapolate from those
events to modern current affairs. ‘Shakespeare was not for an age but for
all times,’ wrote Ben Jonson, a contemporary of Shakespeare.
Give examples and explain your points.
There then is the Final Exam in Shakespeare & Rhetoric for the second year
students at Dallas College. Prior to this was the Mid-Term Exam, given a few
months earlier, which also had two essay questions. The first was centred on the
completion of the Henry VI trilogy plus its finale, Richard III. It dealt with
the forceful, beautiful and at times cruel Queen Margaret who fought ferociously
to retain her crown and protect her son’s inheritance, despite her husband’s
flaccid will and cracked mind. She ended up a deranged prophetess left to wander
the corridors of the palace now occupied by those who had dispossessed her.
Opposite her was the master Machiavellian, Richard III, brilliant, dangerous and
doomed. “A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a
horse!” The students were asked to create biographical profiles, derived
from passages of the four plays, of these two main protagonists.
The second essay question was on Julius Caesar, which we were still studying,
having moved from the English History Plays to the Roman Plays. The question was
to compare Brutus, the final defender of the once highly acclaimed Roman
Republic and co-murderer of Caesar, with Robespierre, a major ideologue of the
French Republic and complicit in the killing of a king, a queen, other royals,
aristocrats and some thousands of ordinary Frenchmen who did not conform to his
idea of their freedom. ‘Not that I loved
Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more’ was Brutus’s legal argument as
he explained to the people why Caesar had to be killed. With a rallying cry at
the Capitol when Caesar was stabbed nearly identical to the famous mantra of the
French Revolution, it is not surprising to learn that Robespierre greatly
admired Brutus, “for Brutus was an honourable
man”, and was known to have studied the play by the famous English bard.
That completes the Second Year.
There is now the material of the First Year. It began with a brief introduction
to the poet from Stratford-on-Avon. Then the fascinating scene in Elizabethan
London as this famous city, now a burgeoning metropolis, was bursting with life
from a vast world trade resulting from a most powerful and modern English navy
that brought goods and people from every corner of the globe. There were new
sciences, languages and some old vices all competing for the attention of a very
bright twenty year old Will, who would soon capture the world. They called him
‘an upstart crow.’
The first play we studied was Richard II then the two Henry IV plays, centring
on the forging of the character of Prince Hal. Lastly, the heroic Henry V “Once
more unto the breach, dear friends” was read.
Going now to the third and final year of the course, it centres on two plays.
The first is Coriolanus, reputably Shakespeare’s most political play. It is an
exploration of democracy juxtaposed on the nature of personal rule, or tyranny
as some refer to it, taking pros and cons from each side and retaining that
breadth of ambiguity on Shakespeare’s part to allow his audiences to interpret
the work. It has been used in different eras to support nearly every position on
the political spectrum. Today it is hardly performed, since Western democracy is
the only choice on the menu.
The remainder of the third year is dedicated to Hamlet.
What a piece of work is a man. This
play, more than any other in the entire opus of world literature, contains some
of the greatest lines ever composed by man. Hamlet is studied as a psychological
character as if he were an actual human being. Goethe placed the play into his
seminal work, Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship.
We started by simply reading the play, to enjoy it. We recited passages in
class. There are the many great soliloquies.
What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba? The students gave oral
commentaries on some of these most renowned passages. It is a play rich beyond
our expectations. A play so fecund in meanings that it has not yet, after 400
years, exhausted appreciation for it. The masterful use of metaphor to say a
thing so apropos, so sublimely, that we delight in what secrets the tongue can
reveal.
For the last semester the entire focus is on reading Hamlet as a gloss for the
most vital of all issues confronting Elizabethan England. Taking the excellent
scholarship of Lilian Winstanley as a guide, in her 1921 study prepared at the
University College of Wales, entitled Hamlet
and the Scottish Succession, we re-read
the play as a key to understanding those volatile political events involving
James VI of Scotland, who became James I of England, Ireland, Scotland and
Wales. Lord Darnley, James’s father, was murdered by the Earl of Bothwell, who
then married Mary Queen of Scots, James’s mother. Compare this to King Hamlet
who was murdered by his brother, Hamlet’s uncle, who then marries Hamlet’s
mother. "A little more than kin and less than
kind", replied Hamlet. We encounter Essex and Cecil (with William and
Robert joined as one character) on stage in a play about Denmark which is, it
turns out, Scotland.
The fourth year of Dallas College in Cape Town has just completed. The core
syllabus of the college is comprised of Geo-Politics, Lit-Politics and Bio
(biography) Politics. Added to this core a few languages have been offered. We
started with Arabic which was then replaced by Osmanli Turkish, and Urdu. There
are Qur’anic Studies, taught by some our best scholars in this time, and also IT
to assist the learners in the necessary use of tools required in this 21st
Century. In the midst of this challenging curriculum is Shakespeare & Rhetoric,
concentrating on the political plays.
The approach of this new paideuma,
classical yet radical for these times, was envisaged by Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir
as-Sufi, a Dallas from Scotland, who lent his name to the college. Its aim is to
produce a new generation of leaders. There must be the will to support this
undertaking commensurate with the commitment and will of the lecturers, the
administration and its excellent students. The need for it could not be greater,
and the age demands it, for what now passes for a modern education has failed
young people who deserve much better.
No comments:
Post a Comment