Dark Comedy

Dark Comedy

Painful laughter

If you are a fan of shows like Little Britain you’ll be familiar with the fact that, amongst sublimely funny situations of punctured pride and physical slapstick, lurk darker elements that make us laugh. The Fat Club sketches are essentially about bullying and racism, the W.I. ladies are grotesque snobs, the breast-feeding adult is disturbing.

Twelfth Night

Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is defined as a comedy and regularly performed today. It includes the comic pathos in Sir Andrew Aguecheek’s aspirations to valour, the broad comedy of mistaken identities, the witty repartee of Maria etc. But in the taunting of Malvolio, and the perpetrators’ obvious enjoyment of his torture, we encounter that darker seam of what makes people laugh.

How Shakespeare’s audience understood the play

Through the antagonism between Sir Toby Belch and Malvolio on stage, Shakespeare was reflecting a cultural sea change. Elements of society, influenced by extreme reformed Protestantism in Europe and Scotland, were challenging the laissé-faire attitudes of the nobility and established church in England.

Malvolio represents the aspiring middle classes who wanted their own share of social influence and prestige – a share that others were reluctant to allow. It was a conflict that would ultimately erupt in the mid seventeenth century with the English Civil War.

Helpful links

You don’t need to know all this to enjoy the comic plot, but if you end up studying Twelfth Night for A Level, marks are awarded for your understanding of how the play was originally received and understood. The newly launched Context links: Twelfth Night will fill you in with all you need to know if you visit Crossref-it.info.

If you can get to see the forthcoming production of the play, part of the Cambridge Shakespeare Festival, at Robinson College Gardens, 2-28 August (www.cambridgeshakespeare.com), even better!

Passionate Poetry

Passionate poetry

Reading poetry requires some mental space. We need to be able to resist the demands of a hectic lifestyle and allow the words to penetrate our minds and hearts. So what better time to pick up a volume during the less pressured days of the summer holidays!

The brevity of much poetry means that we encounter ideas and emotions distilled into their purest form. It is powerful stuff, particularly when it speaks of the strongest human feelings.

The poetry of the Brontës

The Brontë sisters are famous for their vivid and tumultuous novels, such as The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. But many of the themes and passions we come across in these stories exist in condensed form in the sisters’ surviving poems. It is hard to read, for example, Cold In The Earth and not think of Cathy’s love for Heathcliff which endures beyond the grave.

Another level of interest is added when we find out about the actual lives and loves of the three sisters, and see how they translated the stuff of their daily environment into these moving poems. An ideal way of discovering what they knew and what motivated the Brontës is launched this week at Crossref-it.info. Go to Context links: Selected poetry of the Brontës.

But best of all, find a quiet place on a lazy summer’s day and read these distillations of passion for yourself!

Chaucer for today

Chaucer for today

The General Prologue and The Nun's Priest's Tale

Sections of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales frequently feature on A Level syllabuses. The Tales and the descriptions of their tellers are funny and inventive, particularly coming to life when read aloud as they were originally intended. Because Chaucer was portraying the jobs and personality types familiar to his medieval hearers it helps to get a window into the world that they knew.

• How much of a say did women have in that society?
• Why were people in the Middle Ages so fussed about death and judgement?
• Why did they accept that some were superior to because of their birth?
• Why was the Church so influential in people’s day to day lives?

Quick solutions to the questions

The latest helpful student resources from Crossref-it.info this week are focused on The General Prologue and The Nun's Priest's Tale and link you to all the most helpful sections of the website. If you are studying or teaching either work look out for:

Context links: The General Prologue

Context links: The Nun's Priest's Tale

The pointlessness of tragedy

The pointlessness of tragedy

Productions of Othello

Whenever I see Shakespeare’s Othello I am always struck by how such trivial incidents – like the dropping of a hanky, the repetition of apparently innocent phrases – can result in such a momentous downfall of the protagonist and those around him. Played well, it can be almost unbearable to watch.

Yet there is an appeal to this agony, which is why the play endures and takes new generations of theatre go-ers down its tortuous paths. It is never performed as regularly as Hamlet or King Lear for example, so, if you are studying Othello in the coming year do watch out for these productions:

• Currently running until 21 August is a (semi) open air performance by Stamford Shakespeare at the Rutland Open Air Theatre, Tolethorpe Hall, Stamford, 15 June – 21 August (01780 756 133 / 763 203). www.stamfordshakespeare.co.uk
• An interesting adaptation of the Othello story is being done by the Veni Vidi Theatre Company at Lauderdale House, London, between the 10 – 13 August (020 8348 8716).

Getting a fix on the play

Unlike some of Shakespeare’s other plays, which can exist within a world of their own, Othello is set in a specific political situation. Racial and class resentment festers amidst the fears and upheaval generated by armed conflict.

To help you understand this world, Crossref-it.info has this week launched a handy guide tailored to the play, which takes you to all the most helpful sections of the website. Look out for Context links: Othello. If you find yourself studying the play in the coming academic year, this one stop resource will really help you to understand the reactions Shakespeare’s original audience might have had to the tragedy.

The Tempest

See The Tempest live this summer

If any of you are expecting to study or teach Shakespeare’s last great Romance for A

Level, then there is nothing to beat seeing a live production for a fresh perspective on

the play. The magical nature of the play inspires directors in all sorts of ways:

> The Lord Chamberlain's Men are doing a national tour into all sorts of unsual theatrical spaces until the 22nd August. Visit www.tlcm.co.uk for details

> Also performing around Britain until 5th September is a production mounted by The Festival Players. www.thefestivalplayers.co.uk

> For highbrow quality, the The Old Vic production, directed by Sam Mendes should be unmissable at the Old Vic Theatre, London, until 31st August www.oldvictheatre.com

> Regional companies are exploring the drama, with the Guildford Shakespeare Company performing at the University of Surrey Lake, 22 July - 7 August www.guildford-shakespeare-company.co.uk and the Oxford Shakespeare Company staging it at Hampton Court Palace, from 21 – 30 August www.osctheatre.org.uk

Making sense of the play

A Level students tend to enjoy a quirky take on serious dramas, so the ‘B Movie’ adaptation of Shakespeare’s plot makes a great comparison piece. Catch Return to the Forbidden Planet at Morley Town Hall, 22 – 25 September (07960 766 334).

Of course any advanced study of The Tempest is going to require some in depth exploration of the Shakespeare and the Romance genre. 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 Context links: The Tempest. 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 pastoral world Shakespeare conjures on-stage.

A Level reading in the holidays

Recent blogs have encouraged subscribers to tackle some of the larger texts you will be studying for the coming year, particularly any long Victorian novels, during the lazy days of the summer holidays.

Reading for yourself, but not on your own

Ideally this means that you:

• Develop a personal response
• Get a sense of what the story is about
• Engage with the characters and their situation
• Start to have a feel for the author’s perspective
• Enjoy the text!

However, a first reading will probably throw up all sorts of questions in your mind. Although term hasn’t yet started, you might like to find some immediate answers.
What to do? No-one's around, and the notes in the back of your text are too short or confusing. That's where Crossref-it.info can come in useful. You are not on your own.

Making sense of Victorian novels

At Crossref-it.info, you can click on any specific chapter of three significant Victorian novels to get a summary, an explanation of difficult words, and some pointers as to what the author is doing. If you want to switch over to read the actual text on-line in a new screen, go to texts.crossref-it.info, then you can flip between that and the explanations.

Or you can find out some biographical information about Dickens, Charlotte (and Emily) Brontë or Thomas Hardy themselves. How did each of them come to write their novels? Where in England did they set them, and why? Over the summer, four more texts by these authors are being covered by Crossref-it.info. Launched this week are helpful compilations of material relevant to two more Hardy novels: Context links: The Mayor of Casterbridge and Context links: The Return of the Native.

To get a picture of the times in which they were writing, there is a huge array of background material on the Victorian era. We are no longer familiar with things that these authors took for granted when they were writing, but a handy on-screen explanation can quickly halt confusion.

There is no substitute for reading at A Level, but for everything else, there is Crossref-it.info. It's been designed with you in mind.

Reading novels for A Level: Tess of the d’Urbervilles

Over the summer, students have a great chance to get to grips with the texts they will be examined on the following year. Make the most of it and read for pleasure! Spend indulgent hours with the longer novels (which are harder to fit in later) and be honest about your initial response.

Tess and first impressions

It's difficult not to have strong initial reactions if you are reading Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles as your Victorian novel (appearing on the AQA and OCR papers). It is a tremendous and passionate story, so let yourself be drawn in.

Many of Hardy's descriptions are very cinematographic, but one of the pleasures of reading is using your imagination to create his descriptions in your mind, and then sense the emotions that come with those pictures. They're your emotions, and they form part of your first impressions.

Imagine it for yourself

Although there are several good adaptations of the novel, it is the words on the page that make the difference. However tempting, don't substitute a DVD for your first encounter with the story. A film controls too many of your responses, and maybe edits out some of the parts you will enjoy most when you read it.

Besides, you need some hours to get acquainted with Tess herself. After all, she is one of English Literature's most iconic heroines. If you find things which puzzle you, there is a discussion of Hardy’s heroine at Crossref-it.info, - but don’t look at this until you have read her story for yourself!

Hardy’s poetry

Tess’s figure of a sensuous woman and the theme of missed opportunities recurred in much of Hardy’s poetry, which also appears on the A Level syllabus. For a way into the mind of the poems’ creator, a new mini guide links you to Hardy and his world. Find it at Crossref-it.info > Context links: Selected poetry of Thomas Hardy.