Farewell Post on Rank and Status

At the start of the semester I wrote that I understood the terms rank and status referred almost exclusively to an individual's position in society. With that idea rank and status rely on the amount of money a person makes  or the job they possess. For example a garbage man may make a large amount of money however he would not hold a high rank in society due to the nature of his job.

I was particularly interested in tracking this concept throughout the semester because I believed it was important to understand the role that the society-created concepts of rank and status have on the way we interact with other people and how Shakespeare addressed the concept in his era.

I thought that the concept could prove important to Shakespeare's early works because of his use of the stock characters from commedia and how he often portrays lower class characters or those who are not in the highest rank among the other characters. He often portrays these characters as the more intelligent or enlightened of the cast even though they are rarely listened to or laughed away.

I really looked forward to tracking the concept over the semester because during my time in World Theatre I with Dr. Laura Hope I wrote my research paper comparing Shakespeare's use of the wise fool in As You Like It, with Touchstone, and Twelfth Night, with Feste. I would like to expand my understanding to see how rank and status in general can be seen throughout Shakespeare's early works.

The lens that this theme put on my reading was fascinating. I was able to see how social status then vs now informs your reading of characters of both high and low rank in addition to how certain characters are given added license to critique society's attitude towards the societal rankings of characters.

Not only was I able to see how the concepts of rank and status applied to Shakespeare's world but as the semester progressed I was more attuned to how these concepts were impacting MY everyday life. As I mentioned in the second cluster convo, as a graduating senior I have had the stressful and tedious task of applying for post grad jobs. It was interesting to see how in many aspects I consider myself of a higher status as a near college graduate and as a senior I am technically ranked highest within the terms of educated students. However, while that may be true within the small bubble that I have lived my life, as I applied to job after job after job after job and the applied to a few more jobs, my status in the "real world" is less than dirt.