Understanding Shakespeare:

1. Understanding Shakespeare: What to Be Ready for

2. Verse • Most of Shakespear’es writing is in Blank Verse -That is unrhymed iambic pentameter -Most characters speak this way -This is heightened language, flowery, not the language of everyday life.

3. Theseus opening lines from A Midsummer Night’s Dream Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hourDraws on apace; four happy days bring inAnother moon: but, O, methinks, how slowThis old moon wanes! she lingers my desires,Like to a step-dame or a dowagerLong withering out a young man revenue.

4. Prose • Sometimes a character will speak in prose which is the language of everyday speech. • You can tell when a speaker is using prose because the writing becomes blocky and uses no special rhythm. • It looks like a normal paragraph. • Shakespeare usually saves Prose for lower-class characters to signify less standing.

5. The gatekeeper (Porter) from Macbeth • Here's a knocking indeed! If aman were porter of hell-gate, he should haveold turning the key.Knocking within • Knock,knock, knock! Who's there, i' the name ofBeelzebub? Here's a farmer, that hangedhimself on the expectation of plenty: come intime; have napkins enow about you; hereyou'll sweat for't.Knocking within • Knock,knock! Who's there, in the other devil'sname? Faith, here's an equivocator, that couldswear in both the scales against either scale;who committed treason enough for God's sake,yet could not equivocate to heaven: O, comein, equivocator.Knocking within • Knock,knock, knock! Who's there? Faith, here's anEnglish tailor come hither, for stealing out ofa French hose: come in, tailor; here you mayroast your goose.Knocking within • Knock,knock; never at quiet! What are you? Butthis place is too cold for hell. I'll devil-porterit no further: I had thought to have let insome of all professions that go the primroseway to the everlasting bonfire.Knocking within • Anon, anon! I pray you, remember the porter.

6. Sonnet • Every once in a while, Shakespeare will throw a sonnet into the story. • This usually occurs at the beginning of an Act as a prologue. • Sonnets signify important information.

7. Prologue from Romeo and Juliet Two households, both alike in dignity,In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.From forth the fatal loins of these two foesA pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;Whole misadventured piteous overthrowsDo with their death bury their parents' strife.The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,the continuance of their parents' rage,Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;The which if you with patient ears attend,What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

8. Music • Shakespeare’s plays often contain songs. • In these cases, you will be able to tell song lyrics by the shorter line lengths.

9. From The Tempest Where the bee sucks. there suck I:In a cowslip's bell I lie;There I couch when owls do cry.On the bat's back I do flyAfter summer merrily.Merrily, merrily shall I live nowUnder the blossom that hangs on the bough.

10. Challenges to Reading Shakespeare

11. Where are the stage directions? • Shakespeare only uses the most minimal stage directions. • We know when characters enter and exit the stage. • We know when trumpets, or music should be played. • Other than that, the rest is up to the actor. • Everything from movement to voice qualities.

12. Personification • In order to make his plays more expressive, Shakespeare often has his characters talk to or about inanimate objects as if they have human qualities, emotions, and thoughts.

13. Hamlet from Hamlet • Takes the skull • Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellowof infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hathborne me on his back a thousand times; and now, howabhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims atit. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I knownot how oft. Where be your gibes now? yourgambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment,that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not onenow, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, lether paint an inch thick, to this favour she mustcome; make her laugh at that. Prithee, Horatio, tellme one thing.

14. Extended Metaphors • To make his point, Shakespeare often uses extended metaphors. • A metaphor is a direct comparison to something else. Ex. He was a bull in a china shop at practice • An extended metaphor just goes on for a longer length of lines.

15. Romeo from Romeo and Juliet • JULIET appears above at a window • But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,Who is already sick and pale with grief,That thou her maid art far more fair than she:Be not her maid, since she is envious;Her vestal livery is but sick and greenAnd none but fools do wear it; cast it off.It is my lady, O, it is my love!O, that she knew she were!

16. Try this exercise Give me the keys.

17. Caliban from The Tempest I must eat my dinner.This island's mine, by Sycorax my mother,Which thou takest from me. When thou camest first,Thou strokedst me and madest much of me, wouldst give meWater with berries in't, and teach me howTo name the bigger light, and how the less,That burn by day and night: and then I loved theeAnd show'd thee all the qualities o' the isle,The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile:Cursed be I that did so! All the charmsOf Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you!For I am all the subjects that you have,Which first was mine own king: and here you sty meIn this hard rock, whiles you do keep from meThe rest o' the island.