1. 1.Look at the extract: does it have a rhyme scheme? Does each line begin with a capital letter? Or are the words closer to natural speech? (Verse, Blank Verse or Prose) 2.Does the extract change between any of the above? If so, what could that mean is happening to the characters? 3.Is there a regular, structured rhythm like iambic pentameter or does it jump all over the place? If it does, what does this say about the characters’ state of mind? 4.Do the syllables add up to 10 between shared lines or should they be left as pauses? 5.Are there any words you don’t recognise? Can you work out the meaning from the rest of the line or do you have to look it up? 6.Is the speech complicated or simple? Are there midline endings, shared or short lines of meter? 7.If there are mid-line endings, what kind of emotions might be making the characters interrupt themselves? 8.If there are shared lines of metre, what does that say about the characters’ relationships? 9.If there are short lines of metre, what might the character be doing or saying in the gap? 10.Do the characters use thou/you to each other? Do they switch? If so, why? Shakespeare Detectives: What to look for...

2. W HERE ARE THE FULL STOPS ? PUCK The king doth keep his revels here to-night. Take heed the queen come not within his sight; For Oberon is passing fell and wrath, Because that she as her attendant hath A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king. She never had so sweet a changeling; And jealous Oberon would have the child Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild. But she perforce withholds the loved boy, Crowns him with flowers and makes him all her joy.

3. MACBETH If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well It were done quickly. If the assassination Could trammel up the consequence, and catch With his surcease success - that but this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all! - here, But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, We'd jump the life to come. But in these cases We still have judgment here; that we but teach Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return To plague the inventor. This even-handed justice Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice To our own lips. He's here in double trust... W HERE ARE THE FULL STOPS ?

4. Enter LADY MACBETH LADY MACBETH That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold; What hath quench'd them hath given me fire. Hark! Peace! It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman, Which gives the stern'st good-night. He is about it: The doors are open; and the surfeited grooms Do mock their charge with snores: I have drugg'd their possets, That death and nature do contend about them, Whether they live or die. MACBETH Who's there? what, ho! LADY MACBETH Alack, I am afraid they have awaked, And 'tis not done. The attempt and not the deed Confounds us. Hark! I laid their daggers ready; He could not miss 'em. Had he not resembled My father as he slept, I had done't. Enter MACBETH My husband! MACBETH I have done the deed. Didst thou not hear a noise? LADY MACBETH I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry. Did not you speak? MACBETH When? LADY MACBETH Now. MACBETH As I descended?

5. MACBETH Hark! Who lies i' the second chamber? LADY MACBETH Donalbain. MACBETH This is a sorry sight. LADY MACBETH A foolish thought, to say a sorry sight. MACBETH There's one did laugh in's sleep, and one cried 'Murder!' That they did wake each other: I stood and heard them: But they did say their prayers, and address'd them Again to sleep. LADY MACBETH There are two lodged together. MACBETH One cried 'God bless us!' and 'Amen' the other; As they had seen me with these hangman's hands. Listening their fear, I could not say 'Amen,' When they did say 'God bless us!' LADY MACBETH Consider it not so deeply. MACBETH But wherefore could not I pronounce 'Amen'? I had most need of blessing, and 'Amen' Stuck in my throat. LADY MACBETH These deeds must not be thought After these ways; so, it will make us mad.

6. KENT Nor no man else: all's cheerless, dark, and deadly. Your eldest daughters have fordone them selves, And desperately are dead. KING LEAR Ay, so I think. ALBANY He knows not what he says: and vain it is That we present us to him. EDGAR Very bootless. Enter a Captain Captain Edmund is dead, my lord. ALBANY That's but a trifle here. You lords and noble friends, know our intent. What comfort to this great decay may come Shall be applied: for us we will resign, During the life of this old majesty, To him our absolute power: To EDGAR and KENT you, to your rights: With boot, and such addition as your honours Have more than merited. All friends shall taste The wages of their virtue, and all foes The cup of their deservings. O, see, see! KING LEAR And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life! Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more, Never, never, never, never, never! Pray you, undo this button: thank you, sir. Do you see this? Look on her, look, her lips, Look there, look there!

7. HAMLET Well, God-a-mercy. LORD POLONIUS Do you know me, my lord? HAMLET Excellent well; you are a fishmonger. LORD POLONIUS Not I, my lord. HAMLET Then I would you were so honest a man. LORD POLONIUS Honest, my lord! HAMLET Ay, sir; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand. LORD POLONIUS That's very true, my lord. HAMLET For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god kissing carrion,--Have you a daughter? LORD POLONIUS I have, my lord. HAMLET Let her not walk i' the sun: conception is a blessing: but not as your daughter may conceive. Friend, look to 't. LORD POLONIUS [Aside] How say you by that? Still harping on my daughter: yet he knew me not at first; he said I was a fishmonger: he is far gone, far gone: and truly in my youth I suffered much extremity for love; very near this. I'll speak to him again. What do you read, my lord? HAMLET Words, words, words.

8. MERCUTIO I am hurt. A plague o' both your houses! I am sped. Is he gone, and hath nothing? BENVOLIO What, art thou hurt? MERCUTIO Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch; marry, 'tis enough. Where is my page? Go, villain, fetch a surgeon. Exit Page ROMEO Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much. MERCUTIO No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door; but 'tis enough,'twill serve: ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man. I am peppered, I warrant, for this world. A plague o' both your houses! 'Zounds, a dog, a rat, a mouse, a cat, to scratch a man to death! a braggart, a rogue, a villain, that fights by the book of arithmetic! Why the devil came you between us? I was hurt under your arm. ROMEO I thought all for the best. MERCUTIO Help me into some house, Benvolio, Or I shall faint. A plague o' both your houses! They have made worms' meat of me: I have it, And soundly too: your houses!

9. LORD POLONIUS What is the matter, my lord? HAMLET Between who? LORD POLONIUS I mean, the matter that you read, my lord. HAMLET Slanders, sir: for the satirical rogue says here that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and plum-tree gum and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams: all which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down, for yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if like a crab you could go backward. LORD POLONIUS [Aside] Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't. Will you walk out of the air, my lord? HAMLET Into my grave. LORD POLONIUS Indeed, that is out o' the air. Aside How pregnant sometimes his replies are! a happiness that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of. I will leave him, and suddenly contrive the means of meeting between him and my daughter.--My honourable lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you. HAMLET You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will more willingly part withal: except my life, except my life, except my life. LORD POLONIUS Fare you well, my lord. HAMLET These tedious old fools!

10. HAMLET O, that this too too solid flesh would melt Thaw and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God! How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden, That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely. That it should come to this! But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two: So excellent a king; that was, to this, Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother That he might not beteem the winds of heaven Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth! Must I remember? why, she would hang on him, As if increase of appetite had grown By what it fed on: and yet, within a month-- Let me not think on't--Frailty, thy name is woman!-- A little month, or ere those shoes were old With which she follow'd my poor father's body, Like Niobe, all tears:--why she, even she-- O, God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason, Would have mourn'd longer--married with my uncle, My father's brother, but no more like my father Than I to Hercules: within a month: Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears Had left the flushing in her galled eyes, She married. O, most wicked speed, to post With such dexterity to incestuous sheets! It is not nor it cannot come to good: But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue