Getting Started

Here are a few links that classmates have shared with me to help get me started on my focus! Thanks guys!

Caroline found a reference to Shakespeare in Robert Bloch's psycho.

Max suggested I read the work of another Bill... Billy Collins' "Night Letter to the Reader".

Cara made a post about common modern day phrases coined by Shakespeare.

While I'm still working on narrowing things down, I have had a lot of success so far.

I've been re-reading The Tempest, and have found some interesting themes throughout the first half of the play:
There is some major issues between those in power and those without power (masters and servants). From the very beginning of the play this is evident in the interaction between the boatswain and the nobles. Also present in the first scene is mention of fate and destiny. Gonzalo humorously takes confidence that the boat will not sink because it is the destiny of the boatswain to be hung. He later says "The wills above be done!" The conflict between power and being subject to that power is seen in many characters (Prospero and Caliban; Prospero and Ariel; Alonso and his nobles). Some of these relationships are portrayed as positive and some negative. Even betrayal is explored in the play.

Interestingly enough, William Faulkner often incorporates the dramatic issue of power into his works. In Absalom, Absalom!, Thomas Sutpen, is a man possessed with gaining power, and goes to any means necessary to establish his rule. Ironically enough he gets a slave pregnant and has a child, who is destined to not have any power because he has a black mother, despite looking white. He is brutally murdered by his half brother for this same reason. Throughout the novel there is great conflict between the ideas of possessing actual power and the image of having power.

Also in doing a little research of Faulkner's works, he did write a three novel series, the first of which was titled "The Hamlet". I think this was one of his lesser famous works because I haven't been able to find out a whole lot about the novel.