Shakespeare Questions: An Outline for the Study of the Leading Plays

Odell Shepard

Jan 1916 · General Books

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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: JULIUS CSAR GENERAL QUESTIONS 1. To show the simplicity of the plot material, outline the action in one hundred words or less. 2. Give reasons for the play's comparative poverty in subtle analysis of character and motive and in poetic beauty. What is the influence, in this respect, of the . nobly simple, austere, and somewhat stiff personality of Brutus ? If Antony had been allowed to dominate and determine the tone of the play, how would the play have differed in effect ? It would not be entirely misleading to compare, in this connection, the wonderfully rich and various Antony and Cleopatra. Coriolanus also has a voluminous majesty and a sumptuous splendor which forbids the assertion that the simplicity of Julius Ccesar is due to the poet's estimate of the Roman type of mind. 3. What powers of the poet's mind are scarcely brought into play in this drama ? What powers are clearly in evidence ? ' 4. Try to define the exact nature of the pleasure you take 'in this play. Is it at all like the pleasure you take in any of the great tragedies or in any of the comedies ? ' ''' 5. Why is this play especially suited to the comprehen- /; sion of children and to the elementary type of mind among adults ? (This must not, of course, be understood to imply condemnation, unless we wish to include in that condemnation almost the entire tragic theater of the ancient world.) What scenes do you leave out of consideration in your answers to this and to the three preceding questions ? 6. Would you say that in this play the poet's powers of expression are in advance of his thought or thatjjiejr lag-Jbehind his thought? Or are thought and expression in a nearly perfect equipoise ? Select several passages in illustration. Compare A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest in this ...