Sunday, January 31, 2010

A Winter's Tale, Act 2, Scene 2

What about that Paulina? How do you compare her to Camillo, the other decision maker back in act 1? And do you notice anything different about Shakespeare's language or sentence structure in this brief scene?

Update for new visitors: We're having a Shakespeare reading party. Various people from around the country, ages 11-70, are slowly making our way through A Winter's Tale. Once a week I leave a brief, open-ended discussion prompt, and they comment here. Actually what they do is talk to each other. You can scroll down through this blog to see how active and engaging their conversations are. And it's not too late to join: we're only at the beginning of act 2.

Update for old visitors: Scene 3 for next week.

10 comments:

Ruth said...

Well, of course I haven't finished, but so far, I'd say Paulina doesn't simper.

Paul said...

that family is not a family of wimps, to put it lightly.

Dawn Potter said...

I'm thinking that Paul is referring to the fact that the cast of characters tells us that Paulina and Antigonus are married. The play itself hasn't made that clear yet.

Dawn Potter said...

COMMENT BY D.M.

I am finding the play easier to read as we are going along. I like Paulina's take charge attitude. She seems to get what she wants without being pushy or bossy about it. She also seems to be well respected by other people and she comes across as a woman of strength, kindness and principles.

Ruth said...

Rather late in the week!!! For me the sentences are more straigth forward. I find this dialogue more direct.

Dawn Potter said...

I've been wondering if that sentence-directness is a way of showing how take-charge and non-nonsense Paulina tends to be. No talking in circles for her.

Dawn Potter said...

That would be "no-nonsense."

Lucy Barber said...

Okay, this is not my analysis but little computer manipulation. I pasted the text (minus stage directions and character names) into http://www.wordle.net. If you search for Winter's Tale.

This generates a pretty word tag and tells us that the most used word is thou, followed by honour, king, and queen. I think.

Personally, I like that the Oracle's words were so clear. One often thinks of oracles as being hard to interpret, but not this time.

Lucy Barber said...

Oops, I think I can link directly to it:
http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/1635674/Winter%27s_Tale_Act_2_Scene_2

Hopefully that works.

More thoughtful comments later

Dawn Potter said...

I think Lucy's read ahead of the rest of us. Now I'm looking forward to catching up.