Who said that?

What a triumph to get to a point in the Duchess of Malfi when I can give the students a selection of speeches by different characters and ask them to identify both the speaker, the person to whom the speaker is talking, and the possible context. I gave the twelfth grade speeches from a scene we hadn't looked at yet. They were beautifully able to identify who might have been speaking, and what they might have been saying. These were difficult speeches. Here are some of them. 

1. 

This proclaims your breeding.

Every small thing draws a base mind to fear,

As the adamant draws iron. Fare you well, sir:

You shall shortly hear form's.

2.

You counsel safely.

Best of my life, farewell, since we must part:

Heaven hath a hand in't: but no otherwise,

Than as some curious artist takes in sunder

A clock, or watch, when it is out of frame,

To bring't in better order.

3.

Look, madam, what a troop of armed men

Make toward us.

O, they are very welcome!

When fortune's wheel is over-charg'd with princes,

The weight makes it move swift: I would have my ruin

Be sudden. I am your adventure, am I not?

1. Student rightly identified that this is probably someone who is likely to insult someone. That put Ferdinand and Bosola in the running. Sama, brilliantly, identified that this would be another "Mean Bosola" moment like the time he insulted the old woman on stage. We've seen both good and bad sides to him, and this would be a bad side. Indeed it is Bosola, speaking to Antonio, saying his lowly birth makes it no surprise that he has a mind as easily drawn to fear as iron to a magnet (adamant).

2. This is perhaps my favourite speech in the whole play. And I was astonished at how ably the students picked up on this simile in which "heaven" or "god" is compared to a "curious artist" who takes apart a malfunctioning clock or watch in order to put it back together in better order, or in better fashion. Our love is so right, he seems to say, that God would only separate us in order to bring us together again in more beautiful fashion later. Unfortunately they will only be brought together again in heaven.

3. Cariola informed the Duchess that there are armed men headed their way. The duchess says "They are welcome!" I was very impressed at how both classes identified the nuanced difference we see in the Duchess here - in the past she has been defiant, with a splash of sass (as Tamara would say). But here she is defiant but in a more defeated way. She seems to have given up on the game, the heist of keeping up with her brothers. In fact, winner of the "best comment of the day" context would be Nadia, who read and commented on this speech of the Duchess's, saying that Fortune's wheel, which represents the way the world works, is o'er charged with princes when people in positions of authority are too controlling, and overrun what nature would have had in store. Thus, they make the wheel turn too quickly, and bring on events that wouldn't naturally happen the way they do, like the death of the Duchess and Antonio. I was so impressed with this interpretation of a line I had been skipping over in my own reading because I didn't understand it.

This week we're going to cruise through as much of the last two acts as we can - this book has been one of the highlights of my teaching career. Along with Romeo and Juliet, Eveline, Raisin in the Sun, and Things Fall Apart. Can't wait for All My Sons in January.

When they lean in and... interrupt

One of my earliest Do Now activities at the beginning of an English A class last autumn was: "What is a pet peeve of yours?" One of mine, I remember writing, was "when other people finish my sentences."

Now I'm trying to reconcile the fact that I don't like it when others finish my sentences, with the fact that I find it ver satisfying when students finish my sentences when I'm lecturing. Yes, they are speaking out of turn, and technically I should give them a warning. But 9 times out of ten the word they come up with works, and 4 times out of 5 it is at least along the lines of what I wanted to say, and 1 time out of three it's a better word than I was about to come up with. It shows me so clearly that they are listening, and thinking along with me, and actively engaged. If no one ever interrupted, I'd never be sure that they aren't sleeping. The students who are most likely to interrupt and cause minor disruption are also the ones who are the most intently focused on what we're saying.

Then, my challenge is to encompass their energy, focus, and to an extent their ejaculations to keep the class dynamic but not chaotic. Whether I'm able to do this seems to depend entirely on how many students there are who are likely to try to finish my sentence. In one of my eleventh grade classes, there are about 8 or 9 people (out of 22) who would love to try to finish every sentence. It's a very vocal, but also very attentive class. The other class has more quiet attentive listeners, and only two really want to finish sentences. That works really well, since other people in the class don't seem to take these two outspoken students' lead. Everyone else raises his hand. That class is my favourite class. They have enough feistiness in them to keep discussion dynamic, and enough critical thinkers so that I never really have to make the "big reveal" about a text - they get to it on their own.

So the moral of the story is, there is no rule about how to run a good classroom. Now that I've gotten to know this class a bit, I'm getting more comfortable breaking rules with them that I wouldn't break with the other class. I love that this job keeps me on my toes.

Bosola, and the first sign of change

On Monday night when Monica and I talked to Olivia on Skype, we told her about our polite disagreement over the interpretation of Bosola's character. Monica thinks Bosola tells whomever he's speaking to what that person wants to hear, and isn't honest. She thinks he's motivated by money, and is driven by ambition.

I think, on the other hand, that he is always honest, and is in that way an anomaly when compared with any other character we have ever read in this course. I don't think he cares about the money, or of rising above his position. I think he only asks what's due to him, and doesn't "reach above what he can see" as he tells Antonio. I think he very much wants to be a good person, (he wants to be like Antonio) but he isn't strong enough to jump track from the criminal life he has led so far.

Basically, Monica condemns him as dishonest because he acts in a dishonest way, while his words imply he might be good. I think that he represents an exception to the rule that "actions speak louder than words". His words, I think, speak louder. He is bound by his past as a criminal and by his own sense of self-loathing, from doing the right thing. He succumbs to that little devil on his shoulder which says "Don't even try to change, bro - you're rotten, you have been since day one, and there's no point in trying to change now. Just take the money and do it."

Olivia encouraged us to air this scholarly debate before the students, to show them that multiple interpretations can be valid. After the class had discussed Bosola during the referred to conversation with Antonio (when Monica thinks he catering to his audience and I think he's being honest) we explained our standpoints. I think the class wasn't quite sure what to do with us. They don't often see teachers express their opinions about the class material, let alone in a way that reveals so much thought and studied contemplation. Monica works with me in one twelfth grade section, and the other section, I'm happy to say, came to almost all the same points that she and I raised in our discussion, without help. Their thoughts about Bosola dazzled me with their insightfulness. They are 16 and 17, and they get this jaded, criminal and tortured man in a remarkable way.

Antonio also says he "gets" Bosola. Take this conversation we looked at today:

Ant. I do understand your inside. 

Bos. Do you so?

Ant. Because you would not seem to appear to th' world 
Puft up with your preferment, you continue
This out-of-fashion melancholy: leave it, leave it.


Bos. Give me leave to be honest in any phrase, in any 
Complement whatsoever. Shall I confess myself to you? 
I look no higher than I can reach:
They are the gods that must ride on winged horses.
A lawyer's mule, of a slow pace, will both suit
My disposition and business: for, mark me,
When a man's mind rides faster than his 
horse can gallop, they quickly both tire.


Ant. You would look up to heaven, but I think 
The devil, that rules i'th'air stands in your light. 

We talked about what we thought those devils could be, that are blocking Bosola out from the sunlight of heaven. I wish I had also the other class's comments, which we drew out even more, but this gives an idea of the thrust of the conversation, and the depth of the comments that this text is inspiring. 

Now, in the eleventh grade at the end of the day, it was time for role play. The prompt:

The first sign of change (a way of stirring up ideas before looking at how the white missionaries enter Umuofia in Things Fall Apart).

These notes came during the feedback after role plays about

- weather and plants growing. The first sign of change was the sun coming out, and other group members portrayed how that action sets in motion a chain of events

- a man who, after years of sitting dejected on the sidewalk as passers by abuse him finally takes a stand against someone who sneers an unkind comment for the umpteenth time.

-  a group of teens in which someone introduces a joint, and others take a hit. One girl refuses. The next day, everyone in the circle except her has a joint. She asks if anyone has an extra and lights up.

These points came during the feedback session. Everything above represents a student comment. When classes like this end, I basically want to give a medal to everyone in the class. I love this! What made this finally particularly satisfying is that at the end we saved three minutes for Basket of Doom and Noura spelled compassion, fulfilling and circumstances correctly, earning her class their first point of the new quarter.

The rich court the poor

Role play classes are my favourite. Monday was spectacular. 

The twelfth grade received this prompt: 

"A rich person courts a poor person."

The role plays showed both genders in each role. In every single role play the poor person was lower than the rich person on stage - some knelt, some were seated begging, others were low down in order to do a chore like washing the floor or shining someone's shoe. During feedback, students identified dynamics that come into play in such relations

- the skepticism of the poor person

- the desire in the rich person to play the "saviour" role or be powerful

- the rich person's desire to escape from the constraints of his own society, from the people who are all like him

- the seeming "purity" of poor people compared with rich people. Saja pointed out that in order to get rich, the rich people may have had to do bad things, rendering them impure. 

- the likelihood that the poor person will say yes, because his family will approve of an advantageous match

We then looked at how the Duchess courts Antonio, saying to him:

Sir, this goodly roof of yours, is too low built; 
I cannot stand upright in't nor discourse,
Without I raise it higher; raise yourself;
Or, if you please, my hand to help you: so.

They identified the symbolism of Antonio's taking her hand to rise up. He is rising in both stature and social class by agreeing to be wooed by and married to her. But he still hesitates:

Ambition, madam, is a great man's madness, 
That is not kept in chains, and close-pent rooms, 
But in fair lightsome lodgins, and is girt
With the wild noise of prattling visitants,
Which makes it lunatic beyond all cure. 
Conceive not I am so stupid but I aim
Whereto your favours tend: but he's a fool,
That being a-cold, would thrust his hands i'th' fire 
To warm them.

The students were so great with their dissection of his words here - looking at how ambition is a madness and prompts men to put their hands right in the fire. Antonio's wariness against ambition contrasts with the duchess's flippant attitude toward the threat her brothers pose to a peaceful union:

Do not think of [my brothers]:
All discord without this circumference
Is only to be pitied, and not fear'd:

Yet, should they know it, 
time will easily Scatter the tempest. 

Her motivation in pursuing this unapproved love may be that her passions are too strong to be contained, and she knows Antonio will never pursue her. As she says,

Now she pays it.
The misery of us that are born great!
We are forc'd to woo, because none dare woo us; 
And as a tyrant doubles with his words,
And fearfully equivocates, so we
Are forc'd to express our violent passions
In riddles, and in dreams, and leave the path
Of simple virtue, which was never made
To seem the thing it is not. Go, go brag
You have left me heartless; mine is in your bosom: 
I hope 'twill multiply love there. You do tremble:
 Make not your heart so dead a piece of flesh,
To fear, more than to love me. Sir, be confident: 
What is't distracts you? This is flesh and blood sir; 
'Tis not the figure cut in alabaster,
Kneels at my husbands tomb. Awake, awake, man! 
I do here put off all vain ceremony,
And only do appear to you a young widow
That claims you for her husband, and like a widow, 
I use but half a blush in's.

I love watching these students sift through and make sense of what these characters are saying. When they are getting at what a character says, I have the impression that they're getting at some core truth of human experience. So many speeches of Webster's quiver with relevance to this condition we all live. The continued relevance of the Duchess's, Antonio's and Bosola's feelings and behaviours is staggering and humbling. 

The Duchess and Antonio wed under Cariola's eye, but she seems to look askance at the man and wife as they exit the hall:

Whether the spirit of greatness, or of woman 
Reign most in her, I know not; but it shews

A fearful madness: I owe her much of pity. 

Cariola presides over the secret wedding of the Duchess and her Master of Household, Antonio