9th Grade Summer Packet: Solving the Shakespeare Enigma
You are expected to do the following:
1. Read and annotate “Hunting for Good Will” and “The Shakespeare Enigma.” You may use Cornell notes, three-column notes,
or annotate the articles directly. It’s extremely important that you understand how to properly take notes at this stage of your
academic career. Read the article titled “Annotated Note Taking” for guidance.
2. After reading the articles, plug in significant similarities and differences between the two poets in the Shakespeare/De Vere
Venn Diagram.
3. Read and annotate “Love Thy Choice” and “Sonnet 116.” Apply the notes from “Useful Notes on English Sonnets” to your
understanding of the two poems.
4. Fill in a TPCASTT chart for each poem. Follow the instructions in the first column. This chart is a useful tool when analyzing
poetry. Once you have completed both TPCASTT charts, determine the similarities and differences of both poems and plug
the details into the “Love Thy Choice”/“Sonnet 116” Venn Diagram.
5. At this stage, you should have gathered an immense amount of analytical content that you will include in your comparative
essay. Structure an outline of your essay. You may use the list approach with bullet points when structuring your outline. You
should have a proper introduction, body, and conclusion. Each body paragraph should be a minimum of two chunks (JS
format).
6. All items listed above will be due on the first day of class for the 2014/2015 school year. This will be graded as a major
assignment.
1
William Shakespeare
Edward de Vere
2
Love Thy Choice (de Vere)
Sonnet 116 (Shakespeare)
3
Annotated Note Taking
To annotate means to add critical commentary or explanatory notes or to provide explanations for words and phrases within the text.
Annotating generally takes place in the margins of text or on a separate piece of paper if you can’t write on the reading.
Why annotate?
Unlike highlighting, which is passive, annotating will help you stay focused and involved with your text. It will also help you to
monitor and improve your comprehension. If you come across something you don’t understand or that you need to ask your instructor
about, you’ll be able to quickly make note of it and then go on with your reading.
To annotate:
Annotating can be used in many different ways. You’ll want to decide what type you will use based on your purpose for reading and
the type of text. Ways to annotate include:
1. Underline important terms
2. Circle definitions and meanings
3. Write key words and definitions in the margins
4. Signal where important information can be found with key words or symbols in the margin
5. Write short summaries in the margin at the end of sections
6. Write questions in the margin next to the section where the answer is found
7. Indicate steps in a process by using numbers in the margin
8. Describe the usefulness of the information in the margin
9. Discuss the limitations of the author’s argument
10. Make notes about the reliability of the source
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11. Make notes about the author’s background, bias, or assumptions
12. Summarize conclusions the author presents and evaluate them
13. Describe your reaction to the text
14. Write connections you make to the text (text to self, text to text, or text to world)
Modified from: Keely, Meg. “Annotated Text.” The Basics of Effective Learning. Bucks County Community College,
1 March 1999. Web. 20 June 2009. < http://www.bucks.edu/~specpop/annotate.htm>.
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Hunting for good Will
Will the real Shakespeare please stand up?
BY MICHAEL SATCHELL
LONDON–Among the crowds enjoying the summer productions of Hamlet and The Tempest at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, few are
likely to question who wrote the 38 plays, two long poems, and 154 sonnets that make up the West's greatest canon of literary genius.
Conventional wisdom points to the Stratford merchant and supposed Globe actor, born to an illiterate glove maker in 1564 and
baptized Gulielmus Shakspere. But there is growing circumstantial evidence that the Bard may be an Elizabethan courtier and author,
the Earl of Oxford.
The authorship question has been pondered since the 1780s, when the Rev. James Wilmot spent four fruitless years trying to link the
Stratford man to the works attributed to him. Today, those who believe that Shakspere was the author have no definitive proof but
instead point to Hamlet's declaration: "The play's the thing." Disbelievers, borrowing from The Rape of Lucrece, are eager "to unmask
falsehood and bring truth to light." Charles Francis Topham de Vere Beauclerk, the Earl of Burford and direct descendant of Edward
de Vere (1550-1604), the 17th Earl of Oxford, believes his ancestor wrote the plays under the hyphenated pseudonym "William
Shake-speare." Declares his lordship, curator of the de Vere library and a leading Oxford proponent: "Academics have an enormous
vested interest in Shakespeare: For them, the issue is not literary or historical, but political. Their man is a flimsy cardboard cutout."
The debate hums on both sides of the Atlantic, and over the years many have expressed doubt in Shakespeare's authorship. Skeptics
range from Walt Whitman, Henry James, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mark Twain, Sigmund Freud, Orson Welles, and John Gielgud to
current entertainment luminaries such as Mark Rylance, artistic director of the Globe, and leading Shakespearean actors Michael
York, Kenneth Branagh, and Derek Jacobi. Even Keanu Reeves has gotten into the act. The Matrix star, who appeared in Branagh's
1993 Much Ado About Nothing, is described by the de Vere camp as a dedicated Oxford supporter. Several Elizabethan writers,
including Francis Bacon, Ben Jonson, and Christopher Marlowe, are proffered as possible authors, but the weight of evidence anoints
de Vere as the leading candidate.
Despite more than two centuries of research beginning with Wilmot, there isn't a scrap of documentation that Shakspere, the
Warwickshire merchant, ever wrote anything in his life. There are no manuscripts, poems, letters, diaries, or records in his own hand.
His will, dictated to a lawyer, makes no mention of a literary legacy and who should inherit it.
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Shakspere at best had only a grammar school education, and he is not known to have traveled beyond Stratford and London. He
probably left the capital in his early to middle 40s, when his writing career presumably would have been at its zenith, and returned to
the humdrum life of a provincial grain and property dealer. How, say skeptics, could he have accumulated the vast knowledge of
royalty, court life, politics, and foreign lands–particularly of Italy, where several plays are set–woven through such a sophisticated
body of work? Whoever wrote the plays and sonnets had a rare breadth of knowledge in numerous disciplines, including physical
sciences, medicine, the law, astronomy, and the Bible.
Grain man. Shakspere died in obscurity and was buried anonymously. Six years after his death in 1616, the first edition of Henry
Peacham's The Compleat Gentleman was published, listing the Elizabethan era's greatest poets. Heading the list: Edward de Vere, the
Earl of Oxford. In this and three succeeding editions, there is no mention of Shakespeare by any spelling. Eighteen years after
Shakspere's death, an engraved monument in a Stratford church shows him holding what appears to be a sack of grain. A century later,
the sack became pen and paper.
Stratfordians cherish their orthodoxy but have scant evidence to bolster their case. In 1623, the so-called First Folio of the complete
works of "William Shake-speare" was published, and the dedications include the phrases "thy Stratford moniment" and "sweet swan of
Avon," apparent references to the author's home. And presuming young Will attended grammar school, he most likely would have
received a first-class education. Gail Kern Paster, editor of The Shakespeare Quarterly, calls the attack on the Bard a snobbish
doctrine that rejects the idea of brilliance flowering in humble circumstances and that underestimates Elizabethan classical schooling.
"The only proof necessary is that Shakespeare could have written the plays and sonnets, not that he did,'' she says.
But did de Vere? The 17th Earl of Oxford died in 1604, before a third of the plays were published, but his supporters argue that they
could have been written and kept under wraps or that the publication dates are inaccurate. He earned two master's degrees, studied law
for three years, traveled extensively throughout Italy, and had an intimate view of court life and politics. A playwright and author of
sonnets, he ceased publishing under his own name in 1593–the same year that the name William Shake-speare appeared on a
manuscript. It's probably a pseudonym, because hyphenation was rarely used then. And the name points to de Vere. His family crest
contains a lion shaking a spear, and, at court, says Lord Burford, he was known as "spear shaker." (Although some believe that he
knew the real Will Shakespeare and simply borrowed his name.)
What's in a name? The pen name was almost certainly for protection. Many of the plays deal with court intrigue and political
corruption and contain thinly veiled satires and parodies of politicians and courtiers. During the Elizabethan era, writers were
imprisoned and mutilated for committing literary excesses or violating political correctness, and many wrote anonymously.
Playwrights were also held in low esteem because public theaters like the Globe were the rowdy province of commoners, the
audiences laced with prostitutes, cutpurses, drunkards, and scoundrels of every stripe.
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There may be an even more urgent reason. The 1623 First Folio of collected works is dedicated to the young Earl of Southampton, de
Vere's son-in-law, with whom he is reputed to have had a homosexual affair. Scholars also see strong homoerotic threads in many of
the sonnets–a dangerous business at a time when such affairs were a high crime.
Mounting evidence appears to strengthen de Vere's candidacy. None is more persuasive than an eight-year study, completed in 1999,
of the heavily marked and annotated Geneva Bible, owned by de Vere. More than one fourth of the 1,066 highlighted passages appear
in Shakespeare's writings–phrases like "weaver's beam" and "I am that I am" and unusual names like "Achitophel." In addition, 29 of
the playwright's 66 most prominent biblical allusions are also marked.
Prof. Daniel Wright directs the annual Edward de Vere Studies Conference at Oregon's Concordia University and harbors no doubts
that Oxford is the anonymous author. Says Wright: "These works are the mature achievements of a worldly and urbane littérateur who
could not tell the world his name." And there's the rub, as Hamlet says–at least for the Shakespearean traditionalists.
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The Shakespeare Enigma
By Peter Dawkins
Who wrote the works of Shakespeare? Indeed, who did?
I was thrown unsuspectingly into this hotbed of debate in the early 1970's, and if you want a comfortable life it is a singularly uncomfortable place
to be. Dogma abounds, both in academic and scientific institutions. They are ruled by dominant people, or groups of people, with dogmatic views
and vested interests, and it is dangerous to question such 'authority'. There are many taboos. To break such a taboo is to bring the vehement and
dismissive fire of authority down upon one's head, and many brave searchers after truth have suffered badly and unfairly from such attack. To
question the orthodox viewpoint concerning the authorship of the Shakespeare works is a particularly powerful example of this. Yet the whole
subject is entirely questionable and worthy of questioning.
The case for the actor of Stratford-upon-Avon being the author of the poetic and dramatic works published under the name of William
Shakespeare is based entirely on evidence that was supplied only after the actor's death and which is enigmatic to say the least. Despite all the
painstaking research that has been done, absolutely nothing has been found in the actor Will Shakespeare's life to indicate him as the author, or
indeed as having written anything at all. This in itself is extraordinary and invites many questions. Moreover, people in Shakespeare's day were
already questioning the authorship and suggesting who the author might really have been.
When one looks carefully at the evidence that is supposed to indicate Will Shakespeare as the author Shakespeare, then the questions come thick
and fast. The evidence is contained in the 1623 Shakespeare First Folio and the contemporaneous Shakespeare Monument erected in Holy Trinity
Church, Stratford-upon-Avon. But the evidence is blatantly enigmatic, even to the extent of the Monument suggesting that there were two
Shakespeares, the actor and the author.
The Folio alerts us strongly in its opening pages to an enigma, a secret. The engraved portrait on the title page carefully depicts Shakespeare with a
doublet that has two left shoulders, one seen from the front and one from the back. This is not accidental. Left-handedness was used to signify
something that was cryptic, concealed. Ben Jonson's equally cryptic poem prefacing the portrait suggests the same - all is not what it seems.
These are three clues, left deliberately for us to discover. There is something hidden that the authors of this mystery want us to find, but not to
discover it too easily or quickly. By following the clues it is soon possible to see that it is a well-laid treasure trail or game of hide-and-seek. That
which is hidden is the truth, and this truth is not only about the authorship of the Shakespeare works but also about many other remarkable and
important things. In fact, ultimately it becomes a way to lead us to the Truth itself. It is a veritable mystery, and we can, if we want to, become
actors and initiates in it.
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Love Thy Choice
Sonnet 116
By Edward de Vere
By William Shakespeare
Who taught thee first to sigh, alas, my heart ?
Who taught thy tongue the woeful words of plaint ?
Who filled your eyes with tears of bitter smart ?
Who gave thee grief and made thy joys to faint ?
Who first did paint with colours pale thy face ?
Who first did break thy sleeps of quiet rest ?
Above the rest in court who gave thee grace ?
Who made thee strive in honour to be best ?
In constant truth to bide so firm and sure,
To scorn the world regarding but thy friends ?
With patient mind each passion to endure,
In one desire to settle to the end ?
Love then thy choice wherein such choice thou bind,
As nought but death may ever change thy mind.
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Useful Notes on English/Shakespearean Sonnets:

A sonnet is a single-stanza lyrical poem containing fourteen lines written in iambic pentameter (five feet, unstressed/stressed syllables).

The English sonnet was made famous by English poet William Shakespeare.

An English sonnet is divided into three quatrains (4 lines) and a final couplet (2 lines).

The rhyme scheme of an English sonnet is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.

The structure of an English sonnet is a step-by-step progression of ideas that is either summarized or reversed by the final couplet.
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TPCASTT Template for “Love Thy Choice”
TPCASTT: Poem Analysis Method: Title, Paraphrase, Connotation, Attitude, Shift(s), Title Revisited and Theme
Title: Before you even think about reading
the poetry or trying to analyze it, speculate
on what you think the poem might be about
based upon the title. Often times, authors
conceal meaning and give clues in the title.
Jot down what you think this poem will be
about…
Paraphrase: Before you begin thinking
about meaning or trying to analyze the
poem, don't overlook the literal meaning of
the poem. One of the biggest problems that
students often make
in poetry analysis is jumping to conclusions
before understanding what is taking place in
the poem. When you paraphrase a poem,
write in your own words exactly what
happens in the poem. Look at the number of
sentences in the poem—your paraphrase
should have exactly the same number. This
technique is especially helpful for poems
11
written in the 17th and 19th centuries.
Sometimes your teacher may allow you to
summarize what happens in the poem. Make
sure that you understand the difference
between a paraphrase and a summary.
Connotation: Although this term usually
refers solely to the emotional overtones of
word choice, for
this approach the term refers to any and all
poetic devices, focusing on how such
devices contribute to the meaning, the
effect, or both, of a poem. You may
consider imagery, figures of speech (simile,
metaphor, personification, symbolism, etc),
diction, point of view, and sound devices
(alliteration, onomatopoeia, rhythm, and
rhyme). It is not necessary that you identify
all the poetic devices within the poem. The
ones you do identify should be seen as a
way of supporting the conclusions you are
going to draw about the poem.
Attitude: Having examined the poem's
devices and clues closely, you are now
ready to explore the multiple attitudes that
may be present in the poem. Examination of
12
diction, images, and details suggests the
speaker's attitude and contributes to
understanding. Remember that usually the
tone or attitude cannot be named with a
single word Think complexity.
Shift: Rarely does a poem begin and end
the poetic experience in the same place. As
is true
of most of us, the poet's understanding of an
experience is a gradual realization, and the
poem is a reflection of that understanding or
insight. Watch for the following keys to
shifts:
• key words, (but, yet, however, although)
• punctuation (dashes, periods, colons,
ellipsis)
• stanza divisions
• changes in line or stanza length or both
• irony
• changes in sound that may indicate
changes in meaning
• changes in diction
13
Title Revisited: Now look at the title again,
but this time on an interpretive level. What
new insight does the title provide in
understanding the poem.
Theme: What is the poem saying about the
human experience, motivation, or
condition? What subject or subjects does the
poem address? What do you learn about
those subjects? What idea does the poet
want you take away with you concerning
these subjects? Remember that the theme of
any work of literature is stated in a complete
sentence.
14
TPCASTT Template for “Sonnet 116”
TPCASTT: Poem Analysis Method: Title, Paraphrase, Connotation, Attitude, Shift(s), Title Revisited and Theme
Title: Before you even think about reading
the poetry or trying to analyze it, speculate
on what you think the poem might be about
based upon the title. Often times, authors
conceal meaning and give clues in the title.
Jot down what you think this poem will be
about…
Paraphrase: Before you begin thinking
about meaning or trying to analyze the
poem, don't overlook the literal meaning of
the poem. One of the biggest problems that
students often make
in poetry analysis is jumping to conclusions
before understanding what is taking place in
the poem. When you paraphrase a poem,
write in your own words exactly what
happens in the poem. Look at the number of
sentences in the poem—your paraphrase
should have exactly the same number. This
technique is especially helpful for poems
15
written in the 17th and 19th centuries.
Sometimes your teacher may allow you to
summarize what happens in the poem. Make
sure that you understand the difference
between a paraphrase and a summary.
Connotation: Although this term usually
refers solely to the emotional overtones of
word choice, for
this approach the term refers to any and all
poetic devices, focusing on how such
devices contribute to the meaning, the
effect, or both, of a poem. You may
consider imagery, figures of speech (simile,
metaphor, personification, symbolism, etc),
diction, point of view, and sound devices
(alliteration, onomatopoeia, rhythm, and
rhyme). It is not necessary that you identify
all the poetic devices within the poem. The
ones you do identify should be seen as a
way of supporting the conclusions you are
going to draw about the poem.
Attitude: Having examined the poem's
devices and clues closely, you are now
ready to explore the multiple attitudes that
may be present in the poem. Examination of
16
diction, images, and details suggests the
speaker's attitude and contributes to
understanding. Remember that usually the
tone or attitude cannot be named with a
single word Think complexity.
Shift: Rarely does a poem begin and end
the poetic experience in the same place. As
is true
of most of us, the poet's understanding of an
experience is a gradual realization, and the
poem is a reflection of that understanding or
insight. Watch for the following keys to
shifts:
• key words, (but, yet, however, although)
• punctuation (dashes, periods, colons,
ellipsis)
• stanza divisions
• changes in line or stanza length or both
• irony
• changes in sound that may indicate
changes in meaning
• changes in diction
17
Title Revisited: Now look at the title again,
but this time on an interpretive level. What
new insight does the title provide in
understanding the poem.
Theme: What is the poem saying about the
human experience, motivation, or
condition? What subject or subjects does the
poem address? What do you learn about
those subjects? What idea does the poet
want you take away with you concerning
these subjects? Remember that the theme of
any work of literature is stated in a complete
sentence.
18