What to do for Monday, March 21^st:

• Read Sonnet 74. Read it a number of times until you understand its meaning, its color, its beauty, its essence. To help with your understanding, try drawing little stick figures of what is happening.

• Memorize: Come to my office by next Wednesday at 2pm and recite one of these two passages:

• 3.1.58-73 (from “I am a Jew” to the end of that speech).
• 4.1. 184-202  (from “The quality of mercy is not strained” to “The deeds of mercy).
• Extra credit: Memorize both.

• Read through Act IV of The Merchant of Venice and answer these questions:

1. You are a gossip columnist for the Belmont Gazette. Write a steamy article on Bassanio’s arrival and successful choosing of the correct casket.

2. Imagine you are Antonio. It is just before the trial and you are in your prison cell writing a final letter to Bassanio to be read after your death. What is the letter?

3. Do you think Shylock receives a fair trial? Does he get a just and/or merciful punishment?

4. Which character most gains your respect in the trial scene, and why? Which one do you respect the least?

5. Run through a list of characters in Act 4. Put them in order of the degree of prejudice you think they display, then rank them in order of how much you like them. Do your lists match?

6. When Dustin Hoffman played Shylock, he always wanted more lines during the trial scene. Once Portia takes over, he has little to say. If you could write one extra speech for Shylock, at what point would you include it, and what would you say?