Dr. White discusses Charles Dickens’ great gift for characterization, which extended even to very minor characters. He gives specific examples of this from David Copperfield, including the based-on-life character of Miss Moucher. Next, Dr. White discusses some of the author’s literary devices, including his masterful foreshadowing and the device of having a double perspective from the narrator: David experiences things as a child, and the elder David who is narrating looks back on it as an adult, giving an adult’s perspective. Indeed, Dr. White points out, the novel is somewhat autobiographical, and Dickens in examining David Copperfield’s life examines his own. Useful or important passages of the novel are read and explained. Dr. White discusses the overwhelmingly female world that David is born to, giving him no male figure to look up to. This section ends with a look at the scene in which Copperfield discovers that his mother is going to be remarried to Mr. Murdstone.
The story now moves away from Venice, never to return. The characters arrive one by one at Cyprus by sea, having weathered a heavy storm. Nature itself is confused. They assemble here to prepare for battle with the Turks. In Act One, Iago only talks about his plans, but now, in Act Two, away from home, he puts his plans into action. Iago gets Cassio drunk and into a fight, disrupting the wedding night of Othello and Desdemona. Othello breaks up the fight. Cassio is dishonored. To help put him right again with Othello, Iago suggests that he talk with Desdemona to have her plead his case with her husband. He agrees. Iago uses this meeting to plant doubts about Desdemona’s fidelity. Iago has several roles in this play. He is first and foremost, the villain. A purely evil man: evil for the sake of evil. He appears as a fellow well met, but his words hide his real intent. Iago provides the comic relief in the play. He is funny, witty, clever. Audiences for centuries love this character. They recognize him. He reminds us all that we are human. But behind his jokes is a sinister plan of destruction and disorder.
Dr. White discusses sentimentality and its characteristics, explaining that it focuses on emotions and wallows in them for their own sake, and pointing out that true artistry allows one to respond on one’s own, without manipulation. Dickens’ work was touched by sentimentality, he explains, particularly in some of his death scenes. Dr. White discusses some of the episodes of his own life that Dickens put into this work, which was partly autobiographical. David’s influences and hero-figures are examined with their respective influences upon him. Dr. White also gives some time to the character of Mr. Micawber, whom he ranks as one of the three great comic characters of literature. Finally, Dr. White touches upon the effect that Dickens had in changing child labor laws and school conditions, the state of which he dramatized in his novels, thus raising awareness of them.
Dr. White explains the connection between language and personality, and shows Shakespeare’s mastery of this in the realness of his characters. He examines the significance of Shakespeare’s position between the medieval and modern worlds, and the dislike of his largely medieval worldview by modernists, who try to undermine his work by removing it from classrooms and ruining the language by translations. Edmund’s soliloquy in Act I is analyzed, showing his practically modernistic point of view in his twisting of the truth, lack of logic, and appallingly egocentric viewpoint. Next, Dr. White examines the characters’ various uses of the word “nature,” which is constantly redefined throughout the play. He looks at Edmund’s lack of personality and traces it to his bland, over-comfortable
Dr. White uses Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s book The Gulag Archipelago to illustrate his points on King Lear, particularly in Lear’s speech calling to “allow not nature more than nature needs,” where he discusses how very little one technically needs in order to survive. The whole celebrated sequence where Lear is out in the storm is carefully examined. Lear’s fast-changing moods are noted as he goes from towering rage and futile commands to the sky to self-pity to cries for patience to bear his sufferings. Dr. White then speaks of the significance of Edgar’s progression of disguises, Edmund’s piteous desire for love, and finally, how Lear and the other sufferers in the play were actually blessed by their suffering.
Dr. White explores the theme of leadership and crisis of authority in this lecture on Shakespeare’s “dark comedy.” He uses the example of a recent scandal at the Naval Academy where he taught to show the consequences of the failure of authority, and ties this into the irresponsibility of the authority figures in Measure for Measure. Dr. White then discusses Shakespeare’s evident Catholicism, how it influenced his work and life, and how it made his plays relevant and popular for all time, despite the protestations of modern critics, who twist his words, and modern schools, who take his works off their students’ reading lists. From there, Dr. White gives examples of how the playwright worked around a ban against mentioning God in the theatre. Finally, he discusses the pattern of the play’s settings and their significance, as well as the main conflict of the piece.
