William Shakespeare A Midsummer’s Night Dream Much Ado about Nothing The Life and Death of King Richard III

Objectives To read, comprehend, and interpret, a scene and soliloquy from three plays. To relate a scene or soliloquy to a personal experience. To summarize a scene or soliloquy. To build vocabulary To develop skill in using subject and verb agreement in inverted sentences.

Meet the Author William Shakespeare ( ) Widely regarded as one of the best writers of all time. Wrote plays and poems that are the best in the English language. They have endured because of his insight into human nature, his ability to lighten the tragic with the humorous, and his portrayal of kings and queens and scoundrels with equal understanding.

Literary Focus Scenes and Soliloquies Like most plays, Shakespeare’s plays are divided into acts and scenes. A scene is a unified series of action that takes place between two or more characters. The scenes are linked together to tell the story. A soliloquy is a speech that reveals the inner thought of a character. Soliloquies can be delivered either directly to the audience or as an internal monologue, as though the actor were speaking to himself. There are speeches in Much Ado about Nothing and The Life and Death of King Richard III are both soliloquies.

Thematic Focus/Culture Relationships- As you read the scenes from Shakespeare’s plays, look for his insights into human relationships. Shakespeare’s plays were performed in open air theatres in London. The most famous theatre was the Globe, a three tiered circle of seats surrounding a central area called the pit. The arrangement was somewhat like a modern stadium, only much smaller. Plays were staged with very little scenery, and, because they were performed in the daylight, not lighting was used. To provide this kind of information for the audience, playwrights revealed this information of time, place, weather conditions, through dialogue.

The Globe

The Story Behind the Plays In A Midsummer’s Night Dream, Shakespeare added new inventions to tales that would have been familiar to his audiences. The lovesick quartet is based on characters from Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. The Life and Death of King Richard III is based on the reign of this king of England. Much Ado about Nothing is a romantic comedy.

Building Grammar Skills Subject and Verb agreement in Inverted Sentences- In an inverted sentence, the subject follows the verb. Most sentences beginning with here and there are inverted sentences. When a sentence is inverted, find the subject and the verb agree with it.

Shakespeare’s Vocabulary Shakespeare’s vocabulary can be challenging. Many of the unfamiliar words occur often, such as the pronouns: Thou and Thee for You Thy and Thine for Your and Yours Verbs can appear in unfamiliar forms ending in t,st, or th. Examples are: Are = arthas = hast or hath Can = canstwere = wert Do or does = dost

Word Bank Apprehension Confederacy Officious Discourse Censured Adversaries