A How-To Guide for Shakespeare’s writing style

1. A How-To Guide for Shakespeare’s writing style For average high school students filled with guile

2. Step One: Know who Shakespeare is! • How are you supposed to write like Shakespeare if you think that the term is when primitive human beings are threatening one another with long, wooden weapons? • In order to write like Shakespeare, you first need to understand who Shakespeare was, when he lived, what he did, where he worked, how he operated, etc. • You wouldn’t write a biography about someone you had never seen or heard anything about before (at least not without Sparknotes), so you at least need a working knowledge about his life before you can write like him.

3. Step Two: …Read Shakespeare! • If I told you to rap like Foojamiqua, could you do it? No, because I just wrote random letters down and pretended like it was a real person. You can’t rap like someone you’ve never heard rap, and likewise, you can’t write like someone whose writings you’ve never read!Shakespeare is a lot more than Romeo and Juliet; he has dozens of sonnets and a vast array of plays out there. You’re not going to grasp Shakespeare’s style by reading one play or sonnet. You need to read at least a dozen or more of his sonnets and several different plays in order to get a wider understanding of his writing style. • Pro tip: Most dramas, or plays, are split into three categories: Tragedies, Comedies, and Histories. You need to read at least one of each. Some popular plays for each category are as follows: • Comedies: The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Tragedies: Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet. Histories: Henry IV, Richard I. • Famous Sonnets: 18, 29, 116, 130, 135, 138

4. Step 3: Study Poetry Scanning • If you would like to write a sonnet now, • You’ve got to learn to speak in meter true • For only if you understand the how, • Can you begin to write as you must do.The above is written in Iambic Pentamenter. If you go back to the title of this guide, you’ll see that it is as well. • Wait, what’s that? You don’t know what Iambic Pentameter is? Or you know what it is by definition because your teacher made you write it down but you don’t have any %$#!ing clue what it means? • Never fear! Anyone can learn how to scan poetry, it just takes practice.

5. Step 3: Continued • My Mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun • Read the above line. Notice how you naturally say the bolded syllables with more stress than everything else? You may not realize it, but where you put the stress on a word makes a difference. Try saying the word “Jello” to yourself. See how the stress is on the first syllable? Try putting the stress at the end. Try saying “Jello tasty in my belly” with the stress at the end of each word instead of the beginning. • After you explain to everyone around you who is now giving you a weird stare that you’re not an absolute idiot, you’re able to realize that syllable patterns create rhythm! In the above line, every other syllable is stressed. Shakespeare didn’t write 154 sonnets of 14 lines each (2156 lines) like this on accident. He very carefully crafted them this way. • When you have an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, you call that an “Iamb”. Since there are five total iambs in the above line, we say that it is in pentameter. “Penta” means five and “meter” means, uh, well, meter. Together you get iambic pentameter! Lets look at that line one more time, this time split into iambs:My Mistress’ eyesare nothing likethe sun • Obviously poetry scanning is a lot more complex than this. If you really want to become a master of it, pick up a poetry scanning book and study it carefully. Ultimately, though, to write like Shakespeare you can get away with just being a master of iambic pentameter.

6. Step 4: Understanding the form of Shakespeare • So you’ve got a feel for how Shakespeare writes and you’re getting the hang of iambic pentameter now, but you’re not there yet. Next you next to understand the form of Shakespeare’s writing. Remember how earlier I said that every one of Shakespeare’s sonnets has 14 lines? Again, he didn’t write 154 sonnets and accidentally end up with 14 lines in each one. Having 14 lines is part of what makes a sonnet a sonnet! • The rhyme scheme is also important. When talking about rhyme schemes, we almost exclusively look at the end of every line of poetry. Whatever that final sound is in every line is going to be the “rhyme”. • Just take a look at this piece of eloquent and well-thought-out poetry from Eminem and Rihanna’s “Love the Way you Lie”:Just gonna stand there and watch me burn AWell that's alright because I like the way it hurts AJust gonna stand there and hear me cry BWell, that's alright because I love the way you lie B If you read the A’s and B’s out loud, pat yourself on the back for officially failing at life and making Shakespeare cry in his grave. Those are to label the rhyme scheme. The first two lines rhyme with each other, so we call that sound the “A” sound. The next two lines are different, but they rhyme with one another, so we call them the “B” sound.

7. Step 4: Continued • Look at this piece of very deep and meaningful poetry from Taylor Swift’s “Mine”: • Do you remember we were sitting there by the water? AYou put your arm around me for the first time BYou made a rebel of a careless man's careful daughter AYou are the best thing that's ever been mine B • This time the rhyme scheme is different. Hey, you didn’t read the letters at the end of each line this time, did you? OK, good, just making sure, because if you did, we do have a guide to writing like a kindergartener that might suit you better. I’m just kidding, mostly… • Anyway, in this case every other line rhymes, so the “A” sounds are on the 1st and 3rd lines and the “B” sounds are on the 2nd and 4th lines. Now that you understand rhyme scheme, here’s how an English sonnet’s rhyme scheme goes: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. So in other words, every other line rhymes until the last two lines. You break each group of four lines into a “Stanza”. Think of stanzas as verses in songs or paragraphs in an essay. The final stanza is only two lines, and they will both rhyme with each other. This form is used in every single Shakespearian sonnet, so it’s important that you use it if you want to write like Shakespeare!

8. Step 5: Learn the Lingo • Shakespeare doesn’t talk like you or me. In the past several hundred years, the English language has changed a ton. You can’t write the following line and expect people to think it’s Shakespearian: • “Man you be trippin’ wit’ yo’ sense of style • Can’t get no sexy ladies with that ‘do” • You might argue that it’s in iambic pentameter, but that doesn’t matter. It sounds like the way we talk today, and that’s not what you want. If you truly want to write like Shakespeare, you’ve got to talk like him, too.Look over the different things that you’ve read by Shakespeare and notice the words he uses that you don’t use. Those are the words that you need to put into your writing. Instead of “You”, say “Thou”. Instead of “have” say “hath”. Add “Est” to the end of verbs at random times. “Thou makest me sick with thine breath of hell” sounds more Shakespearian than “Dude, your breath makes wanna barf.” • To truly sound like Shakespeare, you’re going to have to incorporate his way of speaking and his vocabulary into your writing. You’re never going to have the same vocabulary as Shakespeare himself, but you’ve got to learn enough to sound like him, and learning the common words is the easiest way to do that.

9. Step 6: Start Small • You’ve now got enough tools to begin writing like Shakespeare, but you don’t need to tackle writing an entire play on the first day. Start with one single sonnet. Write it, revise it, make it perfect. This one, 14 line sonnet may be a challenge at first, but it will give you the confidence you need to think bigger. • After you’ve written several sonnets, you might try to write a VERY short skit, which is pretty much a miniature play. To test your skills out, try giving a friend one of your sonnets or skits and tell them that you need help understanding it for your Shakespeare homework. If they believe you, you’re doing something right! Then step up to your parents with the same thing. Finally, try bringing in some of your work to your English teacher and tell them that you were reading some of Shakespeare’s sonnets for fun and you needed some help understanding them. If your ENGLISH TEACHER reads them and doesn’t realize that it’s not Shakespeare, clearly you’re becoming good at this. If they figure it out, though, don’t be surprised if they’re upset!

10. Step 7: Careful Planning for Larger Works • You can’t write an entire play without pre-planning. Even if you sound exactly like Shakespeare when you write now, if you write a play and it doesn’t have any interesting characters or a good plot, it’s not truly emulating Shakespeare. You need to very carefully decide what your play is going to be about before you start writing. Write a quick character biography for every character in your play describing how they act and what kind of person they are. • Only through this planning can your plays stand any chance of working like the complex plots of Shakespeare’s own plays. Without the creative ideas and brainstorming prior to writing, you won’t be able to write a play like you’ll need to in order to sound like Shakespeare.