Decoding Shakespeare

1. Decoding Shakespeare Strategies for fixing confusion

2. 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 theein this sense?

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 • As you read, what strategy can you apply to outdated pronouns?

4. Practice • That in thy likeness thou appear to us! • In your likeness you appear to us! • 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. • 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.

5. 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)?

6. Practice • I would thou hadstmy bones, and I thy news. • I wish you had my bones, and I had your news. • I do protest I never injured thee, / But love thee better than thou canst devise / Till thou shalt know the reason of my love • I disagree; I never insulted you, / But will care for you more than you can understand / you will know the reason of my love

7. Sentence structure • 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. • When reading Shakespearean sentences, rearrange and reword where necessary to understand. • As you cluster words into sentences, you should see that Shakespeare’s sentences can be easy to decode • Your final sentence can be different from Shakespeare’s. His sentence is not better; it’s just different.

8. 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)

9. Strategies • Name and explain your reading strategies for • Pronouns (thee, thou, thy, thine, ye …) • Verb inflections • Sentence structure

10. SONNET 116 • 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. 

11. Sonnet 116 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.