Quality–not quantity: think about how you can represent the ideas–not copy the ideas. Doodles, charts, mini-mindmaps, colour, etc.
Pull out key words and phrases for the margin notes
Don’t use summary to summarize plot. Don’t forget to also include questions.
How to do better in this course: Try. Get involved. Show up on time. Stay on task. Participate. Hand in your work. Seriously, that’s all you have to do to improve.
Next: lecture on Act 2 and then time for the Act 2 challenge: to be filmed in class tomorrow unless you present me with a film clip.
I am unreasonably excited about our Act 2 Challenge
But before we get to that, I have some clarifying I want to do for your group scene analyses.
Macbeth Act 2 Challenge: Conversations That Never Happened
Banquo and Macbeth get the time to have that talk: When Banquo suggests that the witches have revealed “some truth” to Macbeth, Macbeth claims that he has not thought of them at all since their encounter in the woods (2.1.19–20). He and Banquo agree to discuss the witches’ prophecies at a later time. But they never do. How would that conversation have gone if they had the time?
Choose two actors, one director, and at least one script-writer.
The writing will be in modern English.
The winning team will be the one that composes the most interesting and entertaining scene that provides the most insight into the differences between Macbeth and Banquo.
Bonus points for using fresh, original metaphors or similes that would make George Orwell proud.
Scenes will be filmed, then judged and voted on by the English department.
Lines do not need to be memorized and scenes should be short. 2-5 minutes.
Roles:
Actor: know your lines, understand your character and motivation. Do what the director says. Help the script writer come up with lines.
Director: Decide how actors should say their lines, plan where actors should stand and move. Help the script writers come up with lines.
Script writers: Write the lines and stage directions. Make sure you are writing lines that allow the actors to highlight the similarities and differences between the characters.
We will start off today by dealing with our Act 1 Challenge. A winner must be crowned.
You’ll get into your teams and submit your guesses.
Then we’re going to talk about the famous dagger speech from Act 2. As you watch each of the following versions of the speech, pay attention to staging: is there an actual dagger in scene or not? How do the three different Macbeths react to the vision?
Think, pair, share: Imagine a director is suggesting cutting this soliloquy. Imagine you are playing Macbeth. Make a case for keeping this in the play.
Introduction of Challenge #2
Macbeth Act 2 Challenge: Conversations That Never Happened
Banquo and Macbeth get the time to have that talk: When Banquo suggests that the witches have revealed “some truth” to Macbeth, Macbeth claims that he has not thought of them at all since their encounter in the woods (2.1.19–20). He and Banquo agree to discuss the witches’ prophecies at a later time. But they never do. How would that conversation have gone if they had the time?
Choose two actors, one director, and at least one script-writer.
The writing will be in modern English.
The winning team will be the one that composes the most interesting and entertaining scene that provides the most insight into the differences between Macbeth and Banquo.
Bonus points for using fresh, original metaphors or similes that would make George Orwell proud.
Scenes will be filmed, then judged and voted on by the English department.
Lines do not need to be memorized and scenes should be short. 2-5 minutes. You’ll have time to work on this challenge tomorrow. I will give you more specific details about each person’s role tomorrow.
1) There are a couple teams that still need to give me their graphic organizers for their scene analysis.
2) Time to complete summary section on Cornell notes. Submit
3) Get into teams. I will give you your twitter account and your scene (keep your scene secret).
4) Homework: Blog post
On your class blog, write a post for one of the following topics:
1) “Fair is foul and foul’s fair”: Identify examples of contrast and paradox in Act 1. For each example, identify the speaker, explain the context and discuss the significance of the quotation. How does Act 1 begin to answer the question: Does power inevitably lead to corruption?
2) “Weird Sisters”: Identify the ways Shakespeare plays with expectations of gender roles in Act 1. Identify at least three different quotations about gender and explain what you think Shakespeare is suggesting about gender. How does Act 1 begin to answer the question: Does power inevitably lead to corruption?
3) “We will proceed no further in this business”: Who is more to blame at this point in the play? Macbeth? The Witches? Or Lady Macbeth? Support your ideas with at least three specific quotations from the text. How does Act 1 begin to answer the question: Does power inevitably lead to corruption?
Choose a scene from Act 1 and retell the scene using only GIFs. The winning team will be the first one that guesses each group’s scene summary correctly.
Each team will get its own Twitter account.
You will be randomly assigned a scene to summarize.
Be crafty with your GIF choices. Don’t be literal. It needs to be possible for groups to guess your scene using the GIFs you chose but you don’t want to make it easy or that decreases your team’s chance of winning the challenge. How? In my experience, it’s easiest to brainstorm key words for the events and ideas you want to communicate like “manipulation, power, evil, darkness, blood,” Search the GIFs using one of those key words and then choose one that’s not too literal or perhaps suggests something about implicit meaning rather than the explicit meaning of the text.
You must have a minimum of 5 GIFs.
Tweet your first GIF normally and then for each subsequent tweets, do them as replies to form a thread. Only one person per team needs to actually tweet. The rest of you are responsible for helping with the brainstorming and GIF selection—and then of course guessing.
We will do this tomorrow after you have time to summarize your notes.
1) Finish graphic organizers (I know it will be tough with so many people away but I will help.) Submit those to me and I will photocopy them for everyone.
We’ve now finished watching Macbeth, and I know you only had a couple minutes in your expert groups yesterday. So I’m going to have you get back into your expert groups and summarize what your literary theory reveals about the implicit meanings of the play.
Then you’ll get into your home groups and share your findings.
Next, you’ll get a copy of the play. We are going to focus on Act 1 today.
Then, in your home groups (or teams), you will each be responsible for reading and analyzing a scene. Then there will be a challenge to complete for each team.
Today we are watching Macbeth and discussing what each expert groups’ literary theory reveals about the implicit meaning of the film version of this play.
