Decoding ShakespeareStrategies for fixing confusion

I already know …

• Picture yourself at a wedding … what words do the bride and groom exchange to end the ceremony?

• “I, Janette, take thee, Demetrius, as my lawful husband.”

• Which more common word could replace thee in this sense?

Pronouns

• Shakespeare’s works use different pronouns, mostly because he wrote hundreds of years ago when English was slightly different.

• In the Elizabethan era, like today, pronouns changed depending on their job in a sentence.– Thou - Subject: “Thou art my brother.”– Thee - Object: “Come, let me clutch thee.”– Thy - Possessive Adjective: “What is thy name?”– Thine - Possessive Noun: “To thine own self be true.”– Ye - Subject: “Ye shall know me.”

• As you read, what strategy can you apply to outdated pronouns?

Practice• That in thy likeness thou appear to us!• In your likeness you appear to us!

• Griefs of mine own lie heavy in my breast, / Which thou wilt propagate, to have it prest / With more of thine: this love that thou hast shown / Doth add more grief to too much of mine own.

• My grief lays heavy in my heart / and you will expand my pain, to be pressed / into yours. The love you have shown / adds more hurt to my own overly heavy burden.

Verb endings• An older form of English, called Middle English, added ‘bits’ to the

end of verbs, called inflections. • Shakespeare used Modern English (an earlier version of it), but the

language had not completely stopped using inflections. So, often, Shakespeare’s verbs have an ‘extra’ -est or –st, and –th or -eth– “Thou liest, malignant thing.”– “What didst thou see?”– “Whose misadventurous piteous overthrows / Doth with their death

bury their parents’ strife.”– “He heareth not, he stirreth not, he moveth not.”

• Can you think of your own?– “What time should’st thou callest?”– “Hath thou drunk thy Coke when thou wast thirsty?”

• As you read, what strategy can you apply to verbs with inflections (‘extra’ endings)?

Practice• I would thou hadst my bones, and I thy

news.• I wish you had my bones, and I had your news.

• I do protest I never injured thee, / But love thee better than thou canst devise / Till thou shalt know the reason of my love

• I disagree; I never insulted you, / But will care for you more than you can understand / you will know the reason of my love

Sentence structure

• Shakespeare loved to ‘play’ with the English language. He knew that he could be creative with diction (word choice), figurative language, multiple meaning words and sentence structure.

• When reading Shakespearean sentences, rearrange and reword where necessary to understand.

• As you cluster words into sentences, you should see that Shakespeare’s sentences can be easy to decode

• Your final sentence can be different from Shakespeare’s. His sentence is not better; it’s just different.

Sentence structure practice

• Use the cards available to cluster words and create a sentence. All the words are part of a single sentence from Romeo & Juliet.

• Each group will read their sentence out loud and see if anyone else has the same sentence.

Shakespeare’s original sentences

• Why call you for a sword? (I.i.67)• Younger than she are happy mothers made. (I.ii.12)• Thou knowest my daughter’s of a pretty age. (I.iii.10)• She that makes dainty, / She I’ll swear hath corns. (I.v.18-19)• For stony limits cannot hold out, / And what love can do, that dares love

attempt. (II.ii.67-68)• Young son, it argues a distemperèd head / So soon to bid good morrow to

thy bed. (II.iii.33-34)• Nay, and there were two such, we should have none / shortly, for one

would kill the other. (III.i.15-16)• My dismal scene I needs must act alone. (IV.iv.19)• Art thou so bare and full of wretchedness / And fearest to die? (V.ii.68-69)• What sorrow craves acquaintance at my hand / That I know yet not?

(III.iii.5-6)

Strategies

• Name and explain your reading strategies for – Pronouns (thee, thou, thy, thine, ye …)– Verb inflections– Sentence structure

Sonnet 116Paraphrase of SONNET 116

•(Lines 1-2) Although legal marriages have barriers to prevent them [like close genes or being currently married], I don't believe in any such barriers to the union between true lovers. •(2-3) Love isn't really love if it changes when we notice our beloved has changed. •(4-5) Love doesn't vary when someone tries to lure us away from our beloved. •(5-6) No way! Love is like a rock, and storms can't undermine it. •(7-8) Love is a constant guide to us as we sail through life, but we can't really see its true value even if we can quantify love somehow. •(9-10) Love doesn't vary with time, even if the glow of youthfulness passes from our beloved's face. •(11-12) Love doesn't vary because of time; it stays constant even until death. •(13-14) If I'm wrong about love, then I never wrote anything [worthwhile since almost all my writings are about love somehow] and nobody has been in love.