Understanding Shakespeare
Essay title: Understanding Shakespeare
Understanding Shakespeare:
The Power of Footnotes and Paraphrase
Objectives:
The students will…
Compare Shakespeare’s language to a moderately familiar foreign language.
Apply the techniques of reading a foreign language to reading Shakespeare.
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
Make thy sepulcher*,
And creep into it far before thy time.
* Sepulcher: tomb
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.
What fool hath added water to the sea,
Or brought a faggot* to bright-burning Troy?
* Faggot: a bundle of sticks used for kindling
Do you amend thy face, and I’ll amend my life.
Thou wilt be as valiant as the wrathful dove,
Or most magnanimous mouse.