Transcript Decoding Shakespeare

Decoding Shakespeare
Strategies 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.
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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• As you read, what strategy can you apply to outdated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
O 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)?
Practice
O I would thou hadst my bones, and I thy news.
O I wish you had my bones, and I had your news.
O I 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 structure
O 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
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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.6869)
What sorrow craves acquaintance at my hand / That I know yet not?
(III.iii.5-6)
Strategies
O Name and explain your reading strategies
for
O Pronouns (thee, thou, thy, thine, ye …)
O Verb inflections
O Sentence structure
SONNET 116
O 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.
Sonnet 116
O
O
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O
O
Paraphrase 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.