Reading Response Post for Henry V by William Shakespeare — From Act II, Scene 3 through Act IV, Scene 2.

Comedy’s Purposes

Q. In this reading we see how Shakespeare leavens this play with healthy doses of comedy, whether in the scene with the Welsh, Irish, and Scots officers, the one with Katherine attempting to learn English from her attendant Alice, or with any appearance of Pistol. Yet all of these scenes are more than comic relief. Examine any of these scenes and discuss what purposes it serves other than comedy.

Instructions

A Reading Response Post is your opportunity to record whatever thoughts, questions, and emotional or aesthetic reactions you have as you read. For every reading assignment, I will create a new discussion board forum on which I will post possible issues or questions as individual threads. When your group has a reading post due, you should pick one of them and respond to it as best you can.

Because these responses represent the early stages of your thinking about the readings, you should feel free to use them to test out ideas, ask questions, and admit confusion; indeed, summary judgments and easy answers aren’t much use to me or your classmates, whereas confusion, when clearly expressed, can be stimulating. On the other hand, I admire students who are willing to venture an opinion and back it up. What is important is that your response demonstrates your engagement with these works.

The key to reading posts is to keep them focused by quoting specific passages — you must support your argument with textual evidence by quoting and citing the reading for that thread at least once during your post — and commenting on those quotations in order to support a point. Do not simply quote and expect us to see what you see in the passage; explain. That means you should never begin or end a paragraph with a quotation. Start by establishing a point you want to make or an issue you want to explore. Quote (do not paraphrase) the text to provide evidence for what you are saying. Then, comment on the quotation: never assume that your peers or I will see what you see in the passage you quote, let alone see it the same way. Quotations provide evidence; they do not make your case for you.

Always set quotations up substantively. That means that setting up a quotation with a simple phrase like “Shakespeare writes,” is unacceptable. If the set-up for a quotation tells readers nothing other than the information a citation could give them, it’s not substantive.

Reading Response Posts should be between 275 and 325 words long, not including the quotations. Note that longer does not mean better: if you post 500 words I will not be happy, because I do not want reading the posts to be burdensome for your peers or correcting them to be burdensome for me. If you find yourself going over 350 words of your own writing, cut something;