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1599: Autumn
Things Dying, Things reborn
- Why didn't Essex march on Tyrone as soon as he got to Ireland in April 1599?
- Why didn't Essex fight the war of "attrition" and "starvation" advocated by Edmund Spenser?
- As Earl Marshall, what rights and responsibilities did Essex believe he had?
- How many knights did Essex create in Ireland?
- Shapiro says that Essex's enemies relied on "three furies" to defeat him. What were they?
- After a great military defeat, Essex borrowed a controversial tactic from Tacitus. What was it?
- What did John Harington blame for the English defeat in the Curlew Mountains?
- On September 7, Tyrone and Essex conferred for a half an hour. Why did Shapiro call that tactic "foolhardy"?
- What rank of people formed the East India Company?
- To whom did Hakluyt dedicate his second volume of Principle Navigations, Traffics, and Discoveries of the English Nation? Why change the dedicatee from his first volume?
- Which play was performed on the Dragon in 1607? Why?
- Which play, written shortly after Hamlet, parodied epic and chivalric language?
- What weapon in Hamlet signalled a shift from medieval chivalry to the "strange vices" of foreigners?
- While Essex was confined to house arrest, what were his followers Southampton and Rutland doing?
Essays and Soliloquies
- Who might have written the "Ur" Hamlet (the now-lost dramatic version) of the 1580's?
- Who wrote the twelfth-century source for Hamlet?
- Which character in Hamlet was Shakespeare's invention?
- How many existing words does Shakespeare use for the first time in Hamlet? How many of those are never used again?
- How many words does Shakespeare coin (make up) for Hamlet?
- Give an example of a "hendiadys." How many of them are in Hamlet?
- What literary form might have influenced the soliloquies? Who gets credit for inventing that form?
- Polonius reads aloud one of Hamlet's love letters to Ophelia, which compares his love to Ptolomeic certainties: "Doubt that the sun doth move." What was ironic about quoting Ptolomeic science in 1599?
Second Thoughts
- Why couldn't Shakespeare's second quarto have been performed at the Globe in its 1599 state?
- What encounter with what character in 4.4, along with the soliloquy that follows it, gets deleted in the Folio or "revised" Hamlet?
- A hired actor from a road production of Hamlet sold something to London publishers in 1603. What did he sell, and what part did he play?
- Until recently, all readers have read a "conflated text" of Hamlet. What does that mean?
- Shapiro tells us that to understand Shakespeare's greatness, "we need only look at the trails of sparks"? To what does he refer?
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