I took a wild chance this semester and enrolled in a Shakespeare class, the only one I hadn't taken in our English Department so far; but I wanted to take Shakespeare more than the odds against it. The odds were that the professor would be the same one I had for Chaucer. I loved Chaucer! I also greatly admired the professor and felt he had incredible knowledge and skill. However, there was a weird aspect to the class. Every time I turned in a research paper, it was like facing a lobotomy. My papers were almost failed. I thought it must be something I could learn from, but it was not always productive criticism. In other classes I always get an A or occasionally a B at the least on my research papers. There seemed to be more going on than I can explain.
This semester, I decided to go ahead and take Shakespeare's Major Plays hoping things might go better. The professor taught very well and I enjoyed the class very much. Twenty Shakespeare plays in a semester is like getting to eat a whole box of chocolates in one sitting! I made good grades all through the semester as previously in Chaucer. The professor even read one of my papers to the class as an example of what he wanted in a paper. I wrote on the female imagery in Henry IV. There are only three women to speak of in the play, as well as some female imagery, so it caught my attention and he said it was different than anything he had read on the subject before. The two research papers, however were another matter.
I was reading Hamlet at the same time as I was having to consider possible treatments of cancer therapy, (different hormone therapy, possible radiation therapy, etc.) all of which are types of poisons. So when I read Hamlet, the poison theme jumped out at me. I always tend to get into the skin of the characters, so I decided to write the first research paper on the poisons in Hamlet. My thesis was that there are some obvious references to poison in Hamlet, but that the theme of poison permeates the play in many subtle ways. I covered each of the types of poison that were present in the play chronologically. I enjoyed researching for and writing the paper, which was only about 23 pages.
When I got it back, "SEE ME" was written across the top of the paper. The paper was thrashed with ink lines, crossed out sections, and remarks, most of which were illegible. We met and discussed the paper. He said I would need to write a completely different research paper, which he also required most of the rest of the class to do (which also happened in Chaucer). Some could revise their paper, but most had to totally do something new. After a week or more, I was told I wouldn't have to re-write it, but to recognize the problems we discussed. For example, he suggested that some information should have been considered footnotes (agreed), some information he didn't see as relevant to the subject (okay, but debatable), and there was a difference in opinion about the focus of the paper (opinion). Some of the criticism was helpful, some seemed irrational, such as, "what does a Mountebank have to do with poison in Hamlet?" (See Hamlet: IV.7)
By this time, the second research paper was coming due, as well as the second research paper in my second class, The Bible as Literature, as well as preparing for two finals. I was then reading The Tempest. My professor recommended that I write about the Tempest. I agreed, so I began researching different aspects of the play to write about. It seemed like each idea I had was already covered thoroughly by someone else in critical essays. I could have tried to disagree with one of them, but so far I hadn't found anything significant to argue. In the essay by Harry Berger, Jr.'s Miraculous Harp: A Reading of Shakespeare's Tempest, Berger raised some questions that had also interested me, so I used that as an approach for my paper. I didn't write my paper in response to the entire essay, which is what my professor might have expected. I wrote about the questions he raised that I hadn't seen other people write about and which he didn't answer.
I don't know why, but the idea of Carthage and the "Dido Problem" fascinated me. Prospero's external problem of his lost and regained domain and his way of handling it, issues about royal authority and political domain, was the theme I focused on. I used the calculus formula, known as the isoperimetric problem, or "Dido Problem" as an example of the method for establishing domain used by Dido when she went into exile and established Carthage/Tunis. At this point, I knew it would be taking the risk of sounding ridiculous. But I decided to write it as it was unfolding in connection to the island. I also made a connection with Adrian in The Tempest (who has no lines in the play besides Act 2, scene 1), and Don Adriano De Armado in Love's Labor's Lost. The significant lines were, "Thus dost thou hear the Nemean lion roar..." (LLL, IV. 1.1063-1068), and how that echoed the overarching theme of Ariel, and that there is a ruler in heaven that all kings are subject to. The Nemean lion, when slain by Herakles, became the constellation Leo, which is Ariel in Hebrew, and Ariel was the name of the spirit Prospero used to carry out his plans.
I also quoted, Miranda: "What foul play had we that we came from thence?
or blessed was't we did?
Prospero: Both, both, my girl.
By foul play, as thou sayst, were we heaved thence,
But blessedly holped hither" (1.2.60-64).
I argued that Shakespeare encourages us to study the text and subtext when he writes in a quote from Hamlet: "There's matter in these sighs, these profound heaves. / You must translate: 'tis fit we understand them'."
For my research paper in my second class, The Bible as Literature, I wrote about the Jewish Feast of the 15th of Av, and received an A+. The research paper in Shakespeare on The Tempest, a C-. It may have seemed ridiculous to a professor from Yale, but at least it wasn't boring. So my A in his class was dropped to a B due to my two research papers. But I made it through and it was worth it: I was both "foully heaved thence" and "blessedly holped hither." A "B" for the beauty of imperfection.
