Use a table to chart character development. The table should have four columns.
Column One: Event
This column identifies the event where we see the character. e.g. Desdemona has married Othello without her father's consent.
Column Two: Reference and Quote
This column provides a reference to act, scene and lines as well as an appropriate quote "Your heart is burst, you have lost half your soul." I,i 87.
Column Three: Characterisation
Provide information about what is learnt about the character. Desdemona is much loved by her father (Brabantio) but social and cultural values identify her as his property. She appears an innocent who has been led astray.
Column Four: Change?
This column should include information about how our view of the character has changed or developed. As this is the first knowledge we have of Desdemona then we cannot make a comment here.
Using the table
It can be used by individual students, for pair work or small group work adopting a jigsaw approach to the text whereby students study different characters or if this is being used as a form of revision ask different groups to look at the same character but at different acts within the play.
Adaptions to this activity could include providing students with a partially complete table eg. they have to find the appropriate quote, or say how the information develops character.
If used with a whole class looking at a minor character it could be written on flipchart paper with a series of post-it notes containing quotes issued to the students. These have to be found in the text, placed in the right place on the grid, followed by a whole class discussion about columns one, three and four.
A fifth column can be added so that students can discuss how information about minor characters informs our understanding of the major characters.
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