Mr_Shank

Yay! Last post!

For this week’s quote, I choose the last line of the play in which Puck says:

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
if you pardon, we will mend:
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to ’scape the serpent’s tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call;
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.

So, what do you think Puck is telling us here? And how does this connect back to what happened in the rest of the play?

That’s All Folks!

~Sarah L.

Alright as you have read the ending to the book you see that a fairy tale ending has occurred.  Beatrice and Benedick actually get married, and Hero and Claudio mistake fixed itself.  Did you like the drama though?  I think Shakespeare used a great amount of drama and he kept the reader interested by playing these little kid games.  What I mean as a kid game is how he tricked Beatrice and Benedick and how he set up the plan for Claudio to marry Hero.

Much Ado About Nothing 2

That’s right we are continuing the book.  We know we can not write as good as Shakespeare, but I think the play should not end.  Let’s strat with Beatrice and Benedick.  Would they really stay together in your mind?  I think not because they don’t seem to be nice couple at all.  They seem to call each other names, and this could turn out to be a relationship where he gets mad because she asks him to do all this stuff.  In the story I would have her boss him around for a little bit.  Then out of nowhere I would have Benedick disguise himself as someone she may not know.  He would kidnap her where then he may be able to put some fright in her eyes and cause her to appreciate Benedick instead of taking advantage of him.  That is what I would do because that’s what would make me interested.  What would you do?

Next lets talk about the marriage of Claudio and Hero.  We see that they try to trick Claudio and say Hero is dead but she is really not.  I feel this is wrong, as faking death and making someone sad is not a good trick.  But we all know it turned for the best as they were married and go on to live a happily life after all.  In book 2 I think they would not be the main part of book 2.  They would fall off because they are a great couple.  They seem to me to be really happy, and I cannot see them fighting at all.  Do you guys have any ideas?

Lastly lets talk about Don Jon.  To me this guy played the spoiler role the whole entire play.  In the end he gets caught.  He did make the play exciting, but it was wrong.  Does this guy have a heart?  I think he is more jealous than anything.  So in book 2 we would find him a girl.  This will be great.  She will be a nice girl, who is really interested about his past.  To find out about his past she talks to the prince, Claudio, and Benedick.  She hears of him being a wedding crasher, but his plan had failed.  She is angered by this, so she repeats the plan with the two of them.  He shows him up at the weeding, and makes him feel very horrible.  The wedding ended, and they would be back to gether in another 2 months or so.  Then they would talk about how love is a very important thing, and not just an emotion you can toy around with.  He would learn his lesson and they would marry.  What is your guys idea?

Lastly the ending.  There willm not be a book 3 so it has to end.  Of course everybody is happy except for the Beatrice and Benedick, but they end up to be friends because they realize it was not a good idea to be together.  Anyways then together they should have a visit off into some place where they should all live, and they all could help rule that part.  It sounds like a picture perfect ending to me!  Any other things that you guys think is better?

Themes of this story:

1.  First I feel that love was a big part.  The author showed us that love is something more than emotion and it should not be messed with.  Also it showed us that some are in love but are afraid of admitting it.

2.  Mixed identities also played a role in this.  They were always devising plans to switch roles and trick one another.  I think this is important because this is how the drama occurred.

Those are the only ones I can think, do you guys have any others?

-Alex

Act 4 starts off with Jaques and Rosalind, Ganymede, arguing about Jaques mood. Rosalind eventually wins and Jaques leaves. Orlando shows up late for his love meeting with Rosalind, Ganymede. They talk about there love and Orlando wonders what will happen if he tries to kiss his love and she rejects him. She says just to talk about it, but Orlando thinks that he will die if she rejects him. Rosalind says that that’s just silly. Orlando then requests to leave to go with Duke Senior. Rosalind then tells Celia that her love for Orlando has grown considerably. Then Jaques and some of Duke’s Senior men kill a deer and talk about its horns. In the next scene Orlando is 2 hours late from getting back to Rosalind and Celia. That’s when Silvius came with a letter from Phoebe to Ganymede, Rosalind. They thought the letter was first an angry one but then it started to compare Ganymede to a god. Rosalind sent back a letter saying that he will never love Phoebe until she loves Silvius. Oliver then enters and tells them a story about how Orlando saved him from a lion and a snake. He then says that he got bite by the lion and started to bleed heavily, he then went to the duke and that’s where he spent the last minutes of his life. Rosalind, hearing this, passed out. When she came to, she merely said that she was playing the part of the girl who Orlando has been “wooing”. (WWWHHATT?!?! that didn’t sense to me at all, why would he fall for that?!?) Act 5 starts up with Audrey and Touchstone walking through the forest, they are talking about there delayed marriage. Then William shows up, he exclaims that he indeed is in love with Audrey, Touchstone basically tells him to back off his women. The next scene starts off with Orlando and Oliver having a conversation about Oliver being in love with Aliena and Orlando’s love for Rosalind. (Soooo apparently that whole “Orlando’s dead thing” was just an act to see how Ganymede would react, there taking this stuff to seriously). Anyway, then Ganymede asks why he can’t take Rosalind’s place, Orlando admits he has helped but he just can’t wait until he has the chance to try and marry her. Phoebe and Silvius then enter, they have a conversation about Ganymede and how Phoebe wants to marry him. Ganymede promises to marry all of them if they all go to Oliver’s wedding, they agree. Then Touchstone is off with Audrey, they meet some of the Duke’s pages and they sing a song. Touchstone didn’t really like the song. The next day at the church Duke Senior really wonders if Ganymede can do everything that he promised. Celia and Rosalind disappear into the forest and come back out undisguised. Phoebe sees that the man she loves is actually a women, so she says that she’ll marry Silvius. Then all the couples get married; Orlando and Rosalind, Silvius and Phoebe, Oliver and Celia, and Audrey and Touchstone. They have a great wedding feast. Jaques returns and tells them that Duke Frederick has left to lead a solitary life at the monastery, everyone is happy and Jaques says that he too is going to live in the monastery. They all live happily ever after.
 

Question: How comes when everyone found out that Ganymede was actually Rosalind no one was really that surprised?

Words

prithee-pray thee

censure-strong expression of approval

emulation-effort or desire to excel others

entreaty-earnest request

videlicet-to introduce examples

Adam Lough

I thought this play was great throughout.  These tweo scenes added more drama with Claudio stopping the wedding, Lenarto saying that Claudio has killed Hero, and Beatrice and Benedick being married.   In the end every thing turned out how I wanted it to.  Hero, Claudio, Benedick, and Beatrice were all happily married.

“Tush, tush, man; never fleer and jest at me: I speak not like a dotard nor a fool, as under prilege of age to brag what I have done being young, or what would do were I not old.  Know, Claudio, to thy head, thou hast so wrong’d mine innocent child and me that I am forced to lay my reverence by and, with grey hairs and bruise of many days, do challenge thee to trial of a man.  I say thou hast belied mine innocent child; thy slander hath gone through and through her heart, and she lies buried with her ancestors; O, in a tomb where never scandal slept, save this of hers, framed by thy villlany!” (Act V, scene i)  This is said by Lenanato to Claudio.  I picked this quote because it shows Lenarto’splan in action.  In this plan Leonato wants Claudio to feel bad about killing Hero and change his mind about her.  To do this he says that Claudio has killed her from the grief that he caused her.  It also gives the reader how much he loves his daughter.  He loves her so much that he challenges Claudio, a much younger man to a dual to kill his daughter’s fake killer.  In the quote Leonato expresses his anger towards Claudio for accusing Hero of being unfaithful.  You can not blame Claudio for this.  He was mislead by Don John.  He than tells Claudio that Hero has died because what he has done to her.  This plan works great.  Claudio is upset at what he did to Hero.  Because of this Leonato gets Claudio to tell everybody that Hero was innocent.  Than he is told to marry Leonato’s nees in place of Hero, but it is actually Hero.  Do you guys think that it was right for Leonato to lie about Hero’s death? Why or why not?  I believe that it was reasonable because everything worked out in the end.  Claudio found out that Hero was not unfaithful and the two were happily married.

-Julian Garcia

The last two Acts (4 and 5) were very interesting.  They made for a very mysterious end to the book and then it had a happy ending.  The plan that the Friar concocted with Leonato and Hero reminds me of the plan the the Friar made with Juliet.  In both situations it was to help the case of their marriage.

In what ways are the plans from Romeo and Juliet and Much Ado About Nothing similar? Different?

Well, first off I would like to say that it is just super that this is our last and final blog, and I also would like to congratulate anyone reading this blog for making it through Mr. Shank’s class alive. Ok, now I will actually start to write about what changes the characters have gone through in these last two acts of the book.

Well, so far in this play we’ve seen Petruchio go through some changes, such as how he had acted before he had met Kate and after he had met Kate. In this final portion of the book we see however that he is much more cunning and ingenious than we have thought from what we have seen of him so far. Well, what I mean by this is that we did realize that by him acting out that he must have had a greater scheme to accomplish, but now in these last two acts we see that he was actually misbehaving to get Kate to learn how to listen to him. Then at the very end we can see that Petruchio’s plan to calm down Kate had actually worked and had taught her how to not be such a “w”itch. So my question for you is as follows. Do you think that Petuchio’s plan would have worked as fast as it did, and that Kate would cave that fast? Or, do you think that Shakespeare was just tired and wanted to finish the flippin’ play? You tell me.

Although, in these last two chapters we also see some other characters become more cunning. I shall be describing how Lucentio has changed since we have seen him from the beginning of the play. Well, at first Lucentio had started his little charade out of pure love at first sight and the reader would imagine it as being very “sweet”. However as we see in these last two acts, he becomes desperate when he is willing to find a fake dad to support the marriage between him and Bianca, and then it becomes less “sweet” and more desperate and pathetic. It’s not only Lucentio that is more cunning though, he has also brought Biondello and of course Tranio into his little circle of lies. Then the peak of their punishment for lieing was when the real Vincentio finds them and flips crap. So my question for you is as follows. Do you think there is any girl (or guy) out there that would make you willing to go to all of the same lengths that Lucentio had just to get her to be yours? Please elaborate.

Of course what kind of idiot would I be to forget the character that has gone through the most changes since the last portion we read; Kate. When we had first met Kate she had been a bitter “w”itch that was destined to be alone forever, but due to her father and his big pockets a man had actually wanted to marry her despite all of her flaws. Then we also see these two progress through the play from a mutual dislike from first meeting, to a one sided attempt at love, to finally a mutual agreement of listening to one another. This truly shows how characters can change throughout the course of a work of literature and how other characters play a big part in certain character’s development. So my question for you is as follows. What do you think of Kate now? Do you think she would now be a worthy person to marry after she has been married to Petruchio for this short amount of time? It would just be super if you told me.

Well, since I have already taken the liberty do describe one sister’s changes throughout the play I might as well describe the other sister’s development through the course of the play. Well at first we had seen Bianca as this naive girl who had everything she wanted, money, a hooked up family, and of course, guys galore (jk). Then we see that she starts to get angrier as her sister still has yet to find someone suitable and then decides to fall for Lucentio after Kate has been married to Petruchio. This is interesting because out of all of the guys that she could have she chooses the guy who was creepy enough to pretend to be a tutor just to get inside of her house to meet her. Then as we see that at the very end of the story that when the men make bets on who will come first, and astonishingly Kate wins. So my belief is that Bianca was only needed to help extentuate the changes that Kate went through throughout the story. So my question for you is as follows. Do you think that Bianca will turn into what Kate once was because Kate had turned into what Bianca once was? Or, do you think that maybe Bianca may turn out to be a real “w”itch? You can tell me now that my blog is over.

So I would first off like to thank everyone in advance for commenting on my blog, as I always do, then I would like to restate my previous fact that it’s great that we all survived Mr. Shank’s class this year. Now all we have to look forward to is Mrs. Cipher next year. woohoo (unexitedly).