Eagles shall rocketh!
•Today you will be
Shakespeare, a.k.a. The Bard, for a Day
• You will need ONE sheet of notebook paper
and a writing utensil for today’s lesson
(name/date/period at the top).
Write down what you already
know about him.
Discuss in your group.
Watch the video…
“Shakespeare’s Life and Times”
and take notes
on your paper.
The Bard…
Shakespeare is considered to be a genius.
He wrote 37 plays and 150 poems in
approximately 21 years and is believed to
have coined over 1000 words and phrases,
many of which are still in use today:
premeditated
heart of gold
green-eyed
in a pickle
marketable
itching palm
Shakespeare for a Day
Make a new word by joining a
Prefix + Root + Suffix = word
Pan+ tact + ism
(the practice of touching
everything, everywhere)
Prefix + Root
Mono + listen +er
(one who listens to only one thing at a time)
Root + Suffix
Ob +Therm+ ist
(one who does not believe in global warming)
Shakespeare for a Day
How Shakespeare delivered insults:
Thou roguish doghearted
giglet…
Thou paunchy batfowling scut…
Now, you try it.
The Bard…
His language seems difficult at first; but
once readers learn to recognize his
techniques, the meaning behind the words
begins to shine through.
In order to maintain his meter,
Shakespeare sometimes altered standard
English in the following ways:
–changed grammar
–played with words
–inverted word order
Brutus found the note.
S
V
O
Brutus the note found.
S
O
V
Shakespeare for a Day
Inverting the word order of a sentence.
Example:
Sean caught the ball.
(subject >verb>object)
becomes
The ball Sean caught.
(object>subject>verb)
or
Caught Sean the ball.
(verb>subject>object)
You try it!
Invert the word order from SVO to SOV:
Ruff fetched the frisbee.
S
V
O
Cordelia cried all night.
S
V
O
Now, write an original sentence, first as
you normally would (SVO), then using
Shakespeare’s inverted order (SOV).
He is known for using puns (words with more than one
meaning; words that are homophones).
The cobbler is like a minister:
he mends soles.
===========================
Fill in the missing words:
Did you hear about the guy whose whole left side was
cut off? He's all ______ now.
I couldn't quite remember how to throw a boomerang,
but eventually ___ ____ ___ __ ___.
There was a sign on the lawn at a drug
re-hab center that said, “___ ___ ___ ____”.
Answers:
Did you hear about the guy whose whole left
side was cut off? He's all right now.
I couldn't quite remember how to throw a
boomerang, but eventually it came back to me.
There was a sign on the lawn at a drug
re-hab center that said, 'Keep off the Grass'.
Shakespeare for a Day
Can you complete these puns?
1. I'm reading a book about antigravity. It's impossible to ___ ____.
2. I used to have a fear of hurdles,
but I _____ _____ ____.
Watch the video…
“Elizabethan Drama”
and take notes
on your paper.
Iambic Pentameter
Put your hand over your heart.
What sound do you hear?
ba/BOOM, or something like that?
Iambic Pentameter
This sound you hear is
like an IAMB in poetry.
It is unstressed/stressed.
ba/BOOM
You emphasize the second “syllable”
over the first “syllable.”
Make sense?
Iambic Pentameter
The pair of sounds (ba/BOOM) is
called a foot, or an IAMB.
**********
When a poem has 5 of these per line
it is called
IAMBIC Pentameter
I see you are hopelessly lost my love.
I/see you/are hope/less ly/lost my/love
1
2
3
4
5
Scansion: breve = ˇ and macron = ¯
(system of coding for meter)
Iambic Pentameter
Now you write at least ONE line
using IAMBIC PENTAMETER.
Mark/Code, using breves and
macrons, your sentence
like the example below:
I see you are hopelessly lost my love.
ˇ ¯
ˇ ¯
ˇ
¯ ˇ ¯
ˇ ¯
I/see you/are hope/less ly/lost my/love
1
2
3
4
5
He used archaic forms of “you” (thou, thy, thine,
thee), often to address subordinates or equals.
You will also see lots of these words in his
works:
dost = does
whilst = while
didst = did
anon = in a minute/continuously/sporadically
Write an original sentence using 3 of these 4
words as Shakespeare would have.
Summarize what you have
learned today about
Shakespeare, then put your
paper in the orange workbasket.