Senior English 243: Shakespeare Name:
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Essential Questions
Henry IV, Part 1—What is honor?
Much Ado /As You Like It—What is the significance of gender in frienships?
Hamlet—What happens when we die?
King Lear —Essential Question
ASSIGNMENT: In an essay of 700-1000 words—(back to 2-3 pages)—explore one of the two questions below.
What does it mean to be human? How does one describe the Human Condition?
For some readers, King Lear is a play that at its heart addresses the most profound question of the human experience: What are we? You may see the human condition in relation to some higher power or force (in the play, characters consistently address the pre-Christian gods) or see the question as independent of an “I-Thou” (Martin Buber) relationship. How would you answer this question? (Try this: How might you explain your thinking to a child?)
[For an interesting example an artist addressing this question—in two paintings entitled “The Human Condition”—see the back.]
Alternate Essential Question
Filial Duty. To what extent should children be dedicated to their parents?
To some degree, all of the plays we’ve read this year bend themselves to the issue of relations between parent and child, 1 Henry IV and Hamlet the most pronounced. King Lear is a play to appears to be obsessed with this question. What responsibility, for instance, does a child have to his or her parent? How much gratitude is owed? How much personal ambition should be sacrificed to the service of a parent? Be bold in your thinking about this. And then, imagine you are expressing your thinking directly to your parents/guardians—would that shape the way you address the topic?
An example of an artist or thinker trying to express this profound life question: In 1933 and 1935 Belgian surrealist painter Rene Magritte composed two paintings that are both entitled The Human Condition.