Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Shoemaker’s Hoilday: A Happily Ever After

Posted on March 18, 2013 by dc135125

In this play, there were shoemakers who try to achieve their goals, two of whom had to overcome hindrances to reunite with their loved ones, while the other was helped to work his way on top with one of the shoemakers. Lacy wants to marry Rose, who was beneath his social class, but their fathers do not like the union because of social class. As a result, Lacy become Hans the shoemaker. Although a hypocrite at first (in my opinion), Lacy somehow redeemed himself by helping Simon Eyre to be promoted, even though he did not become a honest man who fought for his country. Being a shoemaker was not easy and by the end of the play, Lacy’s hard work paid off when he helped Rose with her pair of shoes and the lovers were able to marry each other with the help of the King and mayor Eyre.

Ralph was more of a tragic figure than Hans and suffered more as a result. Unlike Lacy or his alter ego Hans, Ralph was honest to a fault, not wanting to go to the army as a newlywed, even though he seemed to have no choice. After the war, Ralph became lame and searched for his beloved wife, Jane, who was to be married to another man. Fortunately with the help of his wife’s shoes, Ralph managed to stop the union with Jane and Hammon, earning his happily ever after….or not because he cannot give birth to children because of his impotence.

Simon Eyre was once a shoemaker who became mayor with the help of Lacy. His charming personality attracted others around him. He was a character I believe returned the favor to Lacy by helping him to marry Jane, despite the fathers’ protests. Shoes are important in The Shoemaker’s Hoilday and a shoe could affect the fates of various characters in the play.

Posted in The Shoemaker's Holiday, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Shoemaker’s Holiday

Posted on March 16, 2013 by bk145564

Thomas Dekker’s play The Shoemaker’s Holiday is based around the buying and selling of goods. His play is a working class success story showing that true human value is measured in honest work instead of high class and social connections. During the time the play was written England was going through financial expansion and capitalism was on the rise. Throughout the play, the labor of shoemaking becomes a disguise in helping Lacy and Eyre to succeed.

Simon Eyre began the play as a middle-class shoemaker. After luck and with the help of Lacy, he ends up the Lord Mayor of London. However, it wasn’t the actual shoemaking which caused him financial gain but from pretending to be wealthy and sneakily buying a very profitable ship of goods. Lacy had helped him to do this buy getting the ship’s skipper drunk and giving him a down payment. He was then able to make his social climb.

In the same way Lacy set Eyre up in gaining his fortune, Eyre also gave Lacy the opportunity to work for him. Lacy, disguised as a Dutch shoemaker, was able to reconnect with Rose and ended up fitting her for shoes. At that point they then planned out their marriage. Ralph was also another main male character caught in a romance plot. However, shoemaking did not take the same disguise as it did for Lacy; instead the aftermath of war did. Ralph went off to war and came back physically unrecognizable. Unable to find his wife, he went back to the craft of shoemaking. While working, a servingman comes acquiring a shoe to be made for Hammon and his bride. He also gave a shoe to fit for size and Ralph realizes it is his wife who is to be married. Realizing his wife is alive, he is able to find her and take her home where she belongs.

All three of these men were able to obtain what they wanted through honest labor but very different approaches. Eyre shows human value by being an honest shoemaker most of his career. Although his gain of the ship was sneaky, it was given freely. By him helping Lacy and hiring him, it brought him success. Lacy’s new job of being a shoemaker and working helped him to get the girl. Ralph was honest throughout the play and went off to war even when he was just married. Even after war he continued to labor making shoes and was connected with his wife again. Shoemaking in this play was used to symbolize honest work of the middle class and the triumphs gained from it.

 

Posted in Comedy, Power struggles, The Shoemaker's Holiday, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

The Shoemaker’s Holiday, Love, Fate, and No Bloodshed

Posted on March 12, 2013 by jl112805

Up to the point of scene 13, we as a class have taken a harmonious holiday from the bloody affair that is love in Renaissance drama.  Unlike The Spanish Tragedy, Dekker’s characters have proposed a dubious, yet non-lethal scheme to achieving inter-class love.  Rose is attempting to reclaim her affair with Lacy but through his new identity of Hans.  Rather than Rose killing off her father or herself for love’s sake, she has devised a romantic plan of deception and triumphant love.  Surprisingly enough, Lacy seems to agree, and exits scene 13 with Sybil to go see Rose.  Ironically, the two characters are not desperately searching for each other, but have shown that they desperately love each other.  They fatefully cross paths at a celebration for Eyre.  It seems to me that Dekker substitutes bloodshed for fate.  If fate achieves love, then bloodshed may be avoided.

Also adding an ironic twist, Dekker gives us Hammon.  He desperately seeks love but cannot obtain it from a woman.  Whether from Rose or Jane, Hammon just wants somebody to love.  He “will do any task at your command” he tells Jane (12.37).  Hammon is a “gentleman” and from descriptions a handsome man, but he cannot woo a woman to love him.  What seems like fate to him, Ralph’s name on the list of the dead, is actually a lie.  After seeing Ralph’s name, Jane forces herself to agree that if she marries another man it would be Hammon.

It seems as though Dekker has removed the bloodshed to project his opinion on fate.  In the case of Rose and Lacy/Hans, their love is true and not sought for class, wealth, or to fill loneliness.  On the other hand is Hammon.  He so desperately wants love, but everyone he seeks it with loves another person.  His persistence forces Jane to believe her love is dead but gains no love for himself.  I can only hope in the following scenes that fate brings Jane and Ralph back together to show that fate and true love prevail.

Posted in Comedy, Love relationships, Power struggles, The Shoemaker's Holiday, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Doctor Faustus: Exceeding human knowledge, “Overreaching”

Posted on March 5, 2013 by melissacarbuccia

The play starts off with us knowing Doctor Faustus is a very talented and brilliant scientist who has mastered just about everything a person can know. He has become bored because he knows all there is to know, and now is left with nothing else to study (Except for the supernatural). Faustus’ need to know more than he’s allowed is what leads to his demise, perhaps because there is a thing as “too much knowledge.” We do find out that his pact with the devil wasn’t only for the sake of learning new things, but also a lust for power, control and self indulgence. An excess of anything is bad and can turn a respectable and brilliant doctor into a foolish, power-hungry person. Faustus becomes so fixated on the idea of having control over everything, that he makes a very hasty decision of eternally damning his soul even after Mephistopheles and the good angel try to convince him otherwise.

We observe similar situations of wanting to know things, and having it lead to darkness (ie. Eve’s temptation). Marlow is hinting at a common human mistake that is often repeated through time. Instead of remaining humble and being content with your current  state (whether it’s wealth or knowledge), humanity has a tendency to always want more and overreach. The need for more of something is always associated with evil, and non trivial ways of obtaining “more” because it’s not naturally allowed. We also learn that intelligence doesn’t necessarily reflect morality. Robin, a child living in poverty, was faced with a similar situation and quickly rejected the idea of exchanging his freedom for a few years of power. Having a pure heart and morals can’t be acquired through studying or research.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Faustus Scene Study

Posted on March 5, 2013 by peterb

Scene 5.1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c4tBsHpPas

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Doctor Faustus and the best of both worlds

Posted on March 5, 2013 by peterb

Faustus’s famous bargain with Lucifer was not “worth” it. Trading his soul for a little more than twenty years was not worth forfeiting his previous success and climb up the social ladder. The bargain is simplified for the audience in 1.4 when Wagner attempts to persuade Robin the clown for a similar deal. Robin frames the argument in terms of food. Clearly a nice roasted piece of season meat is better tasting than a bloody raw piece of meat. Why would an educated Faustus not see the flaw in the bargain like Robin simply points out? Well, Faustus believes he can have the best of both worlds.

Faustus asks Mephistopheles to bring him Helen of Troy. When he kisses her he says that her lips are his heaven. As his deal creeps toward its end Faustus believes he can have the best of both worlds. Helen is his heaven and his necromancy is his hell. Faustus cannot have both heaven and hell in his life. Both the good and bad angels have warned him that it is one way or the other. But Faustus, humanly, want everything. When it is time to pay his soul to Lucifer he will only have hell in his life. Hell is described as the absence of god. Faustus will lose the privilege to kiss Helen or even enjoy his power.

Faustus’s dilemma is not unheard of or unrealistic like Emdymion’s. Faustus’s flaw is very real and happens every day. It is the greatest flaw of man to want everything and anything. A modern day Faustus could be Bernie Madoff. He was a very successful hedge fund manager who was already living in extreme luxury and privilege. Madoff simply wanted more. Illegally he pulled a ponzi scheme which ultimately ended his life early. He’ll spend the rest of his days in jail. You can draw connections to Faustus. The ponzi scheme is similar to Faustus’s bargain with Lucifer. Madoff’s jail sentence is comparable to Faustus being dragged into hell to pay.

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The Spanish Tragedy: The value of life

Posted on February 11, 2013 by melissacarbuccia

One thing that really stuck out to me while reading this play was the value of life, or the lack thereof. Death seems to be such a common occurrence that it becomes the “quick fix” to many of the issues the characters face. Almost makes it seem like the characters in this play don’t fully understand how permanent and extreme death is. We can observe this through several characters actions. It all starts when Lorenzo finds out that Bel-Imperia rejects Balthazar because she’s in love with Horatio. His first and immediate thought is that he simply must be disposed of. This then leads to Lorenzo telling Pedringano to kill Serberine because of mere suspicion (mind you, no questioning or further investigation was done in order to confirm this). Pedringano performs this duty without a doubt in mind, and this leads to Pedringano’s death sentence.

We observe a death trend after Horatio’s death, including the suicide of three characters. Hieronimo kills himself after he gets his son’s revenge, Isabella goes mad and kills herself after Horatio’s death, and Bel-Imperia commits suicide after she murders Balthazar. There’s very little value of life in this book, possibly due to the culture of war at this time and also because death isn’t a concept that’s fully understood. These people obviously know HOW to kill, but haven’t grasped the concept and permanence of death; no longer existing. They’re desensitized to death from the constant killings that occur as a way to “right a wrong” or punish those who have committed crimes.

 

Posted in Life vs. Death, The Spanish Tragedy, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Revenge and Justice: Pivotal Themes In The Spanish Tragedy.

Posted on February 11, 2013 by kc133573

Thomas Kyd’s play, The Spanish Tragedy, portrays an immense amount of revenge and justice. These two themes harbor an intense desire within a majority of Kyd’s characters. Firstly and importantly, the audience is immediately introduced to Don Andrea, and the character of Revenge. Don Andrea relies primarily on Revenge to vindicate his murder. Bel-Imperia, the play’s strong willed female character, seeks a form of revenge and justice for the wrongs that have been done to her. She has loved and lost both Andrea and Horatio at the hands of a murderous act and therefore seeks revenge on Balthazaar that ultimately backfires. Kyd’s Act II opens up a new realm for revenge and justice upon the discovery of Horatio’s murder and lifeless body by his father, Hieronomo. Hieronomo vows to seek revenge on the person who committed this heinous crime and seek justice in the name of his son. At one point in time, Hieronomo considers joining his son in death and committing suicide, but ultimately decides against it in the name of revenge and justice.

Kyd portrays revenge and the act of justice as two pivotal themes in his play, but also in life. Elizabethans, and the readers of the twenty- first century, are both enraptured and familiar with these feelings of revenge and the urge for justice that so easily can harbor within ourselves.

Posted in Revenge, The Spanish Tragedy, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Revenge in The Spanish Tragedy: An Eye for an Eye

Posted on February 11, 2013 by jbajraktari

The Spanish Tragedy is clearly a revenge play, with Revenge even being a character in the play.  A question that has long been debated concerning the play and outside of the context of the play is whether Hiernonimo is morally just in seeking revenge.  One can argue that Hiernomino really had no choice in seeking revenge for his son’s death, since the court would not offer him any help, granted his class status (another theme of the play).

We see Hieronimo’s inner conflict in deciding if he should choose “this way or that way” in Act III, scene xii, when Hiernomino grapples with the options of either taking his own life, or taking the way of revenge and justice for his son’s death.  We see the negative connotations that are ascribed to taking the matter of revenge in one’s own hands in Hieronimo’s soliloquy, where he describes the path of revenge as a path through hell.  Horatio cannot simply take these matters to the king since there are several obstacles in his way, such as his social class and diplomacy.  Lorenzo is nephew of the king of Spain and Balthazar is a prince of Portugal who is a key figure in the negotiation between the two nations, so the possibility of Hieronimo finding justice by the way of the king seems unlikely.

In Act III, scene xiii, again we see Hieronimo struggling with the matter of vengeance.  He exclaims, “Vindicta mihi!” or “vengeance is mine,” and considers leaving the matter of revenge to God.  However, he comes to the conclusion that it is his destiny to find his revenge against his son’s murderers.

Hieronimo is a Knight-Marshal, hence carrying out justice is a part of his job.  Although committing murder is an un-Christian thing to do, it seems to be Hieronimo’s only choice  in a society where you cannot depend on the Crown for justice.

Posted in Revenge, The Spanish Tragedy, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Basic Instructions for Posting, Commenting, and Placing Video on the Blog

Posted on February 4, 2013 by Sarah Ruth Jacobs

Part 1. Posting and Commenting

As stated in the course syllabus, you are asked to create four titled blog posts containing 2-3 paragraphs (the posting schedule is here) as well as to comment twice on blog posts about plays which you are not assigned to post about. To contribute your own post, do the following:

1. Go to the Blogs at Baruch website (https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/) and enter your username and password (they are the same as the username and password you enter to log in to your Baruch email).

2. Place your cursor over “My Sites” at the top of the screen, and click on “english renaissance drama.” You will see the site Dashboard–this is the back end of the site. To view the front end of the site, place your cursor over “english renaissance drama” and click on “Visit Site.” To create your own post, place your cursor over “+ New,” and click on “Post.” You may need to enter your username and password again, and then you will be in the post composition window. Write your post–remember, it should have a point of view and textual evidence. To publish your post, click on the “Publish” button on the right.

3. To comment on another student’s post, you should log in to the blog as described above and again hover over “english renaissance drama” and click on “Visit Site.” When you see a post that you would like to comment on, click on “Leave a Comment” or “X Comment(s)” at the bottom of the post and enter your comment in the box.

Part 2. Creating and Posting Scene Videos on the Blog

Later on in the semester, you will work in groups to videotape an interpretive reading of a scene from a Renaissance play. These videos should be uploaded to YouTube or Vimeo and posted on the course blog. You will follow these basics steps to complete this assignment:

1. Work as a group to determine how you will stage and interpret your scene–closely follow the preparation instructions here. Film the scene using a phone videocamera, regular videocamera, or other videorecording device (such as an iPad).

2. Load your video onto your PC or Mac and edit as needed using a basic video editor, such as iMovie for Mac or Windows Live Movie Maker for PC (http://windows-live-movie-maker.en.softonic.com/).

3. Save the final version of your scene and then upload the file using YouTube or Vimeo (for both sites, simply log in or register, click on the Upload button, and follow the instructions to upload your video).

4. Start a new blog post (see 1-2 in Part 1 above). Copy and paste the YouTube URL into your blog post and hit “Publish.” For Vimeo, you can also simply copy and paste the URL, though you may need to change https:// to http://

Your video should appear and play within the published blog post. Here is an example from last semester:

Here is the link to the course website from last semester’s Shakespearean Scene Studies course:  https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/eng4140fall2012/

5. If you have any technical questions or run into trouble along the way, please feel free to contact me at [email protected]. Please don’t wait until the last minute to complete these assignments. You can expect me to respond to your email within 24 hours.

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