"Girl...I'm watching Shake-es-peare in love"

Sorry about the title to my blog, but I can't help thinking about Scary movie when that girl is in the movie theatre on her cell phone and the way she says the movie title is litterally "Shake - es- peare." It cracks me up every time I think about it.

Anyway, on to more important things...like Kevin's presentation. Another round of applause! Great presentation as always. AND a really great topic! Like Kevin pointed out, Shakespeare has really great rhetoric with his characters. He pointed out three different play with their main villians - Richard III, Merchant of Venice, and Othello. Kevin showed how these characters all used the variuos devices of rhetoric, but he also showed how they employed rhetoric to work in their favor and acheive a particular goal. He showed how Richard used alot of pathos and logos to convince his lover Anne and his mother of various things - such as getting Anne to marry such a horrible man. He also showed the characters employed ethos by quoting the Bible and religion, in Richards case to show that he was not evil. In his movie clip, which was an excellent choice for his purpose, he showed the character in an epideictic speech describing his perfect woman and wife.

Kevin showed that Shakespeare was aware of rhetoric, how to use it, and use it well. In a Shakespeare class, there is alot of focus and time spent on the soliloquys and villians speeches. Their language is persuasive to their purpose, and employ all of the aspects of rhetoric that we have learned all semester. It was a great topic to pull all of these ideas together and show how they are used at once.