Please take out your sonnets and response papers. Does anyone want to read their sonnet for the class for two points extra credit? 1/25 – “Do Now”

Goals To understand the purpose of role-playing To use our role-playing today to help us prepare for some of the themes in Othello To understand important background information about Shakespeare and the play in order to help us prepare to study it

Agenda Role play (15) Intro to Othello – notes on tragedy; Shakespeare; unit ques.; major assignments (30 min) Pass out Othello Act I. Review how to read Shakespeare. (20)

Role Playing Today we are going to do some acting. I am going to need six student actors. If you want to participate quietly raise your hand.

ROLE-PLAYING (5 minutes prep) Role-Play can help us “get into the mindset” of a situation we are looking at and see different outcomes Our Role-Play today will deal with jealousy and deceit Six volunteers (3 groups of 2) You will each get a slip of paper with a role on it Groups will come up and perform a scene using the prompts given

All three scenes deal with the state of fidelity between two people involved in a relationship. AUDIENCE – What do you notice? What is going on? What didn’t you see (what can we learn from what was omitted or absent)? Overall thoughts…?

Prompt 1 Two men are talking The “boyfriend” has a girlfriend The “friend” tries to plant seeds of doubt in the boyfriend about the girlfriend’s loyalty without actually suggesting she’s cheating

Prompt 2 Two men are talking The friend tries to convince the boyfriend that his girlfriend is interested in another man

Prompt 3 A confrontation between the boyfriend and his girlfriend He believes she is unfaithful but he’s angry and won’t say why She is innocent and doesn’t understand his anger

Debrief What did we notice? What didn’t we see (what can we learn from what was omitted or absent)? Overall thoughts…?

KWL Fill in the Want to Know parts of your KWL with any information about William Shakespeare or the play Othello!

WANT TO KNOW: William Shakespeare

WANT TO KNOW: Othello

Unit Throughlines Insider/Outsider What does it mean to be an insider? An outsider? Who is an insider or an outsider in this Venetian culture? Betrayal Where do we see betrayal in the play? How does it affect the events and the characters? Jealousy Which characters are jealous and why? What causes it? What does it lead people to do? Is it possible to avoid it?

LEARNED April 23, 1564 – April 23, 1616 in Stratford-upon-Avon, England married Anne Hathaway and had kids moved to London – became actor & playwright (Globe Theatre) wrote ~ 38 plays, 154 sonnets, other poems  tragedies (end in death), comedies (end in marriage), romances (end ambiguously – written later in life), “lost plays,” histories (about lineage of current queen Elizabeth I – patron of Shakespeare – painted her ancestral family in positive light) all ages/classes loved theatre – poor peasants couldn’t read – it was like their “soap operas” or TV many wealthy businessmen & city leaders didn’t like theatre – took time away from peasants working & lost them money, helped to spread disease, was an “immoral” career (only men could act, no women) plays performed in day (no electricity), few sets/scenery (had to pretend, “paint background” with words), costumes donated from rich company would learn a whole play in a week, perform it, then learn another (not only Shakespeare’s plays but other playwrights as well, such as Ben Johnson and Christopher Marlowe)

Want a little more? Othello is one of Shakespeare’s great tragedies. So… WHAT IS A TRAGEDY?

Reading Shakespeare Shakespeare did in fact write in Modern English. Shakespeare wrote in Modern English (our English), only used poetic words, phrases, and syntax (order of words) – which is why at times his writing can be difficult to understand. But, let’s look at some of the phrases I have given you ahead of time to make your reading more enjoyable.

Translate Shakespeare – Modern English Despise me/If I do not. Three great ones of the city,/In personal suit to make me his lieutenant/…/Evades them with a bombast circumstance (I.i.8-14) Our English IAct 1 iScene Lines 8 through 14

TONIGHT’S HOMEWORK Finish reading Act I.i. Please annotate as you read. You should have at least two annotations per page. Read and annotate the essay, “A Cultural Context for Othello.”