Claudio in love

Firstly, I still find this so funny because Claudio is my father's name, and I also find it coincidental because that is how he claims he "fell in love" with my mom, through his eyes.

So Claudio sees Hero, and falls in love with her on a first glance basis.  I find this to be so superficial and surfaced, but this seems to be the trend of all old plays and even Disney movies.  Think about it, do you think Prince Charming actually cared about what Snow White thought or had to say? No, he just loved her because she was the "fairest of them", all I guess.

Claudio's Hero really had nothing much to say, and basically kept her mouth closed throughout him courting her,  so Claudio must have found a quiet girl desirable.  Well so did Prince Charming (not the same Prince, Walt was just getting lazy with the names).  In sleeping beauty the princess and the prince barely even spoke, I mean the princess was knocked unconscious, for what... was it a hundred years or one thousand?  Either way she was a mute, and he loved her based on looks.

This just goes to show that first impressions are a huge deal to men, so ladies just be easy on the eyes and hold your tongues and you will have your own Claudio very soon.

Phantom Of The Opera- Masquerade

Masquerades...

         I for one have never been a fan of masks.  Halloween has never been one of my favorite holidays, especially since every little boy dressed up as "Scream" from about 1998 until the mid 2000's, scaring little girls like me.  It was not until one year when my mother dressed me up as cat for Halloween, that I really understood the feeling of wearing a mask.  I felt like I could do or say anything, because I wasn't being myself, and no one could see my face.  I'm not saying I did terrible things, I probably just meowed at fellow trick-or-treaters, but for me that was a mile stone from hanging on my mother's pant leg.

      Masks, and Masquerades allow people to dress up as something that they are not,  and it even gives people confidence to do things they probably would not do if their face was exposed.  In Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing" , that is exactly what happens.  Also, while reading that entire act, I couldn't stop thinking about the scene from Andrew Webber's famous play "Phantom of the Opera", where they sing for what feels like twenty minutes about a Masquerade.  In my opinion, it is the best scene of the entire play, and with Halloween being tomorrow, i figured that it is appropriate.

Much Ado About Nothing. Huh?

Since this play was written during Shakespearean times,  I am almost positive that William would not waste his precious time really writing about nothing.  Although, this play really does seem quite simple minded so far, but that is because I am not yet on the downward spiral of the Shakespearean comic curve. Most of the conversations are pretty superficial and surfaced.    At this time there was no "TH" sound, so the word nothing, sounds a lot like noting.  So is it Much Ado About Noting? However, Shakespeare is not a poet of love, there is always something more cynical involved.  So what is he "noting"?

Cold-hearted Beatrice

I.i.121
"I would rather hear my dog bark at a crow than hear a man tell me he loves me."
This quote carries out one of the many reoccurring themes Shakespeare uses throughout this play.  In this case it is animalistic qualities.  Beatrice finds it so irritating for a man, especially Benedick, to tell her that they love her.  Most women long for those three words, where as Beatrice loathes these very words and finds more comfort in the loud, earsplitting sounds coming from her dog.

Litany vs My mistress's eyes

Collins uses the same rhetorical techniques as Shakespeare, by not comparing his beloved to wonderful things or by creating beautiful imagery.  No.  Instead, they both compare their beloved to negative things.  Shakespeare basically says that his mistress does not have glistening eyes, golden hair or a goddess like posture and Collins says that Litany is not the moon or the stars, nor the pine scented air.  This draws the reader in, because when one thinks of a poem written about a woman, he would think that it would be a love poem, filled with sappy metaphors and comparisons.  These two poems totally defy that previous notion and makes it cynical rather than light hearted.

How Billy Collins plays with word choice in the poem "Litany"

If I were to have read Collins' "remix" of the poem Litany, it would not have had the same affect on me.  However, seeing him perform it really emphasized his diction, and made it comical.  Collins' has a very monotone voice delivering no waver of excitement at all while he reads his version of Litany, which was a love poem.  The poem was just a list of comparisons about Litany, and how she is like objects like the dew on the morning grass.  However, Collins' version was saying everything she is not, therefore his lack luster voice really made his poem funny.

How Dickenson's poem is "fresh"

Dickenson does not use flashy words to get her point across in her poem.  Instead she focuses on tone and diction.  For instance, the phrase "truth it circuit lies", or telling it "slant", most words or phrases in her poem have a prominent "s" sound.  This "s" sound reminds me of a snake, or something sneaky, basically two phased.  That is what Dickenson's poem is.  She is telling her reader to tell the truth, but to tell it slant. When reading it out loud it sounds like a riddle one would hear in a storybook, sweet and straight forward in some lines, and in others more devious. It is fresh because her phrasing is simple, but the content is what makes it so.

Flash and poetry

The poet Shihan employed a lot of flashy language in his poem.  He recited his poem in a rap-like style, using catchy phrases like "kids don't play and god doesn't pray".  The point of his poem was to show the audience the importance of words, and how life is all about them.  At one point he goes on a rant about the world spinning, and if it stops words will still be forming.  However, the reason he is "flashy" with his language is because he is trying to show the audience that people are more interested in sophisticated phrases and words, rather than the true meaning behind something "fascinated with more what is fabricated".