Death by drowning.

I am a big lover of the beach and being in water. Living in Utah would be significantly better if there was a beach nearby. However I think of drowning as possibly one of the worst deaths. Some might disagree here, but drowning to me is in the very top of terrible ways to die that I can think of.

It caught me when Gonzalo says:

Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an
acre of barren ground, long heath, brown furze, anything.
the wills above be done! But would I fain
die a dry death.

I found this picture that shows all the different deaths in England in one year. With so little deaths being drowning or 'accidental threats to breathing' as the picture puts it, why are we so concerned about drowning whenever we go to a beach or we see children in water? There are typically 3X the amount of deaths on the road or in transport accidents!

Still though, this opening to the play, with the threat of death near, adds an aspect of spectacle and fear. Inciting this early on, I would say that an audience would not really know what to expect for the rest of the play. Usually something so dramatic might be the climax of a play or film and the dramatic question is: Will they survive this storm?? But if this is only the first scene in The Tempest, then of course they will! No one dies in the first scene. It's an interesting element to add so early on to the play.

Elizabeth Taylor? nah.

 I watched Zifferelli's 1967 version of The Taming of the Shrew that has Elizabeth Taylor as Katherine.

I thought she was an interesting pick because she is/was so well known for her beauty and sexuality. This part calls for neither and brought on a new element into the performance. She seemed to be more of a tease to her husband and cunning- like all along she knew exactly what she was doing to annoy him.
Her charm really came out in juxtaposition with other frightfully annoying female qualities that were all heightened and rather ugly. Overall though, I really think her beauty sort of betrayed the character that was written.

In comparison, a very modern day telling of this play '10 Things I Hate About You' is similarly based on Shakespeares writing although it is all said in modern day speech.

This Katherine played by Julia Styles, represents a different and more subtle kind of shrew however I think her demeanor and natural looks are more how the part should be played.
Styles has a very dry sense of humor and really only talks to entertain herself or put down others around her. In contrast to Elizabeth Taylor's performance where she is extremely attention grabbing and quite hysterical, Styles compliments a more modern shrew as discussed in my previous post.

The modern woman as the shrew.

I'm looking at how Katherine -the shrew, really may not be such a shrew in our modern days.
Her most prominent characteristics are:
-witty
-quick tempered
-sharp tongue
-intelligent
-independent
-angry (unhappy?)

That list of qualities I see in Katherine, definitely portray the sort of modern day feminist that we see today who is independent, working and successful. Sort of the feminist view on females these days, where a woman can be smart and successful without the aid of man. Katherine seems to have some sort of anger on her shoulders that stops her from being happy and a more functional human being as everyone see's it however. 

Petruchio: Come, come, you wasp, i’faith you are too angry.

Katherine: If I be waspish, best beware my sting.

Petruchio: My remedy is then to pluck it out.

Katherine: Ay, if the fool could find where it lies.

Petruchio: Who knows not where a wasp does wear his sting? In his tail.

Katherine: In his tongue.

Petruchio: Whose tongue?

Katherine: Yours, if you talk of tales, and so farewell.

Petruchio: What, with my tongue in your tail?

Even just in this excerpt from act 2, you can see her biting tongue and that she does not back down to men. When this was written, women were particularly susceptible to a man and would have been much more submissive as a social norm. Nowadays, I see women like this everywhere. I would even venture to say that I am like this myself. Not exactly snarky or rude all the time, but definitely not ashamed to say what I think in the presence of males.

Perhaps, to some extent, today's everyday girl, is comparable to Shakespeare's Shrew.

Males funnier than females?

In Love's Labour's Lost, I was thinking about how much of a comedic role all the male characters play. Their language might be considered poetical and maybe farcical and I would venture to say that most of the female roles are not as comedic at all.

SO my question is are boys funnier than girls? Did Shakespeare think this when writing the play? But this is not just an issue of Shakespeare's time. Today, it is hotly debated about modern comedians and whether women really play a role in this environment.

Off the top of my head I can list the following female comedians:

Ellen Degeneres

Tina Fey

And male comedians:

David Letterman

Conan O'Brien

Jay Leno

Jimmy Fallon

Jerry Sienfield

..Not to mention the main characters in shows like
The Office or Arrested Development are also male. Even though Shakespeare was writing hundreds of years before us, I'm still not surprised that males have more comedic roles in his plays and particularly Love's Labour's Lost.

This video gives some more interesting insight. Just ignore the end...

The Taming of the Shrew

First of all, I had to look up in a dictionary what a shrew is. Somehow I just never really new the exact meaning of the word.

Shrew: A woman with a violent, scolding, or nagging temperament; a scold.

And then I found out that it is also this heinously ugly mouse.

A woman being compared to a household pest? A little condescending me thinks.

Missionaries and The Oath

I used to serve food at the MTC and found out that fresh little 19 year olds are pretty awkward after being set apart. Before they’re even out in the field. It’s like whenever I would hand them a plate of food and be conversational, they weren’t quite sure whether they should talk to me and be friendly back. I could see that it wasn’t the same with the male servers.

It just got me thinking- how the King and his lord’s vowing not talk to girls unless it is “necessity”, is similar to how LDS missionaries interact with girls. At first, it seems like the King and his lords are not allowed to be seen talking to women at all. Difficult. So, to be a little more practical but still placing precautions and restrictions, they allow contact with females if necessary.
Maybe girls can relate to this post more but regardless, the whole situation is pretty funny in home wards. 

Hamlet and I.

Sorry for my blogging hiatus! I'm one of the students Prof. Gideon was talking about being the worst and needing to catch up. Nonetheless, let me make one last post on Hamlet and relate a similarity between himself and I.

Hamlet clearly, was pretty bad at making decisions. He waited until other forces made him make decisions and often they were delayed. Killing Claudius is the pending question of the whole play: will Hamlet kill Claudius? It takes him a long time to finally decide to do so after having numerous opportunities and even seeing his mother killed.

Like me, I have waited and waited to blog and then suddenly the day has gone by and I haven't done it. Even when I was deciding to come to BYU, I deferred for a year and then finally decided to come over to the States. Then when I went back to Australia for the summer, I couldn't decide on whether to come back again and all of a sudden the following Fall semester had gone by and I still hadn't got on the plane yet. Alas, I'm here now. In a country that snows 2 and half months before winter starts and I'm still deciding whether to keep my summer dresses in the front of my closet.

Hamlet and I don't like to make decisions.