Lesson Plan for Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

1.  Small group dramatic reading:
          Choose parts and read this excerpt from The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare (on handout).  Today's reading, like yesterday's will involve a humorous battle of the sexes.  So be sure your group has at least one boy and one girl.  The two main parts are Kate (a.k.a. Katherine or Katherina) and Petruchio.  The third member of your group will take all the minor parts:  Baptista, Gremio, and Tranio.
           Here is the premise of the play.  The wealthy Baptista has two daughters: the beautiful Bianca and the beautiful, but hot-tempered (shrewish) Katherine.  Bianca has two impatient wooers, Lucentio and Hortensio.  However, Baptista will not allow his youngest daughter Bianca to marry until the oldest daughter Katherine is wed.  Katherine, of course, has no interest in getting married. However, Hortensio convinces his friend Petruchio to court and marry Katherine.  At first, Petruchio is primarily looking for the financial reward of marrying Katherine since Baptista is wealthy and will offer a substantial dowry.  Furthermore, Petruchio is not  scared off by Katherine's temper because he has a plan to "tame" her. 
            Modern critics like to discuss the "sexism" inherent in the play, particularly from Petruchio's point of view, but Kate is such an interesting and powerful character herself, that after the two "bullies" fall in love with each other, it's not clear who has tamed whom.  The humorous irony at the end of the play is that the wives who were calm and compliant at the beginning of their marriages have turned "shrewish," and Kate and Petruchio, who battled mightily at first, have now negotiated their own peace.
2.  Today's poem:
            "Upon the Death of Sir Albert Morton's Wife" by Sir Henry Wotton
             Wotton is a contemporary of Shakespeare though it is uncertain whether they knew each other at all.  Wotton was a popular politician in the House of Lords.
             In a few days we will be writing a short poem like this (2 to 4 lines) in "iambic pentameter," so note the rhyme and rhythm.
3. In the time that remains we will either do some "Shakespeare Trivia" with candy for the groups than can come up with the correct answer, or we will do SSR.