Woman's Club Work and Programs Part 27

Synopsis of the plot and a.n.a.lysis of the chief characters. Essentially lyrical quality of this play. Compare Ophelia and Juliet. Read Act ii., Scene 2. Reading from A Study of Romeo in J. J. Chapman's Emerson and Other Essays.

2. _As You Like It_--Source: Lodge's Rosalynde. Synopsis of the plot and a.n.a.lysis of the chief characters. Note the part of Adam, which Shakespeare played himself. Compare Juliet and Rosalind. Read Act ii., Scene 4, and Act iii., Scene 2. Readings from Hamilton Mabie's In the Forest of Arden and William Winter's Old Shrines and Ivy.

3. _The Merchant of Venice_--Source: the Italian Tale, Il Pecorone.

Synopsis of the plot and a.n.a.lysis of the chief characters. Discuss the question, Who is the hero of the drama? Read from Act iii., Scene 2, and Act iv., Scene 1 (Portia's plea). Reading from Philipson's The Jew in English Fiction.

BOOKS TO CONSULT--Hiram Corson: Introduction to Shakespeare. Fleming: How to Study Shakespeare. Dowden: Transcripts and Studies (for Romeo and Juliet). Stopford Brooke: On Ten Plays of Shakespeare (for As You Like It). Introductions to the several plays by Brandes, R. G. White and Rolfe (popular).

The heroines of these plays are among the loveliest in Shakespeare. A special paper might be prepared on them, ill.u.s.trating it with their famous speeches.

VI--PLAYS OF FANCY

1. _Midsummer Night's Dream_--Source: old tales (Petrarch, Ovid, Chaucer, etc.). Synopsis of the plot and a.n.a.lysis of the chief characters. An early play, full of sprightly gaiety. Splendid metrical command. Influence on later literature and music (Faust, Oberon). Read Act iii., Scene 1. Also the Pyramus and Thisbe part.

2. _Cymbeline_--Source: Boccaccio and Holinshed. Synopsis of the plot and a.n.a.lysis of the chief characters. Serene temper with tragic element.

Fanciful geography. Read Act iv., Scene 2, through the song Fear No More.

3. _Winter's Tale_--Source: Greene's Pandosto and the Decameron of Boccaccio. a.n.a.lysis of the plot and description of the chief characters.

List of Warwickshire flowers mentioned (Act iv., Scene 3). Discuss the reason for the popularity of this play in Shakespeare's time and its neglect now. Read Act iv., Scene 3, in part.

4. _The Tempest_--Source: almost entirely Shakespeare's own; very slight dependence on materials. a.n.a.lysis of the plot and description of the chief characters. Probably Shakespeare's last play. Wreck of the _Sea-Venture_ and description of Bermuda (see Mabie's Shakespeare). Note Shakespeare's desertion of reality for fancy at the close of his career.

Read Act v., Scene 1.

BOOKS TO CONSULT--Hudson: The Life, Art, and Character of Shakespeare.

Dowden: Shakespeare, His Mind and Art. The Arden Shakespeare: introductions by Chambers, Wyatt, Boas, etc. Editions of the plays by Rolfe, Brandes, and Hudson. Winter: Old Shrines and Ivy. Sherman: What is Shakespeare? (chapters on Cymbeline and Winter's Tale). W. B.

Carpenter: Religious Spirit in the Poets (chapter on the Tempest).

As this is the last program in which Shakespeare's plays are taken up in detail, the important subject might be discussed of the relation of the plays to the author's own life and mental development. (See Dowden's book.) Special study should be made of the exquisite songs in which the last three plays are particularly rich. Hark, Hark, the Lark! and Fear No More, from Cymbeline, Jog On and When Daffodils Begin, from Winter's Tale, and Where the Bee Sucks, from the Tempest, should be sung or read.

VII--SONNETS AND OTHER POEMS

1. _Venus and Adonis_--Early experiment in narrative verse. The story founded on Ovid, with medieval alterations of the legend. Character of the theme acceptable to the Renaissance spirit, but impossible to-day.

Correctness of the text.

2. _The Rape of Lucrece_--Story of Lucius Tarquinius Superbus. Legend unaltered by the poet. Lucrece, the model of conjugal fidelity in the Middle Ages. Who was the Earl of Southampton, to whom the poem was dedicated? What did the other poets of Shakespeare's time think of these early poems?

3. _Shorter Poems_--A Lover's Complaint, The Pa.s.sionate Pilgrim, and The Phoenix and the Turtle. Shakespeare's part in the second and his indignation at the use of his name for the whole. The "unsolved enigma"

of the last.

4. _The Sonnets_--The origin of the sonnet form in Italy. The plan of the series. Comparison of the collection with Wordsworth's sonnet sequences, Mrs. Browning's Sonnets, and Tennyson's In Memoriam. The problem of W. H. Read the Sonnets, 18, 22, 33, 116.

BOOKS TO CONSULT--W. J. Rolfe: Venus and Adonis, and Other Poems.

Sidney Lee: introductions to the several poems. Israel Gollanez: Shakespeare's Sonnets. Edward Dowden: Shakespeare's Sonnets. Parke G.o.dwin: New Study of the Sonnets of Shakespeare.

The most interesting problem about the sonnets is whether or not they are a revelation of Shakespeare's own experience and views of life, or are wholly imaginative. On this point read from Wordsworth, Scorn Not the Sonnet, and Browning's House, in which the two poets take opposite views. For a full and most interesting discussion see Dowden's essay.

VIII--THE WOMEN OF SHAKESPEARE

1. _Introductory_--Variety of characters and p.r.o.nounced individuality.

Different types represented. Not peculiar to his age, but timeless.

2. _The Women of Intellect_--Portia: the woman of wisdom and learning.

Is she Shakespeare's highest female type? Beatrice: the fine lady, of wit and high spirits. Readings--Portia: the casket scene and the court scene from the Merchant of Venice. Beatrice: first and last scenes from Much Ado.

3. _The Women of Sentiment_--Juliet: woman of the South; romantic and intense. Desdemona; woman of the North; modest, tender, self-restrained.

Readings--Juliet: Act iii., Scenes 2 and 5, of Romeo and Juliet.

Desdemona: Act iv., Scene 2, of Oth.e.l.lo.

4. _The Women of Imagination_--Perdita: simplicity, dignity, and sweetness. Miranda: ethereal, unsophisticated, and ideal.

Readings--Perdita: Act iv., Scene 4 (the shepherd's cottage), of the Winter's Tale. Miranda: Act i., Scene 2 (the island), of the Tempest.

5. _The Women of History_--Lady Macbeth: power of intellect, determination, devotion to her husband's career. Princess Katharine: charming and coquettish. Readings--Lady Macbeth: Act i., Scene 8, from Macbeth. Katharine: Act v., Scene 2 (beginning "Fair Katharine"), from Henry V.

6. _Women of Various Types_--Ill.u.s.trative readings from As You Like It (Rosalind), Hamlet (Ophelia), King Lear (Cordelia), Taming of the Shrew (Katharine).

BOOKS TO CONSULT--E. Dowden: Transcripts and Studies. L. Lewes: Women of Shakespeare. Mrs. A. B. Jameson: Characteristics of Women. Wingate: Shakespeare's Heroines on the Stage.

The club members could add interest to this meeting by recalling the famous actresses they may have seen, and comparing their presentations of Shakespeare's women. For example, Mary Anderson as Juliet, Ada Rehan as Katharine, Ellen Terry as Portia, Modjeska as Rosalind, and Julia Marlowe as Ophelia.

IX--SHAKESPEREAN PROBLEMS

1. _His Personality_--How much education had Shakespeare? Did he reveal himself in his plays? What were his personal characteristics?

2. _Characteristics of His Work_--Did he plagiarize? If so, was he justified? Was his meaning always clear to himself? See Richard Grant White on this point. Is his broad humor defensible? Discuss Taine's criticism on this point.

3. _Estimate of Shakespeare in His Own and Later Times_--What did his contemporaries think of him? Why was he ignored in the later seventeenth century? Quote from great writers on Shakespeare: Coleridge, Goethe, Swinburne, etc.

4. _The Bacon-Shakespeare Controversy_--Origin: story of Delia Bacon's life. Is there a cipher in Shakespeare? Quotation of learned opinion on both sides.

BOOKS TO CONSULT--Emerson: Essays. E. Dowden: Essays, Modern and Elizabethan. Arthur Gilman: Shakespeare's Morals. Ignatius Donnelly: The Great Cryptogram. Charlotte Carmichael Stopes: Bacon-Shakespeare Question Answered.

Have a talk on Shakespeare the historian. Is he trustworthy? Does he give an accurate account of events or only reproduce general color? Have a discussion on the character of Hamlet. Was he really mad? Did Shakespeare intend so to represent him, or to leave the matter in doubt?

For those interested in such things, the subject of the early editions of Shakespeare, and their relation to one another, is one of great fascination. A description of the immensely costly collection recently presented to the Elizabethan Club at Yale might be given.

X--FAMOUS PRESENTATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS

1. _English_--Garrick, Charles Kean, Siddons, Charles Kemble, Lady Faucit, Irving, Terry, Tree, Benson. Descriptions and anecdotes from Boswell's Johnson, Charles Lamb's Essays, f.a.n.n.y Burney's Diary, and Ellen Terry's life.

2. _American_--Forrest, the elder and younger Booth, Barrett, Ada Rehan, Mansfield, Sothern, and Marlowe.

3. _The Theater at Stratford-on-Avon_--Description of it with views.

Story of some of the famous presentations given there. Differences between these and those of Shakespeare's own time.

4. _Discussion of the Question of Stage Settings_--Was that of Shakespeare's time better, with no scenery, and all the effect lying in the meaning of the lines; or is the method of to-day preferable with its elaborate, costly, and spectacular scenery and stage effects? Describe the change in stage ideas due to the invention of the electric light.