“To Reflect, or Not to Reflect: That is the Question”

Yesterday’s Shakespeare seminar felt like Columbus discovering a new continent. Before we started this new unit, Dr. Terrett told us that this unit would be a harder unit compared to other units. As I researched information on the website, I found out that Dr. Terrett was wrong. This unit was not ‘hard’ but ‘really hard’! Shakespeare’s self-invented words were very complicated to understand. But as I went through the seminar, sharing my thoughts and the information I got, I realized that his drama and the influence he had brought to the world in present and past—which is the old London Shakespeare had came from.

I’m really impressed by his work—the plays, sonnets, poetry etc. A great genius from ancient London made a huge impact on our world today as well as the world in which he was born and lived in the first place. His played was still played today and people still love them. His plays even affected the songs in the 21 century. Songs such as ‘Love story’ was created by Taylor Swift, based on his play ‘Romeo and Juliet’, and a very famous song also created by her—‘ The Fate of Ophelia’.

However, in these impressing creations I’m really fond of,I noticed that I struggled with a bit of vocabulary. There were words I didn’t know. Furthermore, I have a lack of questioning skills. My classmates asked brilliant questions about Shakespeare but I only forced out one question. For the next seminar I want to improve the ability of asking questions and sharing more knowledge.

Overall, this seminar showed me that if you take the time to dig into it, Shakespeare’s work is actually pretty cool. I’m looking forward to the next seminar and to start digging into the deep depths of Shakespeare’s history. I’ll definitely try harder to focus on the emotions behind the words instead of just getting stuck on the difficult language.

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