Phase 2 progress report

So I am a little late in doing this but nevertheless it is now done.

1. Gain Shakespeare Literacy and here as well
so far in this course I have been exposed to more Shakespeare in more forms of media than I had ever been.  I have learned some historical facts of the Shakespearean era (like how politics could have influenced his writing) and also other works that could have been an influence to the Bard.

2. Analyze Shakespeare Critically / plus this one
With the increased interest that I have gained through my exposure to Shakespeare I have started reading his texts in a different way than I ever did.  I am trying to identify themes that were alluded to in Shakespeare blogs and other sites.

3. Engage Shakespeare creatively
I haven't done too much for the semesters creative project but I have been really interested with modern film adaptations of Shakespeare I would like to plan a project around that but I still need to do some brainstorming.  Part of this learning outcome, however, has been the many different ways that I have been able to enjoy Shakespeare this semester: text, audio, youtube videos, blogger's interpretations, comics etc

4. Share Shakespeare meaningfully
Apart from sharing ideas with other students in the class it has been fun to post on other blogs and receive their responses.  I didn't realize that there was so much digital chatter about Shakespeare everyday.

5. Gain digital literacy
Through this blog and the other blogs that I have found I now feel like I am part of a new learning community that I didn't know existed.  I now feel confident that I can go and find social proof for other academic essays that I undertake because, firstly, I know that it is out there and, secondly, I know some good sites that I can go to jump off to other sites.

My first response

I got my first response from one of the people I contacted.  Rod Marsden is an English/Shakespeare scholar from Australia.  His response was very informative and could possibly help anyone wanting to know more about things that may have influenced Shakespeare's writing (his contemporaries, religion, and/or societal factors).  Here is a link to his response: click on this and scroll down to the bottom

Progress Report

Exploration - So I have been looking for other writers and/or plays and stories that predated Shakespeare so that I could see if it were possible to re-attribute some of the credit that is given Shakespeare by modern film makers and storytellers.  I want to make it clear that I do not want to get into the whole controversy of whether or not Shakespeare wrote all that is given to him.  I do not doubt that and from what I have read the theory is not really founded on fact- just speculation.  What I wanted to do, instead, was see who was influencing Shakespeare as he wrote it and then hopefully this would allow us to give more value to the writings of other authors that either came before Shakespeare or were contemporaries of him.


Textual analysis - A helpful guide in analyzing some of Shakespeare's works was the blog of Liz Dollimore . She has researched over a dozen Shakespeare plays and provided examples of works that were written before Shakespeare's plays.  Using her researching I was able to go back and examine the same plays that she had to see for myself the similarities that existed.  There are slight differences of course but a lot of the major plot elements were unchanged in Shakespeare's plays.
 
Social Proof - Another source that has proved encouraging was an article that Kaleigh shared with me that talks mainly about the grammar in Shakespeare's time but what I found particularly compelling was a comment stating that Shakespeare's contemporaries probably were inventing new words and phrases at the same rate that Shakespeare was.  I have contacted the author of this article (Dr. Hope) as well as a Shakespeare scholar in Australia named Rod Mardsen that has been researching the development of the English language.  I have also contacted Liz Dollimore, the Shakespeare sources blogger, but I am still waiting to hear back.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/31/research-reveals-shakespe_n_1244339.
This link goes to an article that discusses Shakespeare's grammar and how that is what separated him from his contemporaries.  I thought it was very interesting.

Recent developments

My brother shared a link with me that led me to an article by Rod Mardsen an English language scholar from Australia, that gives a quick account of the history of the English language.  Because my research topic has been centered on pre-Shakespearean writers that could have influenced his work this was very interesting to me.  I posted a comment; asking him if he knew more about my topic specifically and now I will wait to hear back from him.

Exploration

Continuing my research into Shakespeare sources, I have decided to focus on modern adaptations that credit Shakespeare but maybe should give credit to earlier sources.  Here is a blog that shows some famous Shakespeare adaptations: A Literary Odyssey
Some films that I am looking at are West Side Story that is allegedly based upon Romeo and Juliet, but a blog by Liz Dollimore shows that Romeo and Juliet's plot has earlier sources: Romeo and Juliet

Lion King is said to be based on Hamlet and Richard III but the story line for Hamlet (uncle murders king and marries king's wife,  the king's son discovers or suspects the uncle's crime and is haunted by it) are seen in earlier versions from various countries: http://bloggingshakespeare.com/shakespeares-sources-hamlet

Words invented by Shakespeare

As my previous post mentioned, I am very interested in discovering how original Shakespeare really was.  I have always thought that Shakespeare was the king of originality.  He is credited with inventing over 1700 words.  Many of our movies contain, if they are not completely based upon, key Shakespeare plot elements.  As I have looked at different blogs I have been intrigued by the influences that pre-dated Shakespeare's time.  So trying to take this further I found a site that contained some of the words that have been attributed to Shakespeare: http://www.shakespeare-online.com/biography/wordsinvented.html . With this and other sites that contain Shakespearean phrases I will try to do some research to discover if any of them have an origin before Shakespeare.