{"id":1451,"date":"2017-09-03T12:29:29","date_gmt":"2017-09-03T16:29:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/english\/?page_id=1451"},"modified":"2017-09-03T13:16:00","modified_gmt":"2017-09-03T17:16:00","slug":"sharon-mcgradys-close-reading-passages-onhamlet","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/english\/sharon-mcgradys-close-reading-passages-onhamlet\/","title":{"rendered":"Sharon McGrady&#8217;s close-reading passages on &#8220;Hamlet&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Interpreting the Closet Scene in <em>Hamlet<\/em> in the Reflections Journal: <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>While preparing to write a research essay on Shakespeare\u2019s <em>Hamlet<\/em> in a 1202 class themed \u201cLiterature and the Human Psyche,\u201d students were given a set of reading questions to guide them through the crucial \u201cCloset Scene\u201d of Act 3, Scene 4, to be discussed in the next class followed by a viewing of the scene as interpreted by the director Kenneth Branagh in his film production.<\/p>\n<p>The questions below were not original to me but have been gathered over the years from many different sources and were supplemented by more questions raised in our discussion of the scene before actually viewing the film clips.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Thought questions for this scene:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>how do we detect Hamlet\u2019s confusion and hurt over his mother\u2019s hasty re-marriage?<\/li>\n<li>how does Hamlet show his duty to the memory of his father in this scene?<\/li>\n<li>what is Hamlet\u2019s state of mind here &#8211;changing (how? when?) Is it mad? Reckless?<\/li>\n<li>Angry? Mournful? Melancholic? More than one of these? Shifting between one and the\u00a0other? How do we know? (point to lines)<\/li>\n<li>What can we determine about the mental state of Queen Gertrude\u2019s character\u2014is she\u00a0\u00a0frail, pragmatic, unfaithful, guilty, torn, cornered? (etc)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>New Questions added during class discussion prior to the film clip<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Did Hamlet plan to kill Gertrude in that highly-charged scene in her bedroom?<\/li>\n<li>How do we know?<\/li>\n<li>Can we understand Gertrude\u2019s perspective as compared to Hamlet\u2019s in this scene? (not only in Branagh\u2019s depiction, but in your own imagination?)<\/li>\n<li>How does the presence of the Ghost add to our understanding of Hamlet\u2019s state of mind\u00a0as compared to Gertrude\u2019s?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Journal assignment<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In class, we discussed the scene, viewed the clip and then discussed how the film represented the scene as compared to their own imaginings, looking for language and other cues in the text to understand how these different interpretations might be valid.<\/p>\n<p>For a Journal entry for homework afterward, students were asked to do the following to close-read the scene and develop further their own interpretations for the research essay on <em>Hamlet<\/em>. Here are the instructions:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Isolate 5-10 lines from the Closet Scene <\/strong>which you found particularly powerful for the way they shed light on the relationship between mother and son. Type them out on the page.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Analyze those lines in a paragraph with a topic sentence<\/strong>, being sure to quote from those lines within the paragraph itself as you make a larger point about the relationship. A paragraph of 5- 7 well-crafted sentences should be enough. I am not looking for pages of commentary, but it is important to practice working closely with Shakespeare\u2019s language and writing about it often as we work on <em>Hamlet<\/em>. Point to specific words in your analysis.\u00a0 If you need to look up any words using the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) on the Library databases (under \u201cO\u201d), do so.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Include in your above reflection a \u201cso what?\u201d observation. For example, <\/strong>how does thinking on the mother-son conflict in this scene help to learn something about the way the human psyche works under duress in the context of the family? Can the common man (or woman) relate to the emotional battle between these two royals?<\/li>\n<li><strong>What I wished I had asked them to do as well (but forgot for this assignment)<\/strong>: Include a second separate paragraph of meta-commentary on our viewing of Kenneth Branagh\u2019s film version saying how viewing the film helped you to rethink or sharpen your own interpretations of the scene.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Interpreting the Closet Scene in Hamlet in the Reflections Journal: While preparing to write a research essay on Shakespeare\u2019s Hamlet in a 1202 class themed \u201cLiterature and the Human Psyche,\u201d students were given a set of reading questions to guide them through the crucial \u201cCloset Scene\u201d of Act 3, Scene 4, to be discussed in &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/english\/sharon-mcgradys-close-reading-passages-onhamlet\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Sharon McGrady&#8217;s close-reading passages on &#8220;Hamlet&#8221;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":637,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1451","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/637"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1451"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1471,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1451\/revisions\/1471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}