Understanding Shakespeare

Understanding Shakespeare:

The Power of Footnotes and Paraphrase

Objectives:

The students will…

1. Compare Shakespeare’s language to a moderately familiar foreign language.

2. Apply the techniques of reading a foreign language to reading Shakespeare.

3. Translate Shakespeare’s English into modern English by means of class discussion, teamwork and individual study.

Methods:

The teacher begins by presenting an identifiable text to the students in a foreign language. The students are to identify this text through the use of prior knowledge and footnotes. The teacher then guides the students to summarize the text in modern English. The teacher connects this exercise to how students should approach Shakespeare’s language. The students then work on a worksheet with a partner where they apply foot notes and careful reading to decipher the Shakespearean Insults handout. The students share their work with the rest of the class. If not all of the quotes were covered during class, the students will translate the quotes at home as homework.

Materials:

§ Overhead projector

§ Transparency sheet of foreign languages

§ Overhead pen (optional)

§ Copies of Shakespearean Insults handout

Outline:

Translation of identifiable text 3 minutes

Lecture comparing foreign text to Shakespeare 4 minutes

Pair translation 2 minutes

Wrap up and summary of material 2 minutes

Evaluation:

The teacher will evaluate the students’ comprehension of the lesson through the participation of the students in the class discussion, the quality of student responses to the paired translation exercise, and from the homework of the remaining passages to translate which were not discussed in class.

Shakespearean Insults

1. Make thy sepulcher*,

And creep into it far before thy time.

* Sepulcher: tomb

2. Polonius: I will most humbly take my leave of you.

Hamlet: You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will not

More willingly part withal.

3. What fool hath added water to the sea,

Or brought a faggot* to bright-burning Troy?

* Faggot: a bundle of sticks used for kindling

4. Do you amend thy face, and I’ll amend my life.

5. Thou wilt be as valiant as the wrathful dove,

Or most magnanimous mouse.

* Magnanimous: brave, courageous

6. Her beauty and her brains go not together.

7. Do not

Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,

Whiles like a puff’d and reckless libertine*

Thyself the primrose path** of dalliance*** treads.

* Libertine: an immoral person

** Primrose path: easy and care-free

*** Dalliance: to waste time, dawdle

8. Thou wast* not wont** to be so dull.

* Wast: was or were

** Wont: habit, used to

9.