Love's Labours Lost at BYU

Setting the play "Love's Labour's Lost" in wartime is an exciting idea, invoking the jazz club scenery and atmosphere where song and dance could break out at any time. We Americans seem to like the theme as a backdrop for movies, especially romances (i.e. "The Notebook," "Captain America," "Australia"... ), probably because of the easily recognizable costuming and nostalgic familiarity. It also helped us distinguish the men on separate levels, as they were all dressed according to rank. Although I couldn't figure out why Biron was dressed as a lower rank than the other three lover-boys. It's like it set him apart as the center character that he is, without allowing him those extra lines that make him an obvious focus in Shakespeare's original. In fact, after I'd read the play, I could have sworn that Biron was the main 'hero' of the play, but the presentation seemed to downplay that by dressing him down, I suppose.
I think the wartime theme meshed especially well with the resolution of Shakespeare's storyline, as the women could assign the men to service in the military as proof of their love, rather than to isolation in the mountains as hermits. The set up with Moth and Don Armado throwing jokes back and forth really worked well also. It is full of Shakespeare jargon that normally doesn't make a ton of sense, but my friend Ashley, who hadn't read the play, laughed at all the right times, probably also with the help of the cue cards. I think the pacing of this scene was really smart, because the whole play ran pretty evenly, until this scene, which made it seem much more like a battle of wits, and you could tell it was funny even if you didn't understand it. The other time I noticed the pace speed up a little was when the women were gossiping, which I think was very fitting for a vanity mirror scene with a bunch of girls talking a mile a minute.
I thought I had missed something important when I missed the first scene, because all the men were dancing with women, and I thought the story was supposed to be set in a women-free zone. This is what made Costard being caught with a woman so confusing, and there were also a few other things that added to that confusion, including the additional characters that shared some of the women's lines, making it hard to tell which girls were the lovers.
I was also a little disappointed because I think some of Biron's speeches were cut out, including his monologue on love, which is kind of funny. And some of Don Armado's lines were cut short too. Those were just the ones I noticed, so there might have been more. But I think it was probably necessary with the addition of the musical numbers, because the play ended up taking about two and a half hours! I think I actually like the stylistic choice of adding in the musical numbers, because it added to the atmosphere of a night club in that time period. Though I think if the dancing was added in for this purpose, it probably wasn't worth it, considering the confusion it caused. 
However iconic the scenery and costuming, the production probably desired a little more thought towards the application of an older text that had not anticipated this era, but I'm sure it started out with something brilliant!

Prototype "Teaser Content" Video

I'll probably have to figure out how to make this video a bit shorter! I think maybe for my second attempt I'll do a Prezi or a Powerpoint just because the camera makes me somewhat uncomfortable. But, here it is.

As for my market study, I'm thinking the readers of fanfiction are a pretty well-defined group. But beyond that, Dr. Burton said that teachers may be interested in this sort of media as a teaching tool, and psychologists may also be interested in Hamlet as a psychological specimen of homicidal mania. I figure the best way to get this sort of content out to teachers would be through lesson plans, but I'm not totally sure yet how to bring this sort of material to the attention of this group. I'll keep you updated!

The English Symposium

     I attended the section on fairytales, as well as the one titled, "The bard, and the man." Professor Bruce Young, who was moderating the event section, mentioned that Shakespeare was never called "the bard" in his time, which I thought was kind of interesting. I wonder why people really call him that, as I've always thought it was kind of a weird name. Anyway, the first girl's paper discussed how the many interpretations of Othello have inspired filmmakers to present Othello in ways that highlight certain aspects of the character, mostly discussing the lighting in Orson Wells' film production of Othello. She also points out that Othello refers to himself as a changed man in the end when he says, "That's he that was Othello, Here I am." She uses it to support her thesis that there is a difference between the Othello who loved his wife, the Othello who became jealous, and the Othello who regrets his deeds.
     Then the next person presented on "The Tempest" and how Shakespeare was critiquing humankind, which has a tendency to "play god," like Prospero, and is punished for it. Prospero learns his lesson, and gives up his powers because he cannot control the power of God, being human. The third paper was about emasculated male characters in "Peter and Wendy," and I didn't exactly see the connection between the three, besides maybe the theme of "what it means to be a man." :)

My Intro

Here's a copy of the intro to my whole piece. Let me know if you have suggestions!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1o_TzX3itDQgTHvf8wHGZ5jB8U1M_xFo1BaThiNbmCk8/edit

I'm going to keep adding onto it, so you might see me in the middle of my writing process!

Love's Labours Lost

Probably my favorite part about this play is the rhetorical word games all throughout. Like when Costard tries to get himself out of punishment: "The manner of it is, I was taken with the manner." he sort of skirts around the subject, claiming to present the reason why he is there, but not explaining himself clearly: "In manner and form following sir, in all those three: / I was seen with her in the manor-house, sitting with / Her upon the form, and taken following her into the / park; which, put together, is in manner and form / following." And in the performance done at Shakespeare's Globe, Costard was such a little performer. http://streaming.factsonfile.com.erl.lib.byu.edu/PortalViewVideo.aspx?xtid=41375
But my favorite character was actually the princess. Just like Mikhaela said in her paper, Shakespeare writes strong women characters. I'm not really convinced that the Princess cares for Ferdinand until the end, and even then, she has the guts to challenge him to a year of hermitage. She must be playing with his head, and certainly with the audience as well.

Prototype

Ok, here's my 'prototype' of my fiction piece. I wrote out the climactic scene in the story.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hqQG5U7yUsT33rGUYqkprU6f_bJ2GpEWGUrcKoOBWGM/edit

Ellie's Paper

Ok, I LOVE Ellie's ideas, and I was surprised to see how well they actually fit with mine. We used a lot of the same quotes from the text to make a similar argument. As a part of both our arguments, we said that Hamlet's ghost is really just a projection of his inward desires, but I think using Jung really helped Ellie express this idea more clearly. I felt like some of the textual quotes could have been explained more for those who haven't been studying Hamlet closely, and there were a couple style suggestions i could give, but I thought it was very articulate and well organized. Here's Ellie's paper. It was surprising to see how close our papers were, and I think I could bring in some of Ellie's ideas into my creative writing project! I'll have to ask her opinion on how I could go about that... btw, here's Ellie's blog.

Homicidal Mania in Hamlet

In doing some research for this fanfiction piece, I found a scientific article discussing how a diagnosis of homicidal mania has affected legality over the years.
Eigen, Joel Peter. "Diagnosing Homicidal Mania: Forensic Psychiatry and the Purposeless Murder."
Medical history 54.4 (2010): 433-56. ProQuest Research Library. Web. 7 Mar. 2012.

The working definition we have now for homicidal mania is, "the propensity to kill related to an actual
delusion, an absurd motive to kill related to no known motive, or an impulse to kill that was
"sudden, instantaneous, unreflective, and uncontrollable".21"

I think this perfectly describes Hamlet, as his mania is directly related to a delusion, with an absurd motive to kill. I also mentioned in my paper how Hamlet was "unreflective" towards his actions, in the same way that some of the people described in this article show a lack of remorse. I think Hamlet really is suffering from Homicidal Mania, and I'm also playing with the idea of sociopathy.

I wonder if any scholars have tried to diagnose Hamlet's psychological condition....



So this has sort of morphed with another one of my assignments from my creative writing class. For that class, I need to write a 15 page character development in response to these questions.
so here it is!

Final Draft

MY FINAL DRAFT...Just so you know where it is.

Fanfiction

Before I start, I suppose I need to make some decisions about how close I need to stay to the text. The ideas I'm throwing around are more like adaptations, so I'm hoping Cortnie will have some feedback on how to go about creating fanfiction. I'm staying away from archaic Shakespeare language, because I think that defeats my purpose of making Shakespeare more accessible, specifically to fanfiction readers. I let her know some of my ideas here. Here are some of the ideas I'm working on:
I'm thinking setting could be a sort of modern-day murder mystery, where Hamlet's mother dies slowly of cancer, but Hamlet suspects his dad of giving her drugs and taking her life away too early. So when he goes to see a grief counselor (Polonius), he starts showing signs of obsession and madness, and after a hallucination of his mother's ghost, he kills his counselor/psychiatrist, and gets away with it. So then later, he finally kills his father, his brother (Laertes) suspects his guilt and confronts him about it, getting himself killed.

So What's Next?

My paper is done! But I'm not. Next step: FANFICTION! Cortnie is a fanfiction......fan, and wrote her paper on the legitimacy of fanfiction as a medium for critical analysis. Fanfiction is a reworking of original text, sort of like an adaptation, that is basically an entirely new work. I thought it'd be interesting to see how a fanfiction version of Hamlet would turn out, with the new spin of Hamlet as a villain. Maybe I could even have him kill Ophelia directly... I'm not sure about any of the specifics yet, and in fact I have so many questions! But here are some samples of Cortnie's fanfiction so you can get your toes dipped in the water: http://www.fanfiction.net/u/936227/Angels_Innocence.

Post-Interview

Finally it's over. Well, mostly. My paper could have used a little editing for concision. And some of my sources were outdated. If I'd fulfilled my research dream, I'd have gotten some articles more directly related to my topic, and from this decade. Maybe even more about the revenge tragedies, and how those might connect Iago and Hamlet as revenge characters. That would be nice. Also, Dr. Burton made a really great point: the idea of isolation in my paper could become more of a focus. Maybe psychologists would know more about how isolation from society affects the psyche, and may have negative effects. Hmmmm...

So now the questions is, how can I transform my topic into a more presentable, easily accessible format?