Discussion questions (week 3)

[Apologies if you saw a couple of questions up here earlier--for a few hours on Tuesday I had in mind a different approach to tomorrow's discussion.]

In discussion this week we will focus wholly on MSND since we will get to spend next two discussions talking exclusively about the sonnets.

1. How do events in act V mirror events from the first four acts? Compare one event in act V with an event that it seems to mirror from earlier in MSND. As your "event," you might want to use the speech about which you are writing your mini-essay.

   List what these events have in common and list, also, the ways in which these events differ. Although this is fundamentally a question about structure, think also about word use and staging: how does Shakespeare change the meaning of a word or of an idea from an earlier act to act V? (This is just a new version of the third discussion question from last week.)

2. On Tuesday, Heather suggested that the play within the play at the end of MSND served to fully reverse the tragic momentum of act I. List three more reasons the play within the play might be at the end of MSND. You might want to think in terms of politics, social class, and/or the purpose of art.

3. We should spend the last twenty minutes of discussion addressing your own questions about MSND. Come in with a question about the text, or a problem that you can't resolve -- a scene, character, idea, or conclusion that doesn't make any sense.