1. A brief guide to Shakespearian Language

2. Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.

4. Shakespeare manipulated language structure, invented words and phrases, and used wordplay for poetic and dramatic effect.

5.  To create a specific poetic rhythm  To emphasize a certain word  To give a character a specific speech pattern. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVSRm80WzZk&feature=related

6. I ate the sandwich. I the sandwich ate. Ate the sandwich I. Ate I the sandwich. The sandwich I ate. The sandwich ate I.

7. Locate the subject, verb, and the object of the sentence. Notice, in Shakespeare’s work, the object of the sentence is often placed at the beginning (the sandwich) in front of the verb (ate) and subject (I).

10.  10 syllables  Five pairs of alternating unstressed and stressed syllables  The rhythm in each line sounds like: ba-BUM / ba-BUM / ba-BUM / ba-BUM / ba-BUM

11.  Meter: the pattern of stressed/unstressed syllables.  Foot: a group of syllables that forms one complete unit of a metrical pattern  Meter = patterns of stress + total feet per line  Iambic Pentameter: five beats of alternating unstressed and stressed syllables; ten syllables per line.  Blank Verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter.

13. If mu- / -sic be / the food / of love, / play on ba-BUM / ba-BUM / ba-BUM / ba-BUM / ba-BUM

14. 'So fair / and foul / a day / I have / not seen‘ 'The course / of true / love nev/er did / run smooth‘

15. FEMININE ENDING Adds an extra unstressed beat at the end of a line to emphasize a character’s sense of contemplation. To be, / or not / to be: / that is / the ques- / - tion

16.  Verse: high status, great affairs of war and state, and tragic moments.  Prose: low status characters (servants, clowns, drunks, villains), proclamations, written challenges, accusations, letters, comedic moments, and to express madness.

17. The easiest way to tell whether a speech is written in verse or prose is to look at how the text is presented on the page. Verse doesn’t go to the edge of the page, whereas prose does. This is because of the ten syllables to a line structure.

18. See hand out