Shakespeare and School

So I haven’t actually finished To Kill a Mockingbird yet, because I’ve been so crazy busy with stuff for school. I’m about 3/4 of the way through it, and it really is a fantastic book so far. I’ll let you know more about it when I finish it.

I have, however, finished reading Hamlet for my Intro to Literary Analysis class. I haven’t actually read Hamlet before, so I was pretty excited to read it. I know, that makes me sound like a dork, but hey, I’m an English major. I get excited about stuff like Shakespeare. Speaking of Shakespeare, there’s a study abroad program that I want to do this summer, and one of the classes you can take is a Shakespeare class where you take a field trip to the Globe Theater. How cool would that be? I think it’d be awesome. If everything works out and I end up going to England, I am definitely going to take this class. 🙂

Anyway, back to Hamlet. While reading this play was enjoyable, I really wish that I could see it on the stage. Plays aren’t meant to be read, they’re meant to be seen, and I think I’d get so much more out of it if I actually saw it acted out. I wouldn’t say that Hamlet is my favorite Shakespeare play. Romeo and Juliet still has that spot. I don’t know why I love that play so much, I just do. Maybe it was the way that my English teacher, Ms. Kilpatrick, taught us about it in class. I don’t know. But it still holds the spot as my favorite Shakespeare play. Othello may follow in second, just because I think Shakespeare created a brilliant character in Iago. Entirely evil, but brilliant. And his whole reversal of black and white for good and evil…Shakespeare was a brilliant writer (granted he was the one that wrote everything…but that’s a debate for another day).

Hamlet, yes. I keep getting off topic. I have to write about paper about it, and we basically just have to choose an element to analyze. I’m not sure what I’m going to do it on. That’s all we talked about in class today, and I feel like if I take one of those ideas, someone else might write about the same thing. I was thinking about analyzing the relationship between Ophelia and Hamlet, and whether or not there was love there or not. Could make for an interesting essay. I’m just not sure if I’d be able to find enough to write 4 pages on. Well…I probably could. I’m pretty good at stretching out points that need to be longer.

I can’t make any promises as to when I’ll be done with To Kill a Mockingbird. I’m kind of hoping for the end of this week, but that all depends on how much work I receive between now and then. Silly school, getting in the way of my leisurely reading. Too much required reading to read what I want to. What a shame.