Meleager Authenticity

So Rebecca, Cameron and I got together on Monday to hash out a basic story line for Meleager by Shakespeare. We came out of our meeting with a pretty good story plot. Not only is it intriguing, but the plot is built in a chiasm.

What's chiasmus?

It's a form of Hebrew poetry that was used in writing the Bible and also the Book of Mormon. It has a symmetrical story line that meets in the middle and then repeats itself in an inverse order with the most important things in the middle. oh and note also that when it starts the inverse repetition that it goes in a negative perspective. So if it said "eat cake" the first time, it would say "don't not eat cake" in the second.

Now what's that got to do with Shakespeare, Kent? This isn't a Book of Mormon class.You're right! It's not.

But good old Billy wrote his plays using chiasmus! One play I know for certain that he did was Cymbeline. If you look at the plot structure, and the characters in the scenes it's hard to miss! the characters only appear in a chiasmal order.

let me illustrate with an example

in a 5 act involving myself and Andrew and a few others from class, the play it would be organized like this

1................................. Kent, Andrew, Katie
2............................Kent, Cameron, Dr. Burton
3.......................Kent, Andrew, Katie, Rebecca
4............................Kent, Cameron, Dr. Burton
5.................................Kent, Andrew, Katie


Does that make sense?

Now go look at the plot points that Cameron posted again and see how we organized the major plot points to be in a chiasm. Remember the negatives on the second time around!