BUS 3920-001 Paper #3 4 December 2020

Length: three (3) full double-spaced pages. This is a minimum, not a maximum. You can exceed it, but make sure you are not just repeating yourself. Please include page numbers.

Value: 30% of your overall course grade.

Instructions:

The goal of this assignment is to encourage you to consider how plays, like any product, are created for specific consumer markets, and how the types of customers to whom plays are marketed (or adapted and re-marketed) materially affects both their presentation and their content. There are three distinct components to this assignment; you should budget roughly one page for each.

Part 1

Read the assigned New Pelican edition of Shakespeare’s Henry V. (Ideally, you have already done this.) Consider it as a text intended for performance. For what kinds of audiences was this play written, and how does it appeal to those audiences? What does it assume about their tastes, memory, expectations, cognitive abilities, nationality, politics? How do you know? (You do not have to hit every item in this list; they are not entirely separate. Pick the ones you believe are most important, that blend together best, or for which the evidence is strongest.) Is that audience homogeneous, or might the play work on multiple levels for those different segments? Does it attempt to change its audiences, or satisfy them as they are?

— Do not do outside research.

— Do not write about readers of the printed play in this part of the assignment.

Focus on audiences who would have seen the play and heard its language performed in

an early modern theater. What clues does the text that survived give us about them?

— The best papers will not talk about the play in broad generalizations, but will

focus on a couple of scenes or a couple of specific moments. You only have a page, so

make the most of it. No long-winded “since the dawn of time” introductions, and no self-

narration (“In this paper I will discuss”).

— Quote from the play at least twice (this is a minimum, not a maximum), and use quotes

where the language of the passage is actually relevant to your argument, not merely to

illustrate basic facts and plot points. Assume a reader who has read the play too, but who

just hasn’t analyzed it.

Part 2

Examine a printed edition of Henry V other than the assigned New Pelican edition. You do not need to read all or even most of the book, but study it closely enough to answer the following questions: for what kind of readership (i.e. user) was this book published? Pleasure readers? Scholars? Students? (Of what education level?) Theatrical companies of actors, directors, etc.? ESL readers? Disabled readers? Pretentious bourgeois snobs? Home decorators? Someone else? What do the book’s design, materials, page layout, fonts, and editorial apparatus (introduction, gloss, etc.) imply about these readers’ needs, tastes, uses, cultural backgrounds, or limitations – particularly as contrasted with the one you have, the Pelican? How does the book appeal to – or perhaps create – its market? How do you know?

— You are free to consider any edition of Henry V that has ever been printed. If you

wish to look at early quarto and folio printings, digital facsimiles are available at Early English Books Online (https://search.proquest.com/eebo/index) and Internet Shakespeare Editions (https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/facsimile/index.html). A wide range of modern editions can be found in bookstores or libraries (including Marriott Library – browse the stacks). You can look at a standalone printing of Henry V, or a collection or anthology in which Henry V appears, such as Shakespeare’s “First Folio” (1623) or any modern compilation of Shakespeare’s complete works. But you must use an edition of Henry V that was, at some point, printed . You may access that edition through the Internet, but do not use a free online edition or an exclusively electronic edition. If you look at a digital facsimile on a website, write about the original users of the book, not the current users of the website.

— Other than sourcing your edition, do not do outside research.

— Quote from the book where necessary, or describe specific aspects of it, or include accompanying images from / of it as illustration. What counts as evidence here is up to you, but make it accessible to your reader: you have the book, and they do not.

— Again, concrete detail is always more effective than hazy generalization.

Part 3

Watch Laurence Olivier’s film adaptation of Henry V. (We have watched and discussed much of it in class; if you have not already done so, watch the rest.) For what kind of audience or market did Olivier make this movie, and how does it appeal to that audience? What does it assume about their tastes, memories, expectations, cognitive abilities, nationality, or politics? (This is the same list as above, and the same rule applies.) Just like a printing of the play, what specific visual, editorial, and textual choices does it make to do so? Just like Shakespeare’s play, how might it not only be appealing to its audience, but constructing that audience?

— The film is available for streaming via the Marriott Library website. Search for it in the

catalogue (“Olivier Henry” will bring it up under “audio & video”) and log in to view.

— Again, do not do outside research.

— Again, do not discuss the film in broad generalizations. Try to focus on a couple of

scenes or a couple of specific moments to illustrate your claims.

— Quote from the film where necessary, or describe specific visual details of it; again,

assume a reader who has seen the film, but who has not analyzed it, and does not have it playing in front of them.

Your priority in this paper should be to produce close, careful analysis of each text in each part. But the very best papers will tie the three parts together into a larger thesis, which may help you focus your approach to each text. For instance, you could compare the same scene or moment in each text, and consider what their differences tell us about the respective markets for which they are intended. Or you could isolate something unique to only one text, and consider why the other two lack it. The performed play talked to its audience through the Chorus. How do the book and the film address (and shape) their own readers and spectators, by means of different channels?