Deborah Scally
eNotes Educator
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197
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About
I'm a 'freelance' teacher, writing my dissertation. I also am a professional singer, and have been since before I went back to school to get my degrees. I've worked as a darkroom tech and photographer, a caterer, and a plant technician.
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Recent Activity
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Answered a Question in A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream contains a cast of many different types of characters. Perhaps two of the easiest to compare would be Helena and Hermia, the two young women. They are... -
Answered a Question in The Merchant of Venice
The Merchant of Venice tells the story of how Antonio, a wealthy and generous merchant, loans his friend Bassanio the money to woo his love, Portia. To do so, Antonio must go into debt to the... -
Answered a Question in Much Ado About Nothing
Shakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing opens at the home of Leonato, the governor of Messina in Italy. Leonato, his daughter Hero, and his niece Beatrice are told by a messenger that Don Pedro and... -
Answered a Question in Frankenstein
Mary Shelley lived an unusual life for a woman in nineteenth century England. Her parents were both unconventional and famous, and Mary was not bound by as many restrictions as most women of her... -
Answered a Question in Much Ado About Nothing
Shakespeare uses many Elizabethan phrases and colloquialisms in his plays that were quite common in his day but have fallen out of use in modern times. One of these is the exclamation "Go to!" Its... -
Answered a Question in A Midsummer Night's Dream
At the beginning of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, both Demetrius and Lysander are in love with the fair Hermia, and each seems ready to fight to claim her as his bride. Demetrius is... -
Answered a Question in As You Like It
"Whoever loved that loved not at first sight?" is a line spoken by the shepherdess Phebe when she falls for Rosalind in her disguise as the boy Ganymede. it is actually a line from Christopher... -
Answered a Question in The Merchant of Venice
I am surmising that by "essay" you mean that your assignment was to write a speech for Shylock to plead his case after he has been sentenced to lose his fortune and become a Christian in The... -
Answered a Question in Little Women
Louisa May Alcott's novel Little Women is the story of the March family: Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy, and their mother Marmee. The story is about a houseful of girls living alone with their mother because... -
Answered a Question in Twelfth Night
In many of his plays, Shakespeare seems to go out of his way to remind the audience that it is watching actors on a stage and that we are all part of a larger drama taking place in the real world.... -
Answered a Question in The Merchant of Venice
In Act I Scene 1 of The Merchant of Venice, the merchant Antonio is walking with his friends Salerio and Salarino. Antonio seems sad, and his two friends are discussing probable reasons why Antonio... -
Answered a Question in Twelfth Night
In Shakespeare's Twelfth Night the two main protagonists are Sebastian and Viola. They are fraternal twins, but apparently they look enough alike that Viola, thinking Sebastian is dead, and being a... -
Answered a Question in Twelfth Night
In Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, Sir Andrew is the "foolish knight" who has come to woo Olivia at her kinsman Sir Toby's suggestion. Sir Andrew is wealthy, and Toby wants to set himself up so he can... -
Answered a Question in The Merchant of Venice
In Act I, Scene 1 of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, Antonio, the merchant in question, is walking and talking to his friends Salerio and Salarino. They are discussing Antonio's fortune and... -
Answered a Question in As You Like It
In Shakespeare's As You Like It, the brothers Oliver and Orlando are at odds with one another at the beginning of the play. Oliver is afraid that Orlando, his father's favorite, will take... -
Answered a Question in A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream is not only 2 plays in one, but it also contains a play within a play. The story is fanciful and romantic, and the two plotlines overlap, drawn together by... -
Answered a Question in Hamlet
Zeugma is a rhetorical device by which a single word is made to refer to two or more words. It is a favorite literary device of Shakespeare's and it demonstrates his command of the English... -
Answered a Question in Othello
During Shakespeare's time, the issue of being "gay" was not treated the same way as it is today. What is also different is the fact that strong friendships between men were not stigmatized as gay... -
Answered a Question in Twelfth Night
The plot of Twelfth Night revolves around love and mistaken identity. Shakespeare seems to be using the characters to demonstrate how frivolous and changeable is the very idea of love, particularly... -
Answered a Question in Slaughterhouse-Five
In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five the speaker is Billy Pilgrim. Pilgrim is a man who has become unstuck in time. He simultaneously is experiencing his life as a prisoner of war in WW II, a... -
Answered a Question in As You Like It
One of the things that made Shakespeare a great writer was his ability to create realistic characters that reflected people's needs, desires, and conflicts. He took as much care with minor... -
Answered a Question in Harrison Bergeron
Kurt Vonnegut's short story "Harrison Bergeron" is a satirization of an "idealized" society where everyone is equal. Of course, he is playing with the idea of what equality means in the eyes of the... -
Answered a Question in Twelfth Night
When we first meet Viola in Act I, Scene ii of Twelfth Night she is aksing her companions, survivors of a shipwreck washed up on the shore of Illyria, how she will survive now that her brother has... -
Answered a Question in Othello
One of the main themes of Othello is that of jealousy and what it can do to a person, and the eponymous main character Othello is Shakespeare's example of what can happen to a good but insecure man... -
Answered a Question in As You Like It
I can give you some ideas to get you started on your comparison of Rosalind and Celia that you can use along with your own thoughts about the two characters. Celia and Rosalind are, of course,... -
Answered a Question in Literature
After an extensive search, I have discovered little about the biography of Angela Noel. It is possible that this is a pseudonym. The only other author who has the same name is an author who wrote... -
Answered a Question in This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona
Sherman Alexie's short story "This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona" is part of a collection of connected short stories about members of the Coeur d'Laine Indians. It specifically deals... -
Answered a Question in The Weary Blues
Truthfully, the only way to know why Langston Hughes titled his famous poem "The Weary Blues" would be to ask him. Given that we no longer have that option, your opinion is as good as mine. ... -
Answered a Question in Othello
Iago is an extremely clever villain. He wants to carry out his plan to ruin Othello by using other people to do his dirty work for him, thus avoiding the chance that someone might cast suspicion on... -
Answered a Question in Beowulf
Since this is a statement, not a question, I am not sure what information you need, but I'll attempt to answer based on what I see in the text. Beowulf does contain universal themes that are still... -
Answered a Question in The Yellow Wallpaper
I believe the main reason the story "The Yellow Walllpaper" is called "The Yellow Wallpaper" is because the story describes a woman suffering from post-partum depression and having a serious... -
Answered a Question in The Negro Speaks of Rivers
"The Negro Speaks of Rivers" is one of Langston Hughes's most famous poems. He uses first-person point of view of a Negro person (it is never stated whether the narrator is male or female) in this... -
Answered a Question in The Queen of Spades
Alexander Pushkin uses the characters in the story "Queen of Spades" to illustrate the theme of corruption. In particular, he uses the protagonist Hermann to show how corruption can lead to... -
Answered a Question in The Odyssey
In Book 20 of the Odyssey, the omens, dreams, and oozing of blood from the suitor's mouth portend the coming clash between Odysseus and the suitors, when he will kill them all for disrespecting his... -
Answered a Question in As You Like It
I can help you out with the basics for your request, but to do a detailed analysis, you need to carefully read As You Like It and come to your own conclusions about Duke Senior, based on... -
Answered a Question in The Edible Woman
In Margaret Atwood's The Edible Woman, the main character, Marian becomes slowly unable to eat after she gets engaged to her long-time boyfried Peter. First, she can't eat meat. For a while, she... -
Answered a Question in The Turn of the Screw
In James' Turn of the Screw the reader is treated to several descriptions of the ghosts that the governess thinks are haunting Miles and Flora. However, the information is never given clearly... -
Answered a Question in Othello
In Act V of Othello, after Othello kills Desdemona and Emilia reveals Iago's villainy, Iago stabs Emilia and tries to escape. Of course, it is too late, and he is brought back into the room.... -
Answered a Question in As You Like It
In As You Like It, Shakespeare depicts the forest of Arden as a place that, though it causes hardships for the people who are used to living at court, is desirable because it IS so unlike the... -
Answered a Question in The Importance of Being Earnest
Although on the surface it appears that the relationships between Jack and Gwendolyn and Algernon and Cecily are similar, they are actually quite different. It is true that both are based on... -
Answered a Question in A Midsummer Night's Dream
The character of Nick Bottom the weaver in Midsummer Night's Dream wants to play all of the parts in the performance of Pyramus and Thisbe that the mechanicals are planning for the Duke's wedding.... -
Answered a Question in Hamlet
I am not familiar with Douglas Brode's work, but I will attempt to answer your question as best I can. The main trait that sets Hamlet apart from other Elizabethan/Jacobean characters is the... -
Answered a Question in Romeo and Juliet
The suspense in this statement from Romeo and Juliet arises from the fact that it is foreshadowing the fight to come betweenTybalt and Mercutio, whose death at Tybalt's hands sets the stage for... -
Answered a Question in Frankenstein
In Frankenstien, Mary Shelley's take on the two characters of Victor and the monster he creates are very different, and they demonstrate the way she feels about men who try to play god with the... -
Answered a Question in As You Like It
In As You Like It, Touchstone and Audrey have a very different approach to romance than Rosalind and Orlando, although, surprisingly, there is some similarity as well. First of all, both Rosalind... -
Answered a Question in A Midsummer Night's Dream
There is a good bit of evidence to support the premise that Puck is the protagonist in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, despite the fact that Bottom does steal the show. However, if Puck had... -
Answered a Question in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
"The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" is a story about the conflict between science and religion and about the duality of the human mind/spirit. As such it contains elements of realism, but... -
Answered a Question in Twelfth Night
I'm not sure Twelfth Night has a "moral," but it does contain several important lesson. The first one is that things are not always what they seem. This is particularly exemplified... -
Answered a Question in The Tempest
Of course, this question is purely subjective, and the answer depends entirely on what you see in the play. I disagree that the play contains no conflict. It perhaps may not follow the "norms" for... -
Answered a Question in Literary Terms
The purpose of a literary allusion is to enrich the experience of the reader by the act of bringing in references to outside sources, generally ones that will be familiar enough to the reader so...
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