Blog Post Reflection

Upon revisiting my past three blog posts, I’ve noticed the reoccurring theme of character study. I enjoy seeing patterns in Shakespeare’s characters’ personalities, roles, motivations and behaviors, and in my posts I’ve made connections between the characters of his different plays.
In my first post, I examined Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers, comparing the dysfunctional love web of the characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream to the young couple in Romeo and Juliet. Unlike my later posts, I didn’t analyze the characters at a deeper-than-surface level, but focused mostly on making a comparison between the relationships in the two plays. My next post focused especially on the value of the character Hero in Much Ado About Nothing and the comparison between the play’s two relationships. I compared two relationships in one play rather than making connections to another one of Shakespeare’s plays, as I did in the AMND post. Limiting my post to examining only one play provided the kind of focus I needed. However, I again chose to compare characters from two different plays in my last post, but stuck to one focus-providing theme: types of villains. I compared Iago to Richard III and examined their respective form of villainy and their “level of evilness.”
Now that I’ve read more of Richard III, and now that we’ve discussed the two villains in class, my views in my last post have changed: I no longer believe that Richard is less of a villain than Iago. Prof. Mulready brought up a good point: Richard III is a “history play,” based on true material, while Othello is based on fictional material. Therefore, the sheer fact that Richard’s villainous actions actually happened in history and not just in the mind of a playwright prove he is indeed a very evil character.
My second post is my favorite, since I was fascinated by the characters in Much Ado About Nothing. I love Beatrice and Benedict’s dysfunctional, bizarre relationship, and I’m baffled by the hilariously shallow relationship between Hero and Claudio. Even more baffling is the hatred displayed toward Hero once her virginity is questioned! All of the characters in this play are intriguing to me, whereas in some of the other plays, only one or two characters really struck a chord.

I feel that my first post could’ve been more in-depth. My focus was more outward than inward, meaning I focused more on bringing in outside resources and information rather than taking a deep look into the characters themselves. Now that I have a better idea of the blogging assignment itself, I believe my posts have improved.
Blogging about what we are currently reading in class makes me feel more connected to the text. Having to write a blog in a timely fashion forces me to look deeper into the text for connections I may not have noticed had I just been reading at a surface level. I like that we are required to write a blog every other week rather than every week; this way, we are not always just writing for the sake of getting an assignment in on time, but are able to put thought and effort into our posts.