Textual Analysis
Rather than relying upon summaries or reports of Shakespeare's works, my students look at the text closely, identifying literary form on many levels, then interpreting the significance of that form:
- Genre:
What category of play or poetry does this work belong to? (For example, comedy, tragedy, romance, history; the sonnet, etc.). How does its generic category guide our expectations about what we will be reading? (Certain themes or structures are often associated with specific genres) - Plot:
What happens and why within the drama? Shakespeare's comedies often have intricate plots, such as A Midsummer Night's Dream or Comedy of Errors. Other times, as in The Tempest, plot is very thin. Why? - Themes:
What are the main themes of a given work? Are these themes that threaded through other works by Shakespeare or his contemporaries? - Characters:
How are characters developed? What is their motivation or psychology? What themes do they evoke? Jill Bickham is focusing on Ariel in The Tempest, bringing up good questions like her ambiguous gender. - Language:
There are many levels of linguistic analysis with Shakespeare, including - diction (word choice)
- wordplay (puns, stylistic flourishes)
For example, Jenny Jones analyzed a pun on the word "dolor" / "dollar" in The Tempest. - imagery
- metaphors and conceits (extended metaphors)
- dialogue (not just what is said but how an interchange takes place).
Rachel Ontiveros analyzed the comedic nature of back-and-forth dialogue in The Tempest. - quotations
Shakespeare's works have provided so many idioms and quotations that these can be analyzed on their own or as a way into the larger text. Taylor McComb has found a list of Shakespearean phrases. - Intertextuality
What other texts connect with Shakespeare's? This can be considered in terms of - source texts (since Shakespeare's plays were mostly derivative, imitating and adapting prior works)
- allusions within Shakespeare (Shakespeare's texts refer to many classical works, to the Bible, and to contemporary works)
- allusions to Shakespeare (Many subsequent writers and artists directly or indirectly refer to our build upon Shakespeare's works). Alicia demonstrated this by showing how both Dickens and T.S. Eliot explicitly refer to Hamlet.
Contextual Analysis
My students know that many things outside of the text have bearing on how his works are understood. I'd like to specify a few main areas of context
- Biographical Context
Shakespeare's plays are often read through the lens of his life. For example, he composed Hamlet not long after the death of his son, Hamnet. Arielle Custer does a biographical reading of the Tempest, citing the fact that this was Shakespeare's nearly final play, with the main character, Prospero, being seen as giving the bard's goodbye to the theatre. - Renaissance Context
The political, religious, and literary happenings of Shakespeare's lifetime are very relevant to interpreting his work. When characters in Twelfth Night mock a Puritan (Malvolio), this is coming out of a stereotype from Shakespeare's day regarding Puritans being killjoys. - Reception
Beyond Shakespeare's lifetime, there has been a long history of Shakespeare's plays being performed and studied, and of his presence growing as a cultural phenomenon. It's amazing to learn about the history of Shakespeare beyond his day. For example, in the 18th century, Nahum Tate decided to rewrite King Lear's sad ending, and for 150 years everyone believed it ended happily. - Adaptation
Shakespeare's art has spawned a lot of other art, and whether that is poetry, drama, music, or the visual arts -- any of these can be seen as ways to interpret both Shakespeare's work and the period or creator of the adaptation. Kaleigh Spooner did a great job of introducing us to visual and musical adaptations of The Tempest. Similarly, Tara Pina led us to a set of illustrations of The Tempest by Edmund du Lac from 1908. - Contemporary Context
What is the reception of Shakespeare today, or his role within our culture or world?
This is not a complete list of ways to analyze Shakespeare, but it's a fair start. Later, I will specifically come back to analyzing performances of Shakespeare on stage and on film, as well as analyzing various digital mediations of his work.
What kinds of analysis have you been accustomed to using? What could you push yourself to explore futher?
