I am very glad that our performances are over, but at the same time I am sad. I am happy because now I am not worrying about it anymore and the outcome of it, and I am sad because I really enjoyed working with the people in my group. I am so happy that we all got along and agreed on everything. I was very surprised how smoothly it went. I know there were a few parts that had little mishaps but all in all we did a great job for not having a chance to run through it on the stage. I also thought that all of the other groups did a wonderful job. In the end I think it turned out very well and it was a good experience.

Lady Macbeth

Evil, controlling, and manipulative, those are all words that I would use to describe Lady Macbeth and those are words the entire class used also. I disagree with the people in class who say that Lady Macbeth is not these things. I think that if it was not for her Macbeth would not kill anybody. She is like a puppeteer controlling every move he makes. She knows what pushes his buttons and uses that. I am sure this is not the first case of this. Women do this all the time because they know that they can. Obviously woman now a days do it differently than in those days, because now woman show more skin and are more sexual than back then. I personally think that’s where the stereotypes come from and if a woman is doing these things, than she can’t complain about the bad wrap woman get. I think that it is neat that Shakespeare somewhat puts the woman in charge here but he could have done it to make her look better. But what a big shock a woman looks bad in Shakespeare’s play.

I find it interesting that we are constantly analyzing the people in Shakespeare plays without knowing a lot about him. As it was brought up in class it is hard to tell if Shakespeare’s plays reflect his life in any way because we simply just don’t know his background. I found myself wondering if maybe something happened with Shakespeare and his mother that their really aren’t any mother figures in his plays. With Hamlet being the exception and correct me if I am wrong, but didn’t Hamlet have some mommy issues? Maybe if Lear had a wife throughout the play he could identify true love and realize that Cordellia is the only daughter that truly cares for him. Also if he had a wife the problem of his pride getting of the best of him wouldn’t have been their, and than he could have fixed things with his daughters.

The other thing that I would like to touch on is in Ran I liked how the breaking of the sticks foreshadowed what was to come. The son breaks the sticks to show that things can be broken and his father’s choice wasn’t necessarily the best. I also found myself getting a little upset in the end. I was hoping the son and father would get to reconcile, but of course anything related to Shakespeare is not going to have the sappy,happy ending.