Shakespeare and Dante

Like so many of my peers I found the last class’s visit from the American Shakespeare Touring group to be a lot of fun and very enlightening. I thought it was very interesting to hear about the different steps utilized by the actors in understanding and performing their lines. While, memorizing the lines and putting them in one’s own words seemed obvious to me, the breaking up of the line, paying attention to meter, punctuation, speed, volume, motivation, and even one’s own personal bias on how they interpret the line was very new to me. Ultimately, I found the activities to be a lot of fun and I certainly I hope I get the chance next year to see them perform. However, I truly found the end of the class with opportunity to ask the actors questions to be just as informative as the activity itself. Personally I had to agree with the actors in their fear of the decline of live theater and human to human interactions in entertainment. They’re point that human to human interactions in entertainment is not only special but a crucial piece of human history nature is valid, and I do believe that we need to as communities show for support for that type of art. On a final more personal note, I have finally starting working towards of one of my small literary goals of actually reading the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, and so far I have made pretty good head way in the Dante’s Inferno, what I was delighted to find however, was that *drum roll* Dante also uses iambic pentameter in his lines. So far I have really been enjoying the whole epic poem and for those in our class that are a part of my workshop group, I think it’s fair to say that a reference to one of Dante’s lines or his Inferno in general can be expected to appear in one of my poems for workshop.