Activity 2

Thank you all for your insightful and meaningful comments on our first activity. We were all able to see how language can significantly alter a text's meaning, whether it be for an audience, or for many other reasons. Today's activity steers away from films and takes a look at playful ways in which Shakespearian language has been altered to fit different purposes. Below are two writing samples. The first provides a playful look at Shakespearian language through the eyes of a house cat. The other through the eyes of a slacker student.

Please read each selection and comment upon the language and the role of audience and humor in these two selections.

Hamlet's Cat's Soliloquy
by William Shakespeare's Cat

To go outside, and there perchance to stay
Or to remain within: that is the question:
Whether 'tis better for a cat to suffer
The cuffs and buffets of inclement weather
That Nature rains on those who roam abroad,

Or take a nap upon a scrap of carpet,
And so by dozing melt the solid hours
That clog the clock's bright gears with sullen time
And stall the dinner bell.

To sit, to stare
Outdoors, and by a stare to seem to state
A wish to venture forth without delay,
Then when the portal's opened up, to stand
As if transfixed by doubt.

To prowl; to sleep;
To choose not knowing when we may once more
Our readmittance gain: aye, there's the hairball;
For if a paw were shaped to turn a knob,
Or work a lock or slip a window-catch,
And going out and coming in were made
As simple as the breaking of a bowl,
What cat would bear the household's petty plagues,
The cook's well-practiced kicks, the butler's broom,
The infant's careless pokes, the tickled ears,
The trampled tail, and all the daily shocks
That fur is heir to, when, of his own free will,
He might his exodus or entrance make
With a mere mitten?

Who would spaniels fear,
Or strays trespassing from a neighbor's yard,
But that the dread of our unheeded cries
And scratches at a barricaded door
No claw can open up, dispels our nerve
And makes us rather bear our humans' faults
Than run away to unguessed miseries?

Thus caution doth make house cats of us all;
And thus the bristling hair of resolution
Is softened up with the pale brush of thought,
And since our choices hinge on weighty things,
We pause upon the threshold of decision.

From the book: Poetry for Cats:
The Definitive Anthology of Distinguished Feline Verse
by Henry Beard

The Slacker's Soliloquy

To slack, or not to slack, that is the question;
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The zeros and low marks of outrageous assignments,
Or to take pens against a sea of compositions,
And by opposing, finish them. To work; to accomplish,
No more, and by accomplishment to say we end
The workload, and the thousand essays
That students are heirs to; 'tis a dream
Devoutly to be wish'd. To work, to accomplish;
To accomplish; perchance to succeed; ay, there's the rub;
For in that accomplishment of work what mark may come,
When we have submitted this completed piece,
Must give us pause; there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long a school career.

By: Enoch Tung