College Papers

[mygfdontliveincanada]

Posted: 2/18/06 at 6:55pm

I've realized I've written some fun papers in my 4 years at the UCLA theater department, and I'm sure there are other college students (or college graduates) out there that have written some awesome papers, too.

So why don't we share them? I think it would be an awesome idea to share papers on here. Who knows. It may even help out another student somewhere else.

I'll start the ball rolling with my next message...

[mygfdontliveincanada]

Posted: 2/18/06 at 7:02pm

Here's one I wrote on "Into the Woods"...

Jeffrey Davis
Theater 11
12 March 2003

“Life Was So Steady & Now This! When Are Things Going to Return to Normal?”
A Look at Into the Woods & How We can Apply It to a Post September Eleventh World

For the men and women of New York City, the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001 began as any other. People went to work, their children went to school, and tourists set out from their hotels to visit the city’s landmarks. But by 10:30 that morning, one of the city’s landmarks was no more than a jumble of concrete, and thousands of New Yorkers were tragically and unexpectedly killed in an act of terrorism. Our country mourned and tried to make sense of the attack. We asked questions, and the two on everyone’s tongues were, “Why did this happen?” and “How are we supposed to act when our world is turned upside-down?”

Oddly enough, Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine had answered these questions almost fifteen years earlier in their musical, Into the Woods, a show which uses the fairy-tale “metaphors for passage, for the pleasures and pain of going through life, making choices and decisions, [and] dealing with consequences” to comment on the problems of modern life. Their show’s themes about selfishness, immorality, lack of community, responsibility, ignored indications of misfortune, and how they instigate an attack by a giant are also good explanations as to why September 11 happened to our country. The themes of the second act, about the destruction of order, scapegoating, grief, and teamwork are all examples of how people act in the face of a tragic event, yet some are certainly better reactions than others.

Into the Woods uses the fairy-tale characters of “Cinderella,” “Jack and the Beanstalk,” and “Little Red Riding Hood,” plus a Baker and his Wife (created by Sondheim and Lapine), to tell the
story of a community in which everyone is motivated by their own self interests but are forced to pull together to face a giant who threatens to destroy their kingdom. From the very first moment of the play, we see how the community is divided by self interest. The stage is broken into thirds—the respective homes of Cinderella, Jack and his mother, and the Baker and his Wife—and a narrator stands at the proscenium, detached from the rest of the action. In the Original Broadway Production—which opened on November 5, 1987 at the Martin Beck Theater—the homes are separated by a drop of the woods with cut out archways for the homes to appear through. The drop also isolates the characters from the rest of the kingdom. The first words out of all the character’s mouths, save the Narrator, are “I wish.” Cinderella wants to go to the ball, the Baker and his Wife want a child, and Jack and his Mother want to escape their poverty. The entire scene, which lasts a good fifteen minutes, is all about the desires of the characters, most of which are trivial, greedy, extremely selfish. As Jack’s Mother says on her entrance, “I wish my son were not a fool/I wish my house was not a mess/I wish the cow was full of milk/I wish the walls were full of gold/I wish a lot of things!”

We learn later in the scene that the selfishness of the characters is nothing new. The Witch, who comes to the Baker to tell him of a curse on his house and, “For purposes of her own,” how to lift it, tells the Baker that while his mother was pregnant, she had enormous cravings, and to appease them the Baker’s father stole some vegetables from the Witch’s garden, including five magic beans. So we see that previous generations in the kingdom have been motivated by selfishness and have disregarded their effect on others.

The exposition ends with the characters venturing out into the woods to get what they wish for. As critic Nelson Pressley put it, “The goal-oriented characters traipse through this wilderness like so many ids unleashed.” You’d expect the characters to at least notice one another as they leave their homes and traverse through the woods together, yet they are still so wound up in themselves that they don’t notice the others around them, as the blocking of the Original Broadway Production shows. This is an early indication of how ignorant they are of their community and of how their actions will affect each other.

As the Baker and his Wife search for the items the Witch needs to reverse the curse, it becomes apparent that they will do nothing short of deception and deceit to get what they need. The first object they get is Milky-White, Jack’s beloved cow and best friend, by tricking the boy into exchanging him for five beans. When the Baker questions the morality of tricking a young, somewhat dimwitted boy into selling his cow for beans, his wife justifies herself in the song “Maybe They’re Magic” by saying, “If you know what you want/then you go and you find it and you get it” and “when the end is right it justifies the beans,” an obvious play on the “ends justify the means” mantra. This song explains the American philosophy of might makes right almost entirely in the clichés we hear everyday, a wonderfully intelligent idea from Sondheim and Lapine. Just a page later, the Baker, who initially questioned using immoral tactics to fulfill his quest, tries to steal Little Red’s cape and comes to the conclusion that “Things are only what you need them for/What’s important is who needs them more.” These two scenes indicate that these characters will resort to anything to get their wishes.

After concluding that deception and theft is acceptable, the Baker becomes increasingly selfish. After all, once you can justify one crime, it’s easy to justify virtually anything. When the Baker kills the wolf that ate Little Red, he doesn’t do it to save the girl. He thinks she’s already dead anyway. Before killing the wolf, he says to it, “What is this red cloth in the corner of your mouth? Looks to me to be a piece of—ah-hah! I’ll get the cape from within your stomach.” Thus it’s obvious that he kills the wolf to get the cape. The Baker is so self-interested that even when he sees a little girl has been violently eaten alive, the only thing the Baker can think about is how to get what he needs.

More characters use ruthless tactics to get what they want, though. Jack climbs the beanstalk that has grown from the five beans the Baker gave him and finds a kingdom of giants there. He befriends a wealthy lady giant, who kindly takes him into her house. However, after meeting her menacing and threatening husband, Jack flees the kingdom and climbs back down the beanstalk. This is understandable; the disgruntled giant could easily squash him. But before he goes, Jack steals from the giants. Even when he is faced with certain death, Jack is still greedy. And as bad as that is, Jack decides to go back for more…twice! Jack’s endeavors with the giant are major catalysts for the events of the second act.

Sure these characters are selfish and deceitful, but does that allow for the tragedy that faces them later? Certainly, as there is no room for a sense of community in a world where everyone is looking out for themselves. We see this lack of community on many occasions, one being right after the giant falls to his death. After the bizarre event, Jack’s Mother asks everyone to help her move the giant and find her son. No one offers her any help, as they all have their own problems that are more important to them. This comes back to haunt the Baker when he goes to Jack for help in the beginning of the second act and the boy’s mother refuses to let Jack be of service, as the Baker did not help them when they needed it.

Just as their selfishness destroys their sense of community, selfishness also prevents the characters to notice the downfalls of others. The Witch tells the Baker that she punished his father’s theft by cursing the fertility of the family line and taking his newborn daughter. The Baker and his Wife should apply that knowledge to their own lives, yet they still go into the woods and ruthlessly do anything they can to reverse the curse without thinking they could be punished later on for their foolishness.

Later on Rapunzel and her prince pay for their forbidden romance. Rapunzel looses her hair, is banished to the desert, and as we learn later, bore twins. Her prince is blinded. Cinderella’s Stepsisters also suffer their reversals. They mutilate their feet to try to fit into Cinderella’s slipper, but they still do not win the Prince. Then, at Cinderella’s wedding they are blinded by birds. The Witch suffers too, as she loses her powers and her daughter. At the wedding, the Stepsisters and the Witch lament over their misfortunes, but no one else notices. Instead, as the scene was wonderfully staged in the Original Broadway Production, the Witch and Stepsisters sing of their misfortunes to the audience while everyone else happily dances behind them, oblivious to the lamenting trio and the beanstalk growing behind them. Although there are many occasions where Sondheim hints at the coming downfalls of the characters, they are too rapped up in their own selfishness to notice until it’s too late. Perhaps if they noticed earlier, however, they would make more reasonable choices in their own lives. Perhaps the Baker and his Wife would not be so ruthless in their quest for a child, perhaps Little Red would have stayed on the path, perhaps Cinderella would have found someone who really loved her as opposed to a fantasy, and perhaps Jack wouldn’t have stole from the giants.

Although the first act concludes with a fairy-tale ending, “In Act II [the characters] meet the dark side of their dreams, as the superficiality of their wishes surfaces like smog, and results in disaster from the sky, in the form of the Giantess Jack widowed.” However, the characters do not initially realize that their actions in the first act brought about the destruction of their village, and until they understand their responsibility, they cannot fix the problem. Instead, they initially make the problem worse by extinguishing what little order they have in the kingdom. When the entire cast is confronted by the giant, they decide someone needs to be sacrificed to her, yet no one wants to die, so they give her the narrator because he is an outsider. In doing so, they symbolically destroy what little order they have, and the kingdom is thrown into chaos and anarchy. This is shown immediately, as within a few minutes of the Narrator’s demise two other characters are killed. The kingdom is thrown into further anarchy when the royal family flees the problem.
More important than the lack of order, though, is the lack of responsibility. None of the characters notice how they are a contributing factor to the giant’s presence, yet they all understand how the others are to blame. These ideas are beautifully shown in the fast-paced song, “Your Fault,” in which all the characters left to battle the giant point fingers at each other and deny their responsibility for the crisis. Scapegoating was one of our country’s initial reactions to September 11 as well; some people wrongfully blamed Arabs and Muslims in our country, and racial profiling became an even more acceptable practice. Richard Eyre, the director of a post-September 11 revival of The Crucible, wrote about one such incident.

“A man telephoned a booking agency trying to get tickets for The Producers. Full, he was told, and was offered tickets for Kiss Me Kate. He accepted and meticulously questioned the booking agent: how big was the theatre, how far away were the seats from the stage, whereabouts exactly in the row? He gave his credit card details: an Arab surname. When he arrived at the theatre, he was met by four FBI agents and arrested as a suspected terrorist.”

However, the characters eventually realize their contributions to the problem. The Witch argues this point to them in the song “Last Midnight” but also tells them that it doesn’t matter who’s to blame because soon they’ll be dead unless they stop arguing and take some action. In the revival, the song was changed from a direct statement to the group to a menacing lullaby to the Baker’s son. The Witch sings to the child, “You’re so pure/but stay here and in time you’ll mature/and grow up to be them...They’re all liars and thieves like your father/just like you will be too, oh why bother/they’ll just do what they do...” This reinterpretation allowed the Witch to also assert that the characters need to stop quarreling and be responsible in order to set a good example to the child.

This idea of collective responsibility is echoed in the song “No One is Alone.” Although the song, with its lyrics—“Sometimes people leave you/Halfway through the wood/Do not let it grieve you/No one leaves for good,” —obviously deals with grief as well, Sondheim had different intentions. “It’s not simply a ‘we’ll-be-fine’ number,” he says, “It’s a reminder that everyone’s actions affect someone else.” And other lyrics in the song support this idea. The song also preaches that “People make mistakes” and we should “Honor their mistakes/Fight for their mistakes/Everybody makes one another’s terrible mistakes.” Molly Ephriam, the “Little Red” of the Revival Production, had this to say about the play’s theme of responsibility. “I think if you asked anyone who hasn’t seen the show if a tree falls in a forest and there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound, most people would say no. But if you’re looking at this show, definitely…[The characters] are all affected by other people’s decisions. It’s really interesting for a musical to be based on decisions like that.”

Although after the Witch makes her arguments Cinderella, Jack, and Little Red understand how they’ve been catalysts for the crisis, the Baker still denies his liability and runs away from the problem, abandoning the group and his own son. However, he meets his estranged father in the woods, who tells him in the song “No More,” that running away is not the answer and that, if he goes through with it, he’ll regret it. “Running away—we’ll do it,” he says, “Why sit around resigned?/Trouble is, son/The farther you run/The more you feel undefined/For what you have left undone/And, more, what you’ve left behind.” His words cause the Baker to go back with newfound determination to defeat the giant and to help the remaining characters.

And of course, since the musical is a fairy-tale, the characters succeed in defeating the giant. However, Sondheim still tries to show how although the giant’s gone, the kingdom has been destroyed, and it will take a long time for things to get better. This idea did not come out well in the Original Production, but the Revival brilliantly altered the ending to illustrate this point. While the bouncy finale starts immediately after the giant’s death in the Original Production, the finale in the Revival version slowly builds from foreboding chords to a slow military-like march to the energetic title tune. This slow acceleration into the bubbly finale, paired with the cast sweeping up the debris caused by the giant, seems like a reminder that it takes time to rebuild a crumbled community and a heart-wrenching nod to the cleanup effort at ground zero.

Into the Woods definitely has greater importance now in a post-September 11 world. It’s lessons about the effects of our actions and how to (and in many cases how not to) react to a tragedy, can and should be applied today. With that said, however, there still are some critics who chide Into the Woods. As critic Matthew Murray says, “Into the Woods may never have been one of Sondheim's greatest shows, wearing its message on its sleeve rather than allowing the audience the thrill of putting the pieces together.” Plenty of other critics agree, saying that Into the Woods is often blatantly preachy. Although I do agree that Sondheim does nothing to hide the moral to his story, I feel there is nothing wrong with that. After all, in a time where our president turns a blind eye to a global community that, for the most part, protests his proposed actions in the Middle East, subtlety doesn’t seem to work. We must be blatantly obvious for people to hear what we have to say. And what Sondheim has to say deserves our ears.

Works Cited
Chapman, Tracy N., Molly Ephraim, Pamela Myers, Amanda Naughton, and Adam Wylie. Interview. The Sondheim Review. By Paul Salsini and Sean Patrick Flahaven. 8.4: 2002.
In this interview, five cast members from the revival of Into the Woods talk about many different aspects of the rehearsal process (it should be noted that this interview was conducted while the show was still in the middle of rehearsal). All of the cast members in the interview address September 11 and its relation to the themes of the play. Molly Ephraim even mentions how she kept the attacks in the back of her mind while developing her character.

Eyre, Richard. “Why the Big Apple was Ripe for Miller’s Return.” The Guardian 16 Mar. 2002.
Eyre, the British director of The Crucible, mentions a handful of the play’s parallels to the racial profiling and patriotism that immediately followed September 11. He also offers some very interesting first hand observations of reactions to the attacks.

Hitchcock, Laura. “Into the Woods in LA.” Curtain Up. 3 March 2002.
This review of the Los Angeles try-out for Into the Woods is mostly a summary of the plot and a critique of the performances, but it beautifully states the point that Sondheim and Lapine try to make through their musical. It also subtly alludes to similarities between the play and the terrorist attacks.

Murray, Matthew. “Into the Woods.” Talkin’ Broadway. 30 April 2002.
This review, while mentioning many of the same points as the others, especially the ones from Hitchcock and Winer, also has plenty of original thoughts, many of which I do not agree with. However, it is a good source of an opposing opinion.

Phillips, Michael. “Once More Into the Woods.” Chicago Tribune 10 Feb. 2002
This article incorporates an interview with Stephen Sondheim. He addresses the message of Into the Woods, especially those found in the second act. He also argues that the play has not changed since September 11 as it was always about community and senseless suffering and destruction, themes that are simply more noticeable and sentimental now.

Pressley, Nelson. “A Spruced-Up Into the Woods Grows on Broadway.” Washington Post 1 May 2002: C1+
Pressley writes a review which briefly mentions the connections between the play and the terrorist attacks and points out that director James Lapine did not change the play in any way to make it into an analogy for the American public’s response to the terrorist attacks; it just automatically happened.

Spencer, David. “Into the Woods.” Aisle Say. New York. 2 March 2002.
This review of the Revival Production of Into the Woods once again points of some of the musical’s major themes and compares the new production to the original, saying that the new one is darker and truer to the intent of the text.

Works Consulted
LeSourd, Jacques. “A Pale Revival of Into the Woods.” The Journal News. 1 May 2002.
This review, as uneducated as I feel Mr. Le Sourd’s opinions are, is valuable for presenting a drastically different judgment of the musical. He criticizes the book just as much as the production, saying that the dialogue and songs are often preachy.

Wagner, Chuck. “For Wagner, One Princely Role, Then Another.” The Sondheim Review. Interview with Terry Roberts. 8.3: 2002.
Although Mr. Wagner mostly reminisces on the rehearsal process for the Original Broadway Production of Into the Woods, in which he played Rapunzel’s Prince, he mentions the revival at the end of the interview and comments on its importance after the terrorist attacks.

Winer, Laura. “Forest is Still Enchanting.” Newsday. 30 April 2002.
This review of the Broadway Revival production of Into the Woods also mentions some of the morals instilled in the musical, albeit different ones than Laura Hitchcock mentions.

Plays and Other Works Cited
Broadway Revival Cast. Into the Woods. Comp. Stephen Sondheim. Perf. Vanessa Williams, John McMartin, Kerry O’Malley, Laura Benanti, Stephen DeRosa. Nonesuch, 2002.
This recording of the musical has, in my opinion, the best orchestrations of the music. There are some changes in the score for the revival, the most notable and important being an ending to “On the Steps of the Palace” which also feature Jack and Little Red, new lyrics to “Last Midnight,” and a very foreboding beginning of the “Act Two Finale.”

Into the Woods. Dir. James Lapine. Perf. Bernadette Peters, Joanna Gleason, Chip Zien, and Kim Crosby. Originally Broadcast on PBS. Taped at a performance at the Martin Beck Theatre, New York. Videocassette. Brandman Productions, Inc., 1990.
This video of the Original Broadway Production of Into the Woods is an extremely valuable source. It helped to see a production of the musical, especially because of the intense underscoring Sondheim supplies and the beautifully eerie portrayal of the woods provided by set designer Tony Straiges and lighting designer Richard Nelson.

Original Broadway Cast. Into the Woods. Comp. Stephen Sondheim. Perf. Bernadette Peters, Joanna Gleason, Chip Zien, and Kim Crosby. RCA, 1988.
This is considered by many to be the best recording of the musical. It definitely features some outstanding performances, most notably from Bernadette Peters and Joanna Gleason, but much of the score has been cut, especially from the Prologues to each act. Also, the reprise to “Maybe They’re Magic,” isn’t on the CD at all.

Sondheim, Stephen, and James Lapine. Into the Woods. New York: Theater Communications Group, 1989.
Sondheim’s most popular and frequently produced musical about a community of fairy-tale characters whose wants eventually backfire on them when Jack, of beanstalk fame, kills a giant whose wife destroys their village in revenge. As they try to find a way to stop the giant, they question whether their wishes were as important as they originally thought and if they missed more important things in life. The musical’s themes of community, love, family, selfishness, vengeance, death, and senseless destruction have new meaning in post 9/11 America.

Other Works Consulted
Original London Cast. Into the Woods. Comp. Stephen Sondheim. Perf. Julia McKenzie, Imelda Staunton, Nicholas Parsons, Ian Bartholomew, Jacqueline Dankworth. RCA, 1991.
Although this recording features plenty of British charm, as all the performers are English and were encouraged not to cover up their accents as they gave a European feel to a show inspired by European folklore, there are plenty of problems with the recording. It is often too bright and quick-tempoed, which makes it harder to realize what point Sondheim is trying to make.

[mygfdontliveincanada]

Posted: 2/18/06 at 7:05pm

On the recent film version of "Merchant of Venice"...

Jeffrey Matthew Davis
Theater 101B
T.A. Melinda Powers
5 March 2005

The Merchant of Venice:
How a Controversial Comedy Becomes a Controversial Drama

After reading The Merchant of Venice and discussing its highly controversial subjects in class, I had a feeling that the new movie version directed by Michael Radford would either attempt to ignore the taboos in the play or would take a drastically different approach and try to make the controversial parts work for a modern audience. Strangely, Radford does a bit of both. Radford justifiably attempts to make the piece more sympathetic to its Jewish characters and in doing so makes the piece more of a drama than a comedy, but his choices regarding the female characters, the romance between Bassanio and Portia, and the homosexual tension between Antonio and Bassanio isn’t as justifiable.

One particularly important choice made by Michael Radford in his film of The Merchant of Venice is how he decides to make Shylock a victim and even a tragic character. It is so clear in the film that Shylock begins in a state of prominence and eventually loses money, his daughter, and even his own religion and identity. Shylock’s famous “If you ****us, do we not bleed” speech—accompanied here by a mournful violin, distant thunder, and ominous blue lighting—is especially poignant and moving. Radford turns the character who would have been the butt of the joke in Shakespeare’s day into a martyr who we can sympathize with. Of course, this is entirely predictable. Al Pacino who portrays Shylock here isn’t known for comedy, and a production staying true to the comedic intent of Shakespeare’s work would definitely be considered offensive and bigoted by todays standards, though the grunts, groans, and dismay voiced by some audience members as they left the theater suggest that despite his attempts to be P.C., Radford’s film still offends some.

What bothered me about this otherwise interesting, original, and thoughtfully crafted retelling of Shakespeare’s most challenging work was how Radford proved he could make compelling choices through his interpretation of Shylock yet failed to make similarly compelling choices in other areas of the film. The homosexually tinged relationship between Antonio and Bassanio is overblown with a kiss between them, which seemed a bit out of place and inappropriate. Sure plenty of critics think there is a homosexual edge to their relationship, especially in how Antonio views Bassanio, but for the piece to work, Bassanio has to either be straight or bisexual to be physically attracted to Portia or gay and greedy to be attracted to her money. Since Radford decides to play up the romance in the relationship between Bassanio and Portia, the kiss is very out of place. Personally, I felt that seeing a gay, greedy Bassanio would have been more interesting, and the irony it would have provided (after all, Bassanio wins Portia by appearing less greedy than the other suitors) could provide some humor to the tragedy Radford has created.

Besides his somewhat flawed handling of the relationships between Bassanio and Antonio and Bassanio and Portia, Radford’s handling of the female characters is equally problematic. By making Shylock a martyr and Jessica an instrument that brings about his downfall, Radford robs Shylock’s daughter of any sympathy we might have for her. We see her as a whore, not a victim. And Portia, though she has the more money and power than any of the characters, is somehow characterized here as a lowly damsel in distress. What Bassanio is rescuing her from is beyond me. Ironically, the same director who tries to handle Shylock in a way that is politically correct fails to do the same for the female characters.

Despite it’s shortcomings, The Merchant of Venice is gorgeous, superbly acted, and definitely worth studying. All choices made in the film, even if they are occasionally misguided, are definitely fresh.

[sweetestsiren]

Posted: 2/18/06 at 7:08pm

It's cool to share, but honestly I'd feel uncomfortable posting an entire paper online beause I'd worry about plagiarism.
Updated On: 2/18/06 at 07:08 PM

[mygfdontliveincanada]

Posted: 2/18/06 at 7:10pm

A close reading of the "If You Prick Us, Do We Not Bleed" speech from "Merchant of Venice"...

Jeffrey Matthew Davis
Theater 101B
T.A. Melinda Powers
11 March 2005

If You Wrong Us, Shall We Not Revenge:
An Analysis of Shylock’s Act III, Scene 1 Speech from The Merchant of Venice

William Shakespeare is indeed a writer known for his brilliant albeit often controversial plays, and The Merchant of Venice is arguably one of his most debated works and certainly his most controversial comedy. Though the entire play—which centers on the violent and malicious relations between Christians and Jews in Renaissance Italy—has sparked debates and discussions for hundreds of years, Shylock’s short but famous speech in Act III, Scene 1 of The Merchant of Venice has become one of the most carefully critiqued passages of the play. This meticulously crafted monologue, written in prose and filled with emotional rhetorical questions, serves to humanize the villain of Shylock and justify his craving of revenge. However Shylock’s argument, when contrasted to pervious scenes, is definitely flawed, and this misstep in his logic is a microcosm of one of the larger problems the play faces in contemporary theater.

Shylock’s twenty-line speech may be brief but it is one of the most important monologues of the play, and Shakespeare places it into the action carefully so the meaning behind it is sharpened. At this point in the play, Shylock’s daughter, Jessica, has run off with Lorenzo and Antonio’s fortune is gone, ensuing that he will not be able to pay off his debt. Thus the Christian heroes have robbed Shylock of his daughter and his money. Before Shylock even appears on the stage in this scene we know he’s angry as other characters have mentioned his reaction to the recent turn of events. Still, this is the first time we’ve seen him since before Jessica’s abduction in Act II, Scene 6, and this delay makes Shylock’s speech more meaningful. For three long scenes we’ve been waiting to hear Shylock’s reaction in his own words and now we finally get it in one of Shakespeare’s most celebrated monologues.

One of the most important functions of Shylock’s speech is how it serves to humanize the character who up until now has been the clear villain of the play. Shakespeare utilizes many different techniques to make us sympathize with his character. The first is how he writes this passage in prose. By taking the speech and the scene it resides in out of the iambic pentameter that he commonly writes in, Shakespeare makes it easily accessible to the common man. By allowing Shylock to talk in the same manner that commoners would makes it easier for Shakespeare to get his audience to sympathize with Shylock by making it easier for them to understand the parallels Shylock makes between himself, the Christian characters, and the audience themselves.

Shakespeare also uses rhetorical questions to make the audience side with Shylock. According to A Handbook of Rhetorical Devices, a rhetorical question “is not answered by the writer, because its answer is obvious or obviously desired […] It is used for effect [or] emphasis” (Harris). Shakespeare certainly uses rhetorical questions in this passage to emphasize the humanity of his villain. The first rhetorical questions posed by Shylock—in which he says, “Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?”—serve to show how Jews are physically constructed in the same way as everyone else (III, i, 57-59). In short, Jews are humans, too.

When Shylock says that he is “fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed with the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer” as Christians, he implies that certain conditions in life affect Jews the same way as their Christian counterparts (III, I, 59-62). Thus, not only is Shylock human like ourselves or the Christian characters in the play but his humanity is shaped by the same conditions and in the same way. It should be noted that Shakespeare repeats the word “same” five times in this one sentence, further illustrating the sameness between Shylock, the Christians, and ourselves.

Continuing his string of rhetorical questions, Shylock delves into more emotional and universal qualities of humanity. “If you ****us, do we not bleed?” he asks. “If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?” (III, i, 63-65). Here Shylock implies that he too feels the universal emotions of pain and pleasure, happiness and sadness, and will ultimately die as will all of us. These conditions of the human experience are all things which we as an audience can relate to.

Back to the definition of rhetorical questions, Robert Harris states that they can also be used to draw “a conclusionary statement from the facts at hand” (Harris). Shakespeare caps his questions with “And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” (III, i, 65-66), thus bringing us to a conclusion from the already stated facts. By asking this, Shylock places us into his shoes. If we had experienced what he has, wouldn’t we want that pound of flesh, too? After all, we are the same in all other ways. Wouldn’t we feel the same way? To ensure we come to the same conclusion Shylock even gives the logical conclusion to us. Shylock asks “If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should be his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge!” (III, i, 68-70). These are the only two questions in the string of rhetorical questions that we actually get the answer to, just in case we couldn’t get the same answer on our own. Shakespeare brilliantly uses rhetorical questions to make us realize how Shylock is human and how, by Christian standards no less, his thirst for revenge is justifiable.

What makes this speech all the more compelling is how Shylock thinks his reasons for revenge are different from Antonio’s reasons for hating him when in reality they are not. Shylock states at the beginning of his monologue that Antonio hates him for being Jewish. Through his speech Shylock tries to express how he is motivated not because he hates Antonio for being Christian but because Shylock himself is like a Christian in most ways, and if a Christian was treated as Antonio has treated Shylock revenge would be granted. However this statement dramatically clashes with an aside Shylock gives in Act I, Scene 3 in which he says of Antonio, “I hate him because he is a Christian” (I, iii, 42). In addition, in his Act III, Scene 1 monologue Shylock implies that he wishes that Christians could see Jews as human and could treat them humanely, yet it is he who is asking for a pound of flesh of a man he says he hates for being Christian. Moreover, Shylock asks for the severe form of revenge before he’s even been wronged. When looking just at his speech from Act III, Scene 1, which is aimed at making us emotionally connect with Shylock, he appears to be a justifiable character deserving of our sympathy. However when his speech is contrasted with his previous actions and words, it becomes obvious that Shylock preaches humanity and acceptance but refuses to uphold his own ideals.

This hypocrisy and misstep in logic illustrates what is the biggest problem in one of Shakespeare’s biggest problem plays. The audience—and often the director—are lost as to whom they should side with since everyone in this play is hateful, illogical, and malicious throughout, and any production that attempts to favor one side runs the risk of making this problem even more apparent by having some serious continuity issues. The recent film version staring Al Pacino did just that. It favored Shylock so much that it made the film a tragedy—which was indeed understandable and politically correct—but it still didn’t find a specific reason why Shylock should be sympathized with more than any of the other characters, and I say that as a Jew who loves to see stories in which people who are oppressed for religious reasons rise above their oppressors. In Shakespeare’s time this may not have been an issue. His society could probably accept heroes that destroy the life of a Jewish man simply on the grounds that he is Jewish. After all, Europe had just gone through the plague for which Jews were blamed. In short, to Elizabethan audiences the hate of the Christians towards the Jew would be justifiable and even commended while the Jew’s hate of the Christians would not. However to a modern audience which has seen the holocaust and what hate between differing religions is doing today, all the characters in The Merchant of Venice are not sympathetic.

Shylock’s impassioned speech from Act III, Scene 1 of The Merchant of Venice uses rhetorical questions and prose to illustrate the human side of Shylock and to justify his revenge. However when carefully contrasted to his statements and actions in previous scenes, it is clear that Shylock is not a sympathetic character. Sadly none of the characters in Merchant are sympathetic to modern audiences and thus most modern productions of this play—including the recent film adaptation—fall victim to continuity issues. Despite how the problems surrounding this monologue illustrates how it is difficult for a modern audience to understand who to side with in this play, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the play is too difficult to be done. A good director would embrace how none of the characters are sympathetic—rather than trying to ignore or fix the supposed problem—and turn the play into an over-the-top political satire. Considering the current state of the world, what would be more fun to see than a political and religious satire where all the characters are at fault? In all honesty, that’s what I had hoped the recent movie version would be, and though the film was an interesting and likeable retelling of the play, an over-the-top political and religious satire it was not.

Works Cited

Shakespeare, William. The Merchant of Venice. New York: Washington Square Press, 1992.

Harris, Robert. A Handbook of Rhetorical Devices. VirtualSalt. 26 Jul 2002. 11 Mar 2005.
<http://www.virtualsalt.com/rhetoric.htm#Rhetorical>.

[mygfdontliveincanada]

Posted: 2/18/06 at 7:13pm

Sweetestsiren,

I really don't think anyone would plagerize from me more than they'd plagerize from other essays or reviews that are so easily found on the internet. And either way, if they do and get caught it's more their problem than mine.

But still, to anyone who wants to use anything from the papers I've posted, I've attached my name and my works cited. It should not be too hard to quote me and give me credit where credit is due, so please DO NOT PLAGERIZE Updated On: 2/18/06 at 07:13 PM

[mygfdontliveincanada]

Posted: 2/18/06 at 7:18pm

A comparison of the stage and film versions of "Angels in America"...

Jeffrey Matthew Davis
English 118
Dr. Larson
7 June 2005

An Analysis of the Impact of Style
On the Stage and Screen Versions of Angels in America

During the now famous mutual dream sequence in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, a Valium-popping Mormon housewife named Harper Pitt muses to AIDS patient Prior Walter that “imagination can’t create anything new […] It only recycles bits and pieces from the world and reassembles them” (Millennium 32). Obviously Harper’s words are Kushner’s way of thumbing his nose at jaded literary and theater scholars, for with his two-part American epic, Angels in America, he has created something entirely original. By utilizing a “pared-down style of presentation” (Millennium 5) that Kushner writes of in the preface to the play, Angels in America artfully blurs the lines of reality and fantasy. Though director Mike Nichols does not utilize the same simplistic visual style of the play when he adapted it into a miniseries for HBO, the film manages to find another way to blur the line between fantasy and reality. While the play, in its depiction of both realistic and surrealistic scenes—such as the opening scene of a Jewish funeral or the unnatural mutual dream sequence—uses a simple visual style which places more importance on the dialogue, the film constantly depends on detailed visuals, intense camera movement, and musical underscoring, thus shifting the focus off of the text. Still, as both the play and the film are consistent in how they depict moments of fantasy and moments of realism in the same stylistic manner, each suggests that there is no clear line between reality and fantasy.

In the stage version of Angels in America, the play opens with a Rabbi delivering a eulogy at a funeral. The stage directions state that he is “alone on stage with a small coffin” (Millen. 9). Thus, the Rabbi directs his eulogy to the audience, not a group of actors accompanying him onstage as the family of the deceased. In the stage version, the audience takes on the role of the Ironson family, and Rabbi Isidor Chemelwitz talks to us. As he stands on a podium and has no way of interacting with any living people besides the audience beyond the edge of the stage, his words are the driving force of the scene. The scene is totally absent of action and therefore must rely on the text and the actor to carry the scene. The absence of action and immense stress of the text makes this particular scene the most simply represented of the realistic scenes in the play.

In the film version however, director Mike Nichols abandons the simplistic style of representation. Though a scene devoid of action and specifically focused on a singular person and their words may work well on stage, such a scene would be a total bore on film, especially if the scene is a full five minutes in length. Therefore in Mike Nichol’s adaptation of the scene, the audience no longer fills the void of the Ironson family; instead a cast of extras portrays them. In fact, we see the family before we even get a glimpse of Meryl Streep as the Rabbi. This allows Nichols to cut away from the Rabbi to get reaction shots from the family, making the five-minute scene more interesting and, through camera movement, giving it an artificial sense of action.

In addition, Nichols does not limit his visuals in the scene to time or place. During a part of the Rabbi’s speech in which he describes how the deceased, Sarah Ironson, traveled to America from Eastern Europe, Nichols interrupts the scene with archival footage of immigrants arriving at Ellis Island that both visually mirrors the Rabbi’s speech and instills the otherwise actionless scene with some tangible action and movement. The archival footage is also underscored by a sentimental melody that sharpens the tone of the scene, and though music could be used in the stage version of the scene—and in several scenes of the play Kushner explicitly mentions the use of music—it is not written into the original text.

The addition of the Ironson family, the use of footage from Ellis Island, and the musical underscoring make the film version of this scene the most blatantly re-conceived of the realistic scenes in the film. However, the choices made make give the scene a sort of sentimental feel that would be captured by the stage version’s simplistic approach to the scene. What we would have felt from a Rabbi talking directly to us, we now feel through seeing the reaction of the family, the images of immigrants coming to America, and the sound of harps, strings, and woodwinds.

Critics and scholars consider Angels in America’s mutual dream sequence to be one of the most surreal scenes put on the stage in the past fifteen years. Whether that is a justifiable statement or not, the scene is surely one of the most interesting scenes of the play and is a moment that seems to define Angels in America as a play that cannot be confined by realism or naturalism. In the stage version of the scene, stage directions at the beginning of the scene tell us that what we are watching is a mutual dream scene between Harper and Prior. There is no mention of place, though the mention of a make-up table gives us a clue. However, as the scene is a dream, the make-up table can be anywhere. Once again, as in the funeral scene, the set remains quite sparse, yet though the text mentions one piece of furniture, surely more are implied. A director would probably accompany the make-up table with a stool or chair for Prior to sit in while applying make-up, and as the scene revolves around a conversation between Harper and Prior, it is plausible that a director would give them somewhere to sit down and talk, such as a sofa or two easy chairs. Even if the scene is staged with more furniture than is directly required by the text, the stage should remain relatively bare and simply decorated.

Though the dream sequence uses the same undemanding style of the funeral, it has a bit more action. In this scene we see Prior applying make-up, interaction between two people, and even a cryptic omen from Heaven in the form of a disembodied voice and a grey feather falling from the sky. Also, unlike the funeral scene where the Rabbi is locked into one place and has no reason to move as he delivers his eulogy, neither character in the dream sequence is forbidden to move.

Despite the added action, the dream sequence is just as driven by the dialogue as the words of the Rabbi’s monologue drives the funeral scene. The majority of the dream scene focuses on a conversation between Harper and Prior in which—through a magical sixth sense that these strangers seem to acquire in their dream—each tells the other of a prophecy regarding the others life. Though they do not know each other, Prior tells Harper that her husband is a homosexual and Harper tells Prior that there is a part of him “entirely free of disease” (Millen. 34). For the rest of the six-hour play, Harper will grapple with her husband’s sexual preference and Prior will wrestle with his disease and ultimately prevail. Thus, these prophecies are important foreshadowing devices and are the focal point of the scene.

In the miniseries of Angels in America, Mike Nichols, in an attempt to make clear to the viewing audience that what they are watching is a dream, dismisses the simplistic feel of the stage version by making his setting for the dream sequence lush, detailed, mysterious, and incredibly unrealistic. In the play, the dialogue itself, and only the dialogue, tells the audience that the scene is a mutual dream between the two characters in it. Harper asks Prior, “What are you doing in my hallucination?” and he responds, “I’m not in your hallucination. You’re in my dream” (Millen. 31). Though the film version keeps these lines intact, a preceding scene in which we see inter-cut shots of both Harper and Prior taking medications and then falling asleep reinforces the idea. Through the rest of the sequence, Nichols uses unusual visuals to restate that the scene is a dream. After he falls asleep, we see a black and white shot of Prior walking down a mist-filled hall of moving candelabras, an image borrowed from Jean Cocteau’s surreal film adaptation of Beauty and the Beast. At the end of the hall, Prior sees his drag queen persona sitting at a make up table. The table and drag Prior are in color though everything around them remains in black and white, including a fireplace featuring two statues which, at a closer look, are actually living, moving people. These images of the floating candelabras, living marble statues, swirling fog, and the mix of black and white with color are all very unnatural and add to the dreamlike state of the scene.

Due to the rich visual palette of the film’s dream sequence, the film does not rely on the text quite as much as the play does. However, Nichols realizes that the importance of the scene is not its surreal or dreamlike look but is instead the prophecies that each character has about the other. Thus, to make the audience focus on the words at that particular part of the scene, Nichols uses a series of close-up shots where all we see are the faces of Harper and Prior as they divulge what they sense about each other. For this part of the scene, floating candelabras, living statues, or smoke and fog cannot distract our eyes. Though the film uses visual images that go against the stage version’s simplicity, it does understand when the dialogue deserves and warrants more of the audience’s attention than the visuals.

Though the film of Angels in America focuses more on elaborate visuals than the text and the stage version features a simplistic, understated style that places more importance on the language and dialogue, both blur the lines of fantasy and reality by using the same style regardless of how realistic or surrealistic the scene may be. Obviously then the film is not a “faithful” adaptation of the play, but it surely captures the essence and themes of the play. Moreover, the success of the filmmaker’s different and creative approach to the play suggests that other plays which toy with the idea of fantasy and reality like Angels in America can be adapted to film as long as the filmmakers make choices that stay true to the ideas of the play rather than the style in which the play is presented on stage.

Works Cited
Angels in America. Dir. Mike Nichols. Screenplay by Tony Kushner. Perf. Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson, Mary-Louise Parker, Jeffrey Wright, Justin Kirk, Ben Shenkman, Patrick Wilson, and James Cromwell. HBO, 2004.

Kushner, Tony. Angels in America: Millennium Approaches. New York: Theater Communications Group, 1992.


Works Consulted

Kushner, Tony. Angels in America: Perestroika. New York: Theater Communications Group, 1992.

Newman, Thomas. Music from the HBO Film Angels in America. Nonesuch, 2004.

[erinrebecca]

Posted: 2/19/06 at 12:02am

This is a crazy thread. People shouldn't be sharing their college papers. Why would you be encouraging someone to take the opportunity to plagiarize?

[Soozie]

Posted: 2/19/06 at 9:54am

I agree with Erinrebecca. What is your point in posting your entire college papers? It serves NO useful purpose and it is an invitation for other students to plagirise. What is your motivation to do this?

A context for sharing a college paper might be if you have written a draft and ask a friend to read it over and offer feedback. Another purpose might be if a friend said they were researching Sondheim and you said, I once wrote a paper on him, if you would like to read it. To post an entire paper on the internet when nobody was asking or discussing a topic at hand is pointless and crazy. Sharing a paper with a friend makes sense if the friend is interested in a topic, or something like that.

Posting papers is just a way for other students to copy those papers. Who are you doing a favor? An excuse such as it is done all the time or whatever, doesn't hold water. If students must resort to this, they either aren't such good students or simply are not motivated to learn/write on their own. You are not doing anyone a favor. This thread serves no purpose.

A more interesting thread would be to discuss what topics you are currently writing about and discuss the topics, or something like that. That's what I would expect from someone with the smarts to go to a school like UCLA. Posting papers on the internet, frankly, gives another impression, even if not intended.

[mygfdontliveincanada]

Posted: 2/19/06 at 2:39pm

Maybe I'm just a better person than most, but I've found it very easy to find papers on the internet when doing research for papers I've had to write, and I've never plagerized. I've definitely quoted sources I've found, but I've never plagerized, and I would expect others to do the same.

[Soozie]

Posted: 2/19/06 at 3:23pm

I believe you when you state that you have never plagerized but it is naive to think that others do not. I just see no purpose in posting your papers on an internet message board. i can see sharing your papers with those whom you know who are interested in the topic. I would expect a friend or colleague not to plagerize. But to post it on a public message board....you have no idea who is reading this and their intentions. I simply think it is odd to be posting these and am not sure your reason as it is out of context.

[astonishing1985]

Posted: 2/20/06 at 9:51am

I must say I think it's very weird to start a thread like that. Who would post their papers online? I know I wouldn't. Not because I'm scared that other people will steal them just that this is just not something you do. You may share papers with your friends or family but not with strangers online...

[Sporti2005]

Posted: 2/20/06 at 11:22am

also, i read so many of my friends' papers here at school that i can't imagine taking leisure time to read full papers on a message board.

i'm not saying your papers aren't good...i actually have no idea because i (obviously) haven't read them. i just think it's a little strange, that's all.

[mygfdontliveincanada]

Posted: 2/20/06 at 3:48pm

Ok here's the thing. I suppose I could just post the first paragraph and people could ask me for the rest of it if they wanted to use it for a resource for their own papers, but if I did that whats to stop them from plagerizing once they have the entire paper?

[Sporti2005]

Posted: 2/20/06 at 3:52pm

not to discredit you at all (this is totally a general statement)....but i don't think someone else's college paper is a good source to cite in a research paper.

may i'm not getting the right intention of what you're saying, but that's my opinion.

[erinrebecca]

Posted: 2/20/06 at 4:16pm

Exactly, sporti. Who, when writing a paper, cites another student's paper? Answer: no one.

[mabel]

Posted: 2/21/06 at 9:54am

also, i read so many of my friends' papers here at school that i can't imagine taking leisure time to read full papers on a message board.

EXACTLY! No offese, pal, but as a college student who has to revise oddles of my own papers, and papers from classmates and friends, just about the last thing I'd want to read is someone else's paper, just for kicks. I'm sure they're great, and I'm glad you're proud of your work, as you must be to want to share them with us, but I must admit that it seems a bit...different.

I was expecting this to be a thread about venting about all the crazy-ass papers that you've got on the horizon, or looking for ideas on things to write about, etc.

Sorry to have burst your bubble, if I did. As I said, I'm sure they're great, and good for you for being ballsy enough to post them on-line like this. I never have the confidence to show my work (even papers that got good grades) to any more people than is humanly necessary!

[CostumeMistress]

Posted: 2/26/06 at 10:08pm

"not to discredit you at all (this is totally a general statement)....but i don't think someone else's college paper is a good source to cite in a research paper."

Another college student's paper is NOT a certified peer-reviewed source and should definately not be used in an academic setting. Is my school the only one that REQUIRES peer-reviewed sources for use in a student's research paper?