Shakespeare’s Scottish play

See Macbeth live this summer

If any of you are expecting to study or teach Macbeth for A Level, then there is nothing to beat seeing a live production for a fresh perspective on the play. And there are some interesting ones to catch:

• Until this weekend there is as authentic a version as you are likely to get at Shakespeare’s Globe www.shakespeares-globe.org
• The Pantaloons Theatre Company’s national tour is taking the play beyond the confines of the regular theatre circuit around East Anglia and central England in July, before heading north in August www.thepantaloons.co.uk
• An open air production is being staged by the Regent’s Park Company at their Open Air Theatre, London, from 3 – 24 July http://openairtheatre.org
• In Guildford Castle, an unusual promenade performance of the tragedy runs from the 9th – 17th July by The Pranksters Theatre Company www.pranksterstheatre.org.uk
• For a more erudite take on the drama, The Shakespeare Institute Players are performing in Stratford from 8 – 10 July. www.shakespeareinstituteplayers.co.uk

Digging around the original

Of particular interest to A Level English and/or Theatre Studies groups are upcoming adaptations which explore the characters from a slightly different angle:

• Mastering Macbeth explores key scenes in terms of character, language, theme and theatrical technique at the Salisbury Playhouse, 9th-11th November www.salisburyplayhouse.com
• A Season before the Tragedy of Macbeth is at the Camden People's Theatre, 4-8 August and offers a groundbreaking new perspective on Macbeth and Lady Macbeth and the tragedy that befalls them. www.facsimileproductions.co.uk

Essential backup

Of course any advanced study of Macbeth is going to require some in depth exploration of the world Shakespeare was writing for. Launched this week, at Crossref-it.info, a handy guide tailored to the play takes you to all the most helpful sections of the website. Look out for Macbeth: Context links. Either before going to see a production, or when you come to investigate it later, this one stop resource will really help you to understand the zeitgeist the bard was tapping into.

Literature help over the next few months

Just like fashion magazines, who prepare their Christmas issues in the summer and do swimsuit spreads in November, so here at Crossref-it.info we are preparing materials which won’t hit your screens for a while. But we thought it might help to know what’s in the pipeline, so that you can see what will be available when you come to learn, revise, or teach texts in your chosen syllabus.

Comprehensive text guides

In the next 12 months there will be new text guides on these works, set by the following exam boards:

• Summer 2010: Selected poems of Christina Rossetti (AQA, OCR)
• Autumn 2010: Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rys (AQA, Edexcel, OCR)
• Winter 2010/11: The Wife of Bath’s Prologue & Tale, by Geoffrey Chaucer (AQA, Cambs. Pre U., Edexcel)
• Spring 2011: The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Attwood (AQA, Edexcel)
• Summer 2011: Persuasion, by Jane Austen (Cambs. Pre U., OCR)

Quick context guides

If you can’t wait that long, we are soon to produce some ‘quick links’ pages, showing you where you can find helpful contextual material, relevant to selected texts. Currently under development, these include:

• Hard Times, by Charles Dickens (AQA, CIE)
• The Return of the Native, by Thomas Hardy (Cambs. Pre U.)
• Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë (AQA, Edexcel, OCR)
• The Mayor of Casterbridge, by Thomas Hardy (CIE)
• Selected poems of Thomas Hardy (AQA, CIE, Edexcel)
• Selected poems of Coleridge, Keats, Wordsworth (AQA, CIE, OCR)
• Selected poems of the Brontës (AQA)

Your suggestions?

Alongside all of the above, articles on different aspects of context and literature keep being added to Crossref-it.info.

If you have got suggestions of works or aspects of literature that you would like to see featured on the site, please email us at admin@crossref-it.info.

We want to do whatever helps you!

Something out of nothing?

Where does literature ‘come from’? One of the requirements of the English A Level specifications is that students can:

‘Demonstrate understanding of the significance and influence of the contexts in which literary texts were written and received’ (AO4).

Signs of the times

Everything an author creates cannot help but reflect the nature of its creator and the times in which it was composed. Last week, just in time for these final weeks of revision a new web guide to Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus went live at Crossref-it.info.

Dr Faustus is a play which interestingly straddles the interconnection of the Medieval and the Renaissance minds, both in terms of its subject matter, its worldview and its theatrical heritage.

So, what were the ‘times’ against which we should view the play? It is interesting to see what was going on during the life of its creator.

1564 – a significant year

For example, did you know that 1564, the year Marlowe was born, also saw:

• The arrival of Italian scientist Galileo and dramatist Shakespeare
• The death of religious reformer John Calvin and artist Michelangelo?

When Marlowe was eight (1572), poets John Donne and Ben Johnson were born, and he was twelve (1576) when the first permanent theatre was built in London by James Burbage. On the international front, explorer Francis Drake set off to sail around the world the following year (1577) returning in 1581 and the first English colony was established in Virginia by Walter Raleigh when Marlowe was twenty (1584).

Tension throughout England

Marlowe was only seventeen (1581) when he became a spy for England’s secret service at a time of high political tension. There were plots to put the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots on the English throne instead of Protestant Elizabeth I, which came to a head when Mary was tried for treason in 1586. Marlowe was just 22, writing his first play, Dido, Queen of Carthage.

Elizabeth’s execution of Mary the following year (1587) sent shock waves through Europe – it was the year that Marlowe wrote Tamburlaine the Great, aged 23, while Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy was also performed.

Catholic retaliation against Protestant England came in the shape of the mighty Spanish Armada, which attacked the coast in 1588 and was memorably defeated. Alert to the threat of invasion, with warning beacons ringing the kingdom, the possible doom of such a small country cannot have escaped influencing Marlowe as, aged 24, he produced Dr Faustus that year.

Literary developments

Within the next three years (by the end of 1591), Edmund Spenser had published the initial sections of The Faerie Queene, Philip Sidney’s petrachan sonnet sequence Astroplil and Stella appeared and Shakespeare’s early plays such as Titus Andronicus, The Comedy of Errors and Richard III were being performed. Marlowe himself was busy, getting imprisoned for a street fight and writing The Jew of Malta, all before he was 27.

Drama and facts

To get a sense of the tumultuous times which Dr Faustus reflects, why not take time out to watch Elizabeth: The Golden Age (with Cate Blanchett). This dramatises (though with a degree of licence) the world in which Marlowe operated.

For the more accurate information which A Level teachers know you need, go to www.crossref-it.info where you will find detailed commentary on the text as well as the background. Literature never emerges ‘out of nothing’.

New A Level Dr Faustus resources

Launched this week at Crossref-it.info is the long anticipated guide on one of the texts being examined this summer, Dr Faustus.

By its very subject matter (a man selling his soul to the devil in return for 24 years of unlimited wealth and power) Dr Faustus is a text steeped in religious language, which can be daunting to the uninitiated. Where many resources fear to tread, Crossref-it.info jumps right in and provides clear, easy to understand explanations of these terms and ideas. If you chose it can take you to the background refs without you having to turn a page!

Whether you are exploring the A Text or B Text, the new guide tells you everything you need to know about the demonic Doctor, such as:

• The development of the Faust legend through the centuries
• Scene synopses and commentary
• Characterisation
• Theatrical, social and religious background
• Themes, imagery and symbolism
• Critical interpretations of the text

As usual with Crossref-it.info materials, this is backed up by:

• An interactive timeline
• Guidance on how to do well with essays and exams
• Zillions of pop-ups providing literary and cultural definitions, including classical and biblical references.

Coming soon – something for the teachers

To help classes explore key topics (before exams swamp the timetable), there are free, downloadable, teachers' ideas sheets. Look out for them in May!

Time to get serious

Ready for action

The summer term has started, and hopefully all the long AS /A2 Lit. assignments are safely handed in and out of the way. The weather has cheered up and everyone should be refreshed by the Easter break and ready for the intensity of the coming weeks.

For A Level English Lit. students now is the season of going back over texts studied earlier in the year. It is the time when you start to look at your notes and get a sight of how all the pieces fit together into a bigger picture…

Let down by your notes?

Unless, of course, you find yourself faced with pages of skimpy headings, half caught sentences or missing conclusions (but amazing doodles!) and you can’t actually make head nor tail of what they are referring to. We all have days when brain function isn’t sharp (obviously nothing to do with an active social life..) but now is not the time to panic.

Solutions

Ask nicely

Generally teachers really go the extra mile at this time of the year to help students. If you ask very nicely they are often willing to run additional revision sessions based on tricky texts or areas of concern. They know what the syllabus is asking for and are your first port of call.

Check out the web

Revision resources on the web are another useful tool, but do check that they actually cover the kind of areas that will be expected in your exam answers. Many sites (e.g. Sparknotes) are written for the American market, which covers a broader range of literature but in much less depth. Chapter synopses and one paragraph per character can only get you so far..

In greater depth are e-notes and York notes Advanced online – but you have to pay to access most of the material. The S-cool revision site asks some really helpful questions, and is free, but doesn’t provide detail on the texts.

Free, detailed, with helpful questions

Examiners know what students need to address as they get ready for external assessment, so there is logic in looking at a free access site they have had a hand in developing. Many of you already know that Crossref-it.info material is peppered with ‘Investigate’ boxes. If you are now needing to go back and plug the gaps in you’re A Level notes, why not use the questions posed as ‘prompts’ about what you need to cover?

Teaching Blake and pushed for time?

Happy holidays!

I hope the current Easter holidays are providing a great break for you (and not just ‘time for illness’)! Wonderful weather would be a real bonus, but this year it seems too much to hope for…

Time to assess

Within the Easter holidays there is always that scary point as an A Level English teacher when you review the work you have covered so far and realise just how much there is still to fit in. This past term has doubtless had its fair share of staff illness and school closure, which may have thrown your carefully structured lesson plan off course.

So now an element of (controlled) panic may start to assail you. Perhaps a text still isn’t properly covered - and then there are all the revision sessions to fit it, particularly on those texts which you weren’t confident the class really ‘got’ first time around.

Ready made and reliable

Whether you are getting your students ready for AS levels or A2s, you don’t want anxiety to rob you of the remaining days of your holiday. Yes, time is now of the essence, but there are some easy shortcuts you can use.

The recently launched Crossref-it.info guide on Songs of Innocence and Experience is full of information you can send your students to for research. It has the usual interactive timeline, contextual info and clear textual analyses.

Even better, it is now accompanied by a variety of teachers’ worksheets. Devised by the English HOD of a successful state school, each provides three to five lessons’ worth of different approaches to the poems, so that you can make them accessible for the weakest to the brightest of your students.

Check them out on Crossref-it.info then you have got one less thing to worry about…

Songs of Innocence and Experience - new text guide!

Sorry for a delay in the usual missives. It has been ‘heads down’ time as we get as much ready as possible, to help you do as well as possible, in the forthcoming unmentionables (duh.. exams!).

Poetry help

If you are trying to get to grips with how to identify different styles of poetry – a skill you need for any unseen lit. paper – try checking out the expanding range of articles at www.crossref-it.info > Aspects of literature > Recognising poetic form. In around 300 words each they provide a helpful introduction to some of the standard styles poets have worked within, or adapted to suit their needs.

Songs of Innocence and Experience

Many students will be answering on Blake this summer. Deceptively simple in tone and diction, they actually encompass a range of quite complex themes and ideas. Blake was idiosyncratic in his take on contemporary society, what made humans tick and his understanding of God and faith.

Conventional allusions

It’s not always easy getting to grips with the way poets have drawn on texts like the Bible to convey meaning to their readers. However, over the centuries, and in the face of conventional church teaching, a standard interpretation has arisen. This means that if a writer refers to a shepherd for example, you can be confident that s/he is expecting readers to think of:

• Caring leadership
• Practical concern
• Wise guidance
• Sacrificial love
• The call for sheep to follow

All of the above, linked to the person of Jesus, whom the Bible portrays as a ‘good shepherd’.

An unconventional understanding

Grappling with allusions like these gets trickier when the poet doesn’t use such images conventionally. This is often the case with Blake:

• The Shepherd represents a leader who is alongside, but does not rule his flock
• His care does not repress or direct the sheep but enables them to live fully as sheep
• He is full of praise for them rather than demanding obedience from them
• In fact Blake saw any idea of religious authority as the opposite to his understanding of God, even though it was a consistent theme in the Bible.

The new Crossref-it.info text guide on Songs of Innocence and Experience unpacks each poem without assuming that students know all the background that Blake was referring to. It helps readers see where Blake was in line with his society and where he developed his own unique vision.

If you are starting to revise there are lots of handy questions to focus your notes on, as well as sample essay questions and a worked example.

Meanwhile, best of luck as you get down to the serious stuff!