Shakespeare and Macbeth: Language of Poetry
Essential Question: What techniques/styles of language does Shakespeare use in his prose/poetry?
Students will be able to:
-identify iambic pentameter and disruptions in the meter
-understand what the disruptions in the meter mean
-analyze the images/metaphors that Shakespeare uses
-apply the above skills to Macbeth
State Standards:
1.7.10.A: Analyze the role and place of standard American English in speech, writing, and literature. Evaluate as a
reader how an author’s choice of words advances the theme or purpose of a work. Choose words appropriately,
when writing, to advance the theme or purpose of a work.
R11.A.1.3: Make inferences, draw conclusions, and make generalizations based on text.
R11.A.1.4: Identify and explain main ideas and relevant details.
R11.A.1.5: Summarize a fictional text as a whole.
R11.A.1.6: Identify, describe, and analyze genre of text.
Standard - 1.3.10.B: Analyze the characteristics of different genres and compare works
that express a universal theme and provide evidence to support the views expressed in
each work.
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Post Sonnet 29 in front of class.
Go over English sonnet form
Iambic pentameter and its disruption
Discuss poem as a whole. Do first 4 lines self, then have them do two by twos.
Break into small groups.
Have each group analyze either sonnet 18 and 60 by answering questions / using modeled
techniques.
7. Share their results as a class.
8. Talk about how this will help with their reading of Macbeth…assign finding a disturbance of
iambic pentameter?
The activity I got this from: http://www.pbs.org/shakespeare/educators/language/lessonplan.html
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Identify a Shakespearean sonnet
Identify and label the rhyme scheme
Identify and label iambic pentameter
Identify and label a Shakespearean sonnet's divisions
Write a definition for a Shakespearean sonnet
Write a definition for paraphrase and its purpose
Paraphrase a Shakespearean sonnet
Sonnet 29
When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon my self and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least,
Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate,
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
Start:
When I am ‘dissed’ by life and by others,
I cry about my troubles alone.
Heaven cannot hear my troubles
So I sit and feel bad for myself.
I wish I was someone else with more hope
Being like him and having friends
Wanting one person’s talent and that one’s smarts
But what I want I have the least of.
Yet even when I think badly of myself,
Thinking of you makes me happy, and then
(Like a bird flying at sunrise) I sing happy songs to heaven.
Because when I remember your love, it makes me so rich
That I wouldn’t give you up to become a king, baby.
Names:
class period:
Sonnet 18:
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Questions:
1. Look at the first two lines of the sonnet. Does the poem begin in iambic pentameter?
Why do you think the poem begins this way?
2. Read the whole sonnet aloud as a group.
3. For each line of the sonnet, create a short summary of what the line means. This can be
a phrase or sentence. You may also create a doodle/picture for a line instead. Be
prepared to share your sentence/picture with the class.
4. List two literary elements that are in the sonnet. Mention if it is a symbol, metaphor,
simile or alliteration.
5. Create a question that your group has based on the sonnets. The question can be about
the meaning or form of the sonnet.
Names:
class period:
Sonnet 60
Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity, once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown'd,
Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,
And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe* to mow:
And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.
*scythe= a manual tool for cutting grass
Questions:
1. Look at the first two lines of the sonnet. Does the poem begin in iambic pentameter?
Why do you think the poem begins this way?
2. Read the whole sonnet aloud as a group.
3. For each line of the sonnet, create a short summary of what the line means. This can be
a phrase or sentence. You may also create a doodle/picture for a line instead. Be
prepared to share your sentence/picture with the class.
4. List two literary elements that are in the sonnet. Mention if it is a symbol, metaphor,
simile or alliteration.
5. Create a question that your group has based on the sonnets. The question can be about
the meaning or form of the sonnet.