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• As you read, what strategy can you apply to outdated pronouns?

PracticeO That in thy likeness thou appear to us!O In your likeness you appear to us!O 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.

O 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)?

PracticeOI would thou hadst my bones, and I thy news.

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

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

O 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 structureO 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.

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

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

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

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)

StrategiesO Name and explain your reading

strategies for O Pronouns (thee, thou, thy, thine, ye

…)O Verb inflectionsO Sentence structure

SONNET 116

O Let me not to the marriage of true mindsAdmit impediments. Love is not loveWhich 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. 

Sonnet 116Paraphrase of SONNET 116

O(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. O(2-3) Love isn't really love if it changes when we notice our beloved has changed. O(4-5) Love doesn't vary when someone tries to lure us away from our beloved. O(5-6) No way! Love is like a rock, and storms can't undermine it. O(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. O(9-10) Love doesn't vary with time, even if the glow of youthfulness passes from our beloved's face. O(11-12) Love doesn't vary because of time; it stays constant even until death. O(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.