English 287:  Great Books (Fall 2003)
Out-of-class essay assignment 1

Format

Your essay should come to about 500 words.  This is a rough guide of course, but you want to take it seriously.  If you're falling significantly short of that, you're almost certainly not engaging the topic with sufficient depth.  More than 500 words is OK, but you don't want to go on and on beyond that.

500 words is about what you'd have if you wrote a full page, single-spaced, in 12-point Times Roman font, with standard 1-inch margins in each direction.

Put your name and e-mail address in the upper right-hand corner of the first page of your essay.

Devise a title that gives some indication of your particular angle on the topic.  

Use a word processor if possible.  Use 12-point font.  Set the text to be single spaced.  If you go to a second page, staple it to your first page.

On the back of your essay, or at the bottom of it, if there is room there, write in your own handwriting, and sign, the following statement:

"On my honor, as a student, I have neither given nor received unauthorized aid on this academic work."

It will be assumed, that in signing this, you are aware of the relevant portions of the KSU Honor System.  In you are not, then review them here.

Topic Options

Write your essay on one of the following topics.  All of them have to do with the acting company's choices in their characterization of one or another.  

Option 1.  The Aquila Company's characterization of Cassio

Before you go to the play, imagine various ways an acting company might decide to portray this character.  Is he a "lightweight"?  Is he a serious man whom we are to respect in spite of his limitations?  Is he someone we are to find ridiculous?  Sympathetic?  Contemptible?  Admirable?  (At the end of the play, we find him assuming the command that Othello has vacated with his suicide.  How are we to feel about this?)

During the play, pay special attention to the way the actor playing this role shapes our response to Cassio.  You may want to jot notes, so long as doing so does not distract you seriously from watching the performance.

In the next day or so:  sort out your thoughts, frame a provisional thesis, and write an essay in which you gather the potentially relevant evidence from your memory of the performance on the question of how Cassio, in this production, comes across.  Don't be afraid to change your thesis in the process of sifting through the relevant details.

Option 2.  The Aquila Company's characterization of Othello

In his Shakespeare:  The Invention of the Human, that "We cannot arrive at a just estimate of Othello if we undervalue Iago, who would be formidable enough to undo most of us if he emerged out of his play into our lives.  Othello is a great soul hopelessly outclassed in intellect and drive by Iago."  (You might want to look up the etymology of the word magnanimity in a good-sized dictionary.)

Consider the problems any production will have in giving us an Othello that comes across as "a great soul."    After all, he's duped outrageously, and ends up murdering his innocent wife.  It would be possible to play him as little more than a ridiculous fool, or a monster subject to insane rage.  Going this way would take us out of the usual range of tragedy, but there's nothing in principle to prevent it.  How does the Aquila Company decide to conceive of Othello?

During the performance, be alert to how the actor playing Othello must have conceived his character's character.  Is Othello here a not merely a "man of honor" but a man we are compelled to honor?  Is he "great souled"?  If so, in what ways?  If not, how not?

In the next day or so:  sort out your thoughts, frame a provisional thesis, and write an essay in which you gather the potentially relevant evidence from your memory of the performance on the question of how Othello, in this production, comes across.  Don't be afraid to change your thesis in the process of sifting through the relevant details.

Option 3.  The Aquila Company's characterization of Iago

In Shakespeare:  The Invention of the Human, Harold Bloom remarks:  "Great wit, like the highest irony, needs an inner check in order not to burn away everything else:  Hamlet's disinterestedness, Falstaff's exuberance, Rosalind's graciousness.  Iago is nothing at all, except critical; there can be no inner check when the self is an abyss.  Iago has the single affect of sheer gusto, increasingly aroused as he discovers his genius for improvisation."

Back in the 19th Century, William Hazlett declares:  "Some persons, more nice than wise, have thought the whole of the character of Iago unnatural.  Shakespeare, who was quite as good a philosopher as he was a poet, thought otherwise. He knew that the love of power, which is another name for the love of mischief, was natural to man....  Whenever this principle is not under the restraint of humanity, or the sense of moral obligation, there are no excesses to which it will not of itself give rise, without the assistance of any other motive, either of passion or self-interest.  Iago is only an extreme instance of the kind; that is, of diseased intellectual activity, with an almost perfect indifference to moral good or evil, or rather with a preference of the latter, because it falls more in with his favorite propensity, gives greater zest to his thoughts, and scope to his actions."

During the performance, be alert for clues to the ways the actor playing Iago conceives of the character he's presenting.  He's got to make Iago fascinating in some way.  Which way does he choose?  Is "icy coldness" the key?  Or is it "zest" or "gusto" of some sort (as in Hazlett's and Bloom's pictures)?  Does the Iago in this production come across as humanly credible?  Or do we end up with a kind of abstract paper-maché villain -- something more demonic than human?  If so, does the actor find some way of rendering this that makes it hold our instance?  Or do we have something too painful or too boring to invest our imagination in?

In the next day or so:  sort out your thoughts, frame a provisional thesis, and write an essay in which you gather the potentially relevant evidence from your memory of the performance on the question of how Iago, in this production, comes across.  Don't be afraid to change your thesis in the process of sifting through the relevant details.

Option 4.  Desdemona according to Aquila Theatre

Think of the ways Desdemona might be conceived:  is she an ignorant girl?  an insightful and intelligent woman?  a spirited adult?  a passive butterfly?  a wimp?  a fool?  There are lots of ways to "spin" her.  What way does this production decide to explore?

During the performance, be alert for clues to the ways the actor playing Desdemona conceives of the character she's presenting.  Does she succeed in making Desdemona interesting as a person?  Or do we end up with a merely pitiful victim?

In the next day or so:  sort out your thoughts, frame a provisional thesis, and write an essay in which you gather the potentially relevant evidence from your memory of the performance on the question of how Desdemona, in this production, comes across.  Don't be afraid to change your thesis in the process of sifting through the relevant details.

Criteria

Before submitting your essay, you will want to consider the criteria I will be relying on in evaluating it.  There is both a detailed and a succinct version of these.  The former spells out what each criterion means.  The latter makes it easier to see the set as a whole.

Deadline

Your essay should be submitted under my office door at Denison 210 by 5:00 p.m. of Friday, October 24, 2003.

Be sure to slip it under the door.  Do not put it in any of the envelopes taped to the door itself.

  Suggestions are welcome.  Please send your comments to lyman@ksu.edu .

   Contents copyright © 2003 by Lyman A. Baker. 

Permission is granted for non-commercial educational use; all other rights reserved.

  This page last updated 17 October 2003 .