Pentameter Lesson

Here is my iambic pentameter. 

My mistress is so terribly cruel 

I hate the things she makes me do 

Looking at her with hate filled eyes 

It's her wealth I do despise 

I need rid her of this world 

But I'm just a little servant girl 

Ill start to fake a terrible itch

And then ill say that she's a witch. 

The part of her life I've chosen to focus on is a time in her life when she is really struggling with money and begins to get very jelous of Lady Elizabeth Rose whose house she cleans. I chose this time in her life because it is when she is showing most emotion and aggression. It is also when the strong difference between classes is shown best. 

The physical exercise task we did helped me understand the rhythm to be used. When trying to write my pentameter u kept imagining skipping then counting to five and turning. It also was helpful for just warming and loosening up.

The part which best shows her feelings is  in the 4th sentence when it says 'its her wealth I do despise'. This sums up her feelings completely. She is jelous of lady Elizabeth Rose, her life, house, family and wealth. Also in the 6th sentence she mentions 'I'm just a little servant girl'. She clearly dosnt think of herself very highly. She puts herself down and is always comparing herself to others.  

The main event in her life is when she gets her mistress killed. This is explained in the last 2 lines. She makes up a lie and says that lady Elizabeth Rose is a witch. Due to religion they couldn't even risk that this was a lie and killed her. This event was a foolish mistake as meant Mary was left jobless.

I felt very unconfident with the whole Shakespeare topic but after today's lesson I do feel more relaxed about it. By simply doing the warmup tasks in character I watched closely how everyone was standing and also listened to how each character was speaking and pronouncing words. There was a very clear difference between the rich and the poor, mainly in the way people were standing and talking. I feel I got more of a strong idea of how my character should be.

Theatre History Timeline

534 B.C.	Drama as competition	Thespis wins the first public contest for tragic poets. The term thespian derives from his name. He also introduces masks.
550 – 300 BC	Greek Theatre: Tragedy or Comedy	Tragedy: (Conflict between a protagonist & the Antagonist) Comedy: (An escape from reality, often dealing with characters of a “lower type”.) Aristotle thought that the purpose of Greek theatre is "to arouse strong emotions in its audience (catharsis)” so to do this in an outdoor amphitheatre full of 15 000 people while wearing a mask must have needed slow, clear and careful delivery. Plays are performed by main actors wearing masks and a chorus who sing, dance and narrate.
900 – 1500	Christian Theatre - Mystery Plays, Miracle Plays and Morality Plays.	Christian themed dramas, originally acted out by priests in churches, then by members of the community outdoors, in order to communicate the stories of the Bible to people who can’t read.
1550 – 1642	Revenge Tragedy, Elizabethan & Jacobean Comedy	Non-religious themes – Love, robbery, revenge, class, royalty, war.
1500 - 1700	Emergence of Commedia Dell' Arte in Italy	Italian Street theatre. An improvised, quick-witted performance by wandering players. They wore masks to portray a regular cast of characters and made up their lines as they went along.
1642–1660	Puritans ban Theatre in England.	Puritans close or burn down all English theaters and forbid acting.
1660 – 1800	Restoration Comedy	Restoration comedies are hugely overacted satires on the state of society. Women begin to appear regularly in the theatre.
1800 - 1880	Melodrama	Stock characters – The hero, the heroin, the villain. A near disaster followed, usually, by a happy ending.
1890 – 1940	Realism / Naturalism	Stanislavski pioneered the concept of realistic acting, in which actors on stage copied exactly the way that people behave in real life.
1930 – 1955	Bertolt Brecht	Brecht produces plays with a political method and develops a brash, unrealistic style of acting that aims to distance the audience from the emotions in the play, thus completely avoiding “catharsis”.
1932 - 1938	Theatre of Cruelty	Shocking, violent, bloody, crazy performance style. A primitive ceremonial experience intended to liberate the human subconscious and reveal man to himself. Uninhibited gestures, sounds, unusual scenery, and lighting combine to form a “language, superior to words”. The idea is to shock the spectator into seeing the baseness of his world.
1952 - 1965	Theatre of the Absurd	A mixture of broad comedy, often similar to Vaudeville, mixed with horrific or tragic images; hopeless situations, repetitive or meaningless actions; dialogue full of clichés, and nonsense; either a parody or dismissal of realism.
1976	National Theatre opens	The iconic building on the South Bank opens it’s doors for the first time