Assalamualaikum. Hello back everyone. Thank you
for submitting your homework most of you. If you
didn't already submit your homework It's not good,
but I'll give you a chance until tomorrow at 11 o
'clock. If you don't find me in my office, you
just slip it under the door. But I will deduct
marks from you if you are late. Because if you
submit on time, you get the full mark for
submitting on time. So today, we have a review
class. We'll see what questions you have. About
the course. Should I start again?
Okay.
Should I start again from the beginning?
Now I want to start again. Come on.
There is no doubt.
Thank you
So Assalamu Alaikum again everyone. Thank you for
submitting your first assignment for this course
and I'm really looking forward to grading them.
I'm sure you did a good job answering questions
about Shakespeare. Today I'll take a chance to
give you a review session. Let's take a break
Let's not begin a new lesson because we're
supposed to start with Marlow and Ben Johnson as
other Renaissance Elizabethan dramatists and
playwrights and poets also who were contemporary
to Shakespeare. They lived at the time Shakespeare
was also alive and writing. So today we'll do a
review. Please feel free to ask any question you
have, and I'll do my best to try to answer the
question. Okay, yes, can you also, everyone if you
want to ask question, please speak up. When two
lines of verse rhyme, we call them couplets,
right? Yeah. In the cystic and octave, when the
eight, does the eight lines have to rhyme, so
we're gonna call them cystic and octave? Okay, so
when we spoke about the sonnet, remember the
Italian sonnet? Yes. The sonnet was born in Italy,
with a Y, not I. And we spoke about Dante in
brief. We spoke also about the
other name, the other Italian sonneteer, the
father of the sonnet, Petrarch.
Is it a difficult name? Is it difficult? So
Petrarch, C-H Petrarch, exactly how you spell it.
Now, Petrarch is said to be the most important
Italian sonnetier. There are actually other names
in Italy. But this is what we want to focus on,
because of Petrarch, Henry Howard And Sir Thomas
White, they loved the sonnet. And again, remember,
we always talk about the influence of Europe, of
Italy, France, mainly Italy and France. Actually,
the Renaissance started in Italy well before it
started in England. So England was still being
influenced by Europe, especially by Italy. So the
sonnet, the Italian sonnet, is generally two
parts, remember? The form, the structure of the
sonnet is eight lines and then six lines. Eight
lines and six lines. The eight lines we called
octave.
And this is the Sestet.
Sestet from six. An octave, you know Octopus
because of the A. Now the Italian sonnet almost
always rhymes as A B B A A B B A Now this, you're
answering a question. This is in a way Four lines,
remember the four lines, the quadrant? Your
question is, does this count as a rhyme? Sorry, as
a rhyming couplet? No. You know why? Because
generally this stops here. Even does this count as
a couplet? No, it's part of the octave or the
group of the stanza or the quadrant. However, if
in your exam or you find two lines somebody likes
just these lines and you look at them in isolation
you can call them a couplet it's okay you can if
they are in isolation because you don't know the
context you don't know but generally this is
important generally here they don't give one idea
that's the most important thing about the couplet
remember It's like a paragraph, a prose paragraph.
What is a paragraph? A group of related sentences
about one topic, one idea. Now the couplet, two
rhyming lines, two rhymes, two lines that rhyme,
And they are about the same thing. Always remember
Shakespeare's couplet at the end. So long as this,
so long as men can breathe or eyes can see, so
long lives this, and this gives life to thee. What
happens in the first four lines here, the
quatrain, is the author develops an idea. If you
stop here, the idea is not complete. If you stop
here, it's usually not complete. If you stop here,
it's usually not complete. When you finish the
first four lines, you have a part of an idea that
could give you something. But it's not complete in
the Italian Sunnit until you read the first eight
lines. When you read the first eight lines, you
realize, oh, OK. So it gives you an idea. The same
with Shakespeare. When we spoke about Shakespeare,
we said Shakespeare's structure is
We have three quadrants, remember? Three, what's a
quadrant? Four lines. From quarter, okay? And a
couplet, plus a couplet.
Now the first four lines usually have one idea,
one image, and then the second quadrant moves to
another idea or image, and the third quadrant
moves to the other idea. But the three quadrants
have the same theme, the same problem, the same
crisis. Like in Shall I Compare Thee to A Summer's
Day, he spins almost 12 lines saying, no, life is
not perfect. Every fair from fair sometime
declines. Summer is beautiful, but sometimes there
is rough winds, right? Summer is beautiful, but
again, the winds do shake the darling buds of May.
Summer is beautiful, but summer is sometimes what?
Short and hot. Sometimes the clouds destroy the
beauty of this. So he moves from one image to the
other, like in Sonnet 73, I guess, where he speaks
in the first quatrain, he speaks about the end of
the year, autumn. What happens in autumn? Yellow
leaves. Right? The end of the circle. In the
second quadrant we've got the end of the day, the
sunset. So the day is good. We start active,
energetic. We have all hopes and dreams. We want
to go to school, to attend classes, to meet
friends, to go to the cafeteria, to eat pizza. At
the end of the day, it's like everything comes to
an end. Nothing lasts forever. And then in the
third quarter, he speaks about the end of a fire.
Fires, you know? Fire. But it ends up as ashes. So
what is Shakespeare doing here? He's giving us
three images. The three images about the
inevitability of death. The passing of time. Time
kills everything. In a way this is the crisis.
This is the issue of time. But what does he do in
the couplet? He gives hope. In a way he twists.
There's something called a volta. The volta is a
twist. Where like in Sonnet 18, again, he says
something like, I can't remember that couplet,
like similar to 18, he says that, but my poetry
will live forever. My poetry doesn't die. My
sonnet doesn't die. Reminding us of, again, how he
believes in his poetry, giving us some kind of
hope or closure or ending. So long as men can
breathe, our eyes can see, so long lives this, and
this gives life to thee. So the couplet has one
idea. So again, going back to your question, can
we call this here a couplet? No. Generally, no. If
you find them alone, wandering around, you could
say that, but when you read them, they're not
going to give you a full idea, like the idea of,
so long as men can breathe, our eyes can see, so
long as this or this gives life to this. In other
words, in your exam I'm not going to give you two
lines from here and ask you whether this is a
couplet I'll give you a full stanza either two
lines if it's complete couplet or quatrain four
lines or six or maybe eight lines but we usually
because you're still beginning to learn English
and English literature I usually only focus on two
-line nouns okay
Any other question about the sonnet? Does anyone
want to ask questions about the sonnet, the rhyme
scheme, the importance of the sonnet, Shakespeare
and the sonnet?
Please, do ask. Sorry? Not the sonnet? So, no more
sonnet?
Okay, I'll ask you a question here. In one stanza
we studied in the other class today, there was,
okay, don't look at the book, I'll just bring it
myself. There was a line ending in drops and the
other one ending in box, drops and the other one
ending in box.
Listen, these words don't rhyme. Do they rhyme? Is
there rhyme here? This doesn't count, generally,
unless the sounds before it have something similar
to drop, like hops for example, hops, drops and
hops. Okay, but drops and box, they don't rhyme.
The rhyme is generally not the last sound, usually
two, sometimes three. We need to look at this
carefully. Another example, what do you think of
this? A very famous poem by Marlow, we'll study
later on. He says, he begins his poem saying,
come, Live with me and be my love and
Notice when you begin a line of verse, you begin
with capital. That's the rules when you write
poetry. The first word, you capitalize the first
letter of the first word of each and every line.
And this is how you distinguish sometimes verse
from prose in Shakespeare. If it is capitalized,
then it's poetry. If it's not, it's prose. But
more important than this is the music. We've seen
how Shiloh doesn't use poetry and has not a Jew
eyes. And we will, sorry, we will all the
pleasures.
That's a very famous, that's a very famous poem
here. Is it a couplet? No. Okay, we have love and
Prove Not the same sound Okay we have O V E and
also O V E If you know how to do transcription
this is love and this is prove Probably
next year What do you think of this? Is this a
couplet? Do we have rhyme here? What do you think?
No it's not a couplet because the sound is
different The sounds are different. We have love,
like dove, cut, hot, but, and this is prove. What
do you think? Does anybody have something?
If you look at the words, if you look at the
words, they look similar. They look similar. O V
E, O V E. The V sound is the same, but the one
before. So if you look at it from a distance, if
you don't know the words, how they are pronounced,
you think they rhyme. But in reality, they don't
perfectly rhyme. They partially rhyme. We call
this, it has different names. It's called
imperfect rhyme. Or sometimes it's called I rhyme.
You know I rhyme? Because you look at it, they
sound like they would be rhyming but they don't
rhyme perfectly. So what is this? It's still a
couplet. This is a couplet because it has one
idea. Come live with me and be my love and we will
all the pleasures prove. Is there a rhyme here?
Yes, but the rhyme is imperfect. Imperfect is
still a rhyme. Now, imperfect rhyme is still a
rhyme. They rhyme, but they don't rhyme 100%. They
rhyme like what, 60, 50%? Now, there is a
justification for here. Sometimes, the poet uses
imperfect rhyme to tell us there's something wrong
here. Okay, so look at this. This is a poem, a man
inviting his beloved to love him and live with
him. Why? How is he trying to convince her? He's
telling her, we will all the pleasures prove. We
have all the pleasures in the world. In reality,
no one has all the pleasures in the world. Nobody
owns all the pleasures in the world. He's
exaggerating.
In reality, he's not telling the truth. And this
sound here, Prove, is telling us that he's lying.
Because he's trying to depict life to the woman as
a perfect, you know, perfect life. But even the
rhyme doesn't rhyme perfectly. That's the trick
here. So the rhyme, the imperfect rhyme here tells
us something about the idea. So there is
imperfection in the poem and the imperfection is
reflected in the imperfect rhyme. But what is the
poet saying? He's saying, life is perfect. I own
everything. All is fine. I own everything. We can
have all the pleasures in the world. And the sound
of the poem tells us he's lying, because the rhyme
scheme is imperfect. It reflects something
imperfect in the meaning, in the idea. Or simply,
some people would say, but this is a very unpoetic
answer, maybe during the time of Shakespeare or
Marlowe, maybe these words Could have the same
rhyme. Could have rhymed in the past, like three,
four hundred years ago, maybe they rhymed. I don't
know how. Which is better to say love and problem
or love and prove?
Yeah, in my opinion, I think it's harsh to destroy
love saying prove. Maybe you can play with it. But
I don't know how they pronounce it. Maybe we can
check this later on. So what's the point here?
Sometimes this is not rhyme because the S here
doesn't make rhyme. You need to check the letter,
the sound before. Here we check the sound before
and they don't perfectly rhyme. We call it
imperfect rhyme or I rhyme. Is this important in
the poem? Yes, because it reveals something about
the poem, the meaning itself. The poet is saying,
wait a minute. There is music and fun, but here we
don't have perfect music. We don't have perfect
music because something is wrong. What's wrong
here? A poet lying to his woman. And the title of
the poem here is The Shepherds. The shepherd, the
speaker, the character, the man saying, come live
with me and be my love, is a shepherd. And a
shepherd is generally a poor man who takes care of
sheep. If you are a shepherd, it's impossible for
you to have all the pleasures in life, et cetera.
OK? No more questions about the sonnet? Please do
ask if you have any. The sonnet, go. So I didn't
get it clearly, but is a rhyme scheme focused more
on the letters rather than the sound? The sound,
of course. No, the sound. When it comes to the
rhyme, we care about the sound, not the letter.
But verbs and verbs like, clearer than love and
bruise? This one? No. Yeah, no. Sometimes yes,
like why, why, why wouldn't this rhyme? Like
because more important, this is an additional
letter, like it just comes and goes. Drop and
book?
No way. Drop them. Book, book, book. No way. Even
if we say for example, even if we say drop, it's
not drop, it's drop, drop, drop, drop. It still
doesn't rhyme, never rhymes. Drop and box, no way,
there's no rhyme here. But with the S, does it
rhyme? No, I don't think it rhymes here. But if
you insist, it's okay, it's not a big deal. Yes?
If there was a text and you asked us to write
rhymes, and there was drops and box, shall we
write drop A and box B? Yeah. But if you don't,
because you're still beginners, it's not the end
of the world. The same with love and hope? No, but
this one, there is rhyme here. There is rhyme
here. But it's imperfect. This is clearer than
this in many ways. Good question. So because this
is not year four, you're not about to graduate,
you're still starting your life learning English,
English poetry, and you're not native speakers. So
sometimes there's a lot of flexibility. Yes. Go
on, next. I want to ask something. Are the
questions about history, for example, who invaded
England, are they included in the exam? Listen,
this is a course about... The literature itself or
the situation? Yeah, we're not studying history,
we're studying literature. This is an introduction
to English literature course for beginners. And I
said at the beginning, we're going to examine the
literary texts in their historical context. We're
going to study how history, historical events
influenced literature, and how literature
influenced life, changed life in a way or another.
But the focus, 80% of our focus is on the
literature. okay some events in history are very
important like the printing press you should know
this this is a historical this is a scientific
invention it's a historical event did it influence
literature yes of course because you know mass
production mass like people had more and more
copies it took two years to make one copy of the
bible but now One year, 200 copies. For example,
the French invasion, the Normans, when they came
to England, they influenced the language in the
literature. So the focus is on the literature, but
it is important to know the major historical
events. For example, Britain was invaded by many
people from Europe, Anglo, Saxons, Jews. That's
not included. You should know this. Are you going
to put a question in the exam? Maybe, but the
question here is in the literary context, in the
sense that, remember, when we spoke about Old
English, we said At that time, we didn't have a
clear idea of what England is. Even the literature
was not pure English in the sense we have now or
even the sense Shakespeare composed. Because
people still came from different countries across
Europe and they were using different languages. So
did this, you know the invasions, did this
influence the culture, the language, the
literature? Yes, and that's the focus. So at that
time we said England was trying to shape its
identity. In the Middle Ages, Middle English,
later on, like three, four, five hundred years
later, we started speaking about English
literature, pure English literature when we spoke
about Chaucer. We said in Chaucer, there's always
this insistence on being different. He began his
life, by the way, by imitating some Italian and
French authors. But later on, he developed his own
style. He focused on the Englishness of the
literature. Because when you have your own
country, you want to have your own culture and
literature. You want to be different. You want to
create your identity. Remember we spoke about the
English identity when we mentioned Skelton, Philip
Sparrow, vengeance I ask and cry. We said John
Skilton was an important poet at that time because
in a way he was helping shape the English
identity. And in his poetry, we can find poetry
that is different from the poetry of Europe,
mainly Italy and France. In his poetry, there's a
strong sense of the English identity. What is the
English identity? What it means to be English?
What makes you different from Italians and French?
Number one, your language, right? Number two, your
literature, your poetry, the stories, the
narratives, the customs, the habits. So they were
focusing on the things that make them different.
So these invasions are important because English
as a language is actually originally from
different languages. There are Latin roots, German
roots, French words, many French words, even Arab
words. English is naturally a very flexible
language. It borrows from all the languages. So
the invasions are important to understand because
this is how England became England. It became
diversity. There is now a strong movement in
England and in the United States that is described
as white supremacy where people say England is for
the white, only the white people and America is
for the white people. This is really silly because
Racism. Because of racism, yeah. But also because
England and America, now they started on diversity
in a sense. People from across Europe came there.
People from across Europe went to America. And
there was this reconstructuring of they found a
body of 10,000 years ago in England. And when they
did experiments and tests, they realized that one,
he's a black man. in England. He was there 10,000
years ago. And he's considered, I guess, the
father of 20% of the English people now. So
there's the idea of pure race is a lie. It's not
true. It's a fabrication. People have always
coexisted together. Why is this man black man in
England? Because people crossed borders searching
for safety, for food, coexisted in a way or
another. Please. Some of the names are really hard
to spell. If you misspell something. No worries
about spelling. But like Machiavelli, for example.
OK. Not easy to spell, but try to train it to get
as close as possible. Don't give me, for example,
don't spell spaghetti.
Machiavelli is Machiavelli. What difficult names.
But again, most importantly, I don't want you to
misspell Shakespeare.
I feel sad that's shakes you know shake shakes
shaking shake before use yes she shakes the i
don't know the juice before use it's a shake and
then or shake spear i don't know how you would do
this either shake or shakes and then or spear
because spear is another word but this e is extra
Did I tell you that Shakespeare spelled his name,
signed his name in 17 different ways? None of
them, ironically, none of them is this one. And
this is how crazy life is. So you spell your name
17 different ways, hoping that people would pick
one of them. Because remember, spelling, there was
no standard for spelling. There were no rules for
spelling. People would spell different ways. Only
in the 18th century, people started to have rules.
Do this, don't do that, drop this, changes. So
this is Shakespeare. You usually forget either
this E or this E. So Shakespeare. Shakespeare.
He's dumb. Maybe he's going to feel sad if you do
that. This, we want to really appreciate
Shakespeare for what he does. What other names do
you find difficult? Bewolf? No, no, no. In The
Chaucer, there is an Italian writings of
Bastastione. Listen, if it is something I skipped,
you just skip it. If I skip names of authors,
names of texts, you just skip them. But other than
this, the background, the talk, the brief
description about the age, about the writer, about
the texts, please go through them. And I want you
to read what is in the book because this is how
you improve your writing and your English.
The name, the authors, the texts we study, we
examine, we mention in this class. If I skip
something, any name, any text, you just skip it.
Please. Are we going to be asked to summarize what
they place on Shakespeare? Generally, no. You
won't. But maybe, for example, one of your
questions is going to ask you to contextualize.
Anyway, I shouldn't be speaking about this now
because we'll talk about this when we approach the
exams. You know, context. to contextualize a text.
So I'll ask you for example to bring you five
extracts from poems or texts we studied and I ask
you to contextualize three or four of them. I
usually give you more choices so more flexibility.
Okay question number one is to be or not to be
that is the question. So number one you put it in
its context you tell me This is by Hamlet from
Hamlet by Shakespeare Hamlet is a tragedy of a
young prince who wanted to take revenge because
his uncle killed his father Most importantly,
focus on the text I give you. However, because
Hamlet is a modern man, a university student, he's
in conflict. To kill or not to kill? To be or not
to be? To die or not to die? And this is Hamlet's
tragic flaw. You know tragedy, tragic? His
weakness is hesitation. Sloth, hesitation. You
know hesitation? To be or not to be. To kill or
not to kill. Play or not to play. Exactly. He
hesitates. That's it. This is called
contextualization. But although he is a
philosopher, nevertheless, he has a little gold in
his coffer. This is from The Canterbury Tales by
Chaucer. This couplet, this rhyming couplet,
right? Okay, it has irony, but probably before
this, give me the context. It tells the story of a
philosopher who instead of collecting knowledge,
is collecting money. There is irony here because
Chaucer is making fun of the new habits of the
society. Short paragraphs like these, okay? Clear?
Focus on the line. What do we have in the line?
When you tell me this is a couplet, you save
yourself a lot of time. Instead of saying the
rhyme and there is a rhyme in one topic, you say a
couplet. Oh, excellent.
Okay, again, this extract is taken from Canterbury
Tales by Chaucer. That's number one. In this
extract, in this couplet, Chaucer is criticizing
the new habits of the society. Here, we have a
philosopher who is interested more in collecting
money than in knowledge. There is irony in a
little gold, because a little gold is still a lot
of money.
Something like this. This is called
contextualization. You don't have to memorize the
lines, but if you do, it will really be fun for
you. I will not ask you to recite something or
write a complete line or something. But when you
memorize lines, does anyone memorize anything? No.
Other than have not a Jewite or something? You
should, it's really fun. For God's sake, or shall
I compare thee to summer's day? You feel like, oh
my God, I know more English than anyone else. You
feel proud of yourself. You feel confident. So
long as men can, and listen, very easy. Seriously,
one of the students was like, the boy was telling
me the other day that Shakespeare is difficult. I
hate Shakespeare. I said, this is a misconception.
This is a prejudice. Did you study anything about
Shakespeare? Did you read anything about
Shakespeare? Not much. When you read his poetry,
to be or not to be, that is the question. Yes,
it's not this simplistic, but it's easy to
understand. So long as men can breathe, our eyes
can see. So long lives this, and this gives life
to it. That's why I usually advise my students,
when you learn things about poetry, Shakespeare,
go, all of you use social media. Post this on your
Facebook, on Twitter, on Instagram, Snapchat. Use
them in your life. Today I want all of you to go
home and when you have electricity, if you have
electricity, you just type and every fare from
fare sometime declines. One of the most beautiful
lines ever. Start shifting your life, your
Facebook, your social media, everything into
English. I'm sure you're going to benefit a lot.
So when people ask, what does this mean? Your aunt
or your uncle will be like, wow, we're proud of
you. When people ask you what it means, you just
explain it to them. Translating or just
explaining. Yes, more questions. More, please. I
always knew that Shakespeare's style is three
-verse. I never knew that his poems
Shakespeare mainly wrote in verse. His sonnets are
classical English verse. But his plays, because
when you write a 5000 line play, you can't make
them rhyme in any particular way. So generally
this is called blank verse. What's blank verse?
It's verse but doesn't rhyme. Generally in the
play because it's very difficult to make the whole
play rhyme A B A B or A B C A B C or something.
And this is totally different from, totally
different from free verse. Free verse is something
that appeared probably 200 years ago. Free verse.
Generally in blank verse, we have music, we have
rhythm, but we don't have rhyme. We don't have
rhyme. Free verse, generally no music and no
rhyme. It's the poetry that most people write
nowadays, 20th century, 21st century.
In his plays, Shakespeare and Marlowe, they
adopted blank verse. Because if they want to focus
on the rhyme, it's going to be really very
restricting in a sense. Last point, one minute,
yes?
Of course, yeah, of course many and that's why
he's the father of English poetry or English
literature We're only studying the Canterbury
tales. I'll stop here. Thank you very much for
these questions if you have more questions, feel
free to ask Thank you