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Shakespeare Final Study Guide

 

The final exam will be in two parts. For the first part, you will fill out a scantron, recording your responses on the scantron sheet. This section will include the multiple choice questions and the IDs, which this time will offer you options to select from. This portion will be highly familiar. The IDs and multiple choice will be drawn from the class notes on Shaxverse.com.

 

Part One (on scantron):

 

Multiple Choice (20 points).

 

Ten IDs, worth 4 points total (40 points).

 

This time you must complete all the IDs. You will not be allowed to use your laptops during the first part, but must turn in your scantrons before moving to the second half of the exam.

 

Part Two (on laptop, submitted to Sakai):

 

The second portion of the final will include two short essays. This time, however, I’m asking that you upload them electronically.

 

For the second part, you will upload your two short essays as a single document onto the Dropbox on our Sakai. You will go to Sakai, and on the left-hand side select Dropbox. From there you will upload your final short essay responses. These must be uploaded only during the final, not before or after.

 

2 Short Essays, worth 20 points each (40 points). Please make sure you have a thesis and quote from the text. You may once again bring in a notecard, but I ask that you practice the honor code by not referring to additional notes online.

 

Essay Topics:

 

  1. Design a lesson-plan outline for one of the plays we have read this semester. In your lesson plan, you will describe what approach you would take to the play, what your thesis for the play would be that you would present to the class, and discuss three particular moments that you would cover in the lesson (quoting, at least once or twice, directly from the play).

  2. What use is Shakespeare in our modern day? What’s the value of reading Shakespeare? Using one or two plays, discuss how Shakespeare might help us understand our contemporary moment or speak to a wider audience today. Bring in one or two moments from a play that have relevance for us today. I encourage you to think globally or via multiple identity perspectives for this response.

  3. What question(s) do Shakespeare’s plays leave unanswered? That is, what is one particular topic or larger issue that you feel that Shakespeare approaches but never fully provides an answer/decision on?

  4. Pick one emotion to discuss in two of Shakespeare’s plays, comparing how the emotion operates in the separate plays. Possible emotions to cover would be anger, ecstasy, despair, or remorse.

  5. Discuss metatheatricality in Shakespeare’s works, or the idea that the theater is continually commenting upon its own artfulness and artificiality. What is the difference between art and nature when connected with this idea of the theater?

  6. Discuss the vexed relationship between the public and the private self in one or two of Shakespeare’s plays. This particular question might be useful to address through two different genres of plays. What are the duties of the public self? What can the public individual not say? How does the theater show us the inner workings of an individual?

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