Shakespeare in a Nutshell

Hello and welcome, friends! Today we're talking about Shakespeare. If you're interested in a brief summary of his life, check out the hyperlink.

I want to start by saying that everyone, English buff or not, should write a Shakespearean sonnet before they die. It actually makes for an awesome writing exercise. Because of that, in addition to regular comments, I'd like to ask everyone to give it a shot, and post your finished work here. As a follow-up to this post, I'll publish a collection of your sonnets in one week.

Writing this kind of poem is challenging and confusing, even for those of us who do it all the time. I'll take a moment to guide you through the process.

We'll start simple. First, we need a four line stanza, otherwise known as a quatrain. For now we'll ignore the structure business, and just work on this.

This morning I rose;
Bathed and brushed and duly ate-
I scrubbed and dried my dirty plate,
And wrote to friends on blogspot.

This is a quatrain. Now we need to change things around a little bit. First, it's important that the rhyme scheme be ABAB, meaning that the first and third line rhyme with one another, and the second and fourth lines rhyme with one another. You don't need any internal rhyme, we're strictly talking about the last word of each line. Here's what the new quatrain looks like:

This morning I rose in sticky hot,
then bathed and brushed and duly ate.
I stretched my muscles firmly taught,
then scrubbed and dried my dirty plate.

Voila! Hot, ate, taught, plate. ABAB. This is the stuff of legend. Now comes the slightly more complicated stuff. It really isn't that bad, I promise. for this, we need to understand stressed and unstressed syllables. This is really just based on inflection in regular speech, so let me demonstrate what I'm talking about with my first line:

this MORning i ROSE in STIcky HOT

Do you hear it? The beat is thrown off because the the second half of the word "morning" and the word "I" are both unstressed in speech, and when they are back-to-back, the line sounds a little weird. The momentum is thrown off! Shakespeare used a certain kind of pattern quite often in his work called iambic pentameter. I know, it's a terribly confusing couple of words. First, we need to understand what in the world an iamb is.

What we did with my first line is basically called scansion. This is a flashy term for the strategy we use to mark stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry. There's a little mark for stressed, and a different mark for unstressed (here we simply used capital letters for stressed and lower-case for unstressed). We "scan" the entire line, marking syllables as we go. We name the patterns we see in the marks simply for reference, so in discussion we all know what the other is talking about- like naming an apple an apple, this is just about communication.

An iamb is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. The syllables do NOT have to belong to the same word. Here are some examples of iamb, just so you can get use to the sound of it:

toDAY
i FELL
it HURT
i CURSED
this WORKS

You can go on forever. An example of something that is not iambic would be "Boston". The stress is on the first syllable. That is called something else, but let's not try to learn too much at once. So we have an iamb. Pentameter literally just means "five meters". In this case, one iamb equals one meter. Therefore, iambic pentameter simply means "five meters worth of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable". Let's try one line of iambic pentameter:

I washed my plate today within the sink
(i WASHED / my PLATE / toDAY / wiTHIN / the SINK)

Brilliant. Now we just need rework the four lines of our quatrain so that we have an ABAB rhyme scheme and iambic pentameter:

I washed my plate today within the sink,
and brought my tired muscles out to play.
I stretched them far and long enough, I think
To last me through this busy Boston day.

I know what you're thinking: "You just said we couldn't use the word Boston!!! You liar!" Let's take a close look at the line as a whole. (to LAST / me THROUGH / this BU / sy BO / ston DAY). Althought the word "Boston" by itself is not an iamb, it works here because the meter break occurs in the middle of the word, forcing an iambic pattern. Don't be afraid of doing this, because you can actually use words with several syllables, and that can make your poem really awesome and impressive. As long as you use the dun-DUN, dun-DUN, dun-DUN heartbeat-like rhyme scheme, and as long as you have five iambs per line (for a total of ten syllables per line), you're golden.

Now we've mastered the quatrain. In the Shakespearean sonnet, we need three quatrains. Keep in mind, the rhyme scheme is as such:

ABAB CDCD EFEF

Don't mix rhyming words between the quatrains themselves. After those, there are two lines tagged on at the end. They are in what is called heroic couplet. Using what you already know to define the term, this simply means "two lines of iambic pentameter that rhyme with each other". So really, it's the exact same thing you've been doing all along, except the last two lines rhyme with each other. Therefore, we end up with this rhyme scheme:

ABAB CDCD EFEF GG

You can put a blank line between the quatrains and the heroic couplet, or you can choose to have them run continuously. Personally, I break them up, because it's easier for me to read and separate my sections.

Let's talk style! The first quatrain establishes a theme. It could be anything. The second extends on that theme. "We talked about this, let's explore it a little more." The third quatrain is basically a big "but..." statement. This is where the mood of the poem changes. Some people call it the "epiphany" moment. The heroic couplet at the end is basically a summary of what we've learned about the theme considering the epiphany. This is the "I've learned something important today, and here it is" moment. I'll complete my sonnet at the end of this post to show you a full example, and then it's all up to you!

But enough workshopping for the moment. Let's actually talk about Shakespeare's work. Although I really like writing Shakespearean sonnets, I don't like any of Shakespeare's actual poems. I think they're dated. You might benefit from reading one or two of them to get a better understanding of how to write your own sonnets, but other than that, I really wouldn't waste my time. Really.

As far as plays go, I don't have enough good things to say about "A Midsummer Night's Dream". This is one you should read. You should be familiar with a few of Shakespeare's plays. "Twelfth Night" is decent. "Romeo and Juliet" is a must simply because EVERYONE AND THEIR GRANDMOTHER writes some deviation on this classic. "Othello" is alright. There are also many references to "Hamlet" in modern literature. You can live without reading the rest of them. I know, I know... some English majors or professors are reading this and gasping at the blasphemy, but let's get real. The Bard was good, but he's been gone a very, very long time.

His work, although "original", has also been recreated countless times in much more accessible formats. The language of the original text is beautiful and artistic, and that should be respected. However, just because you're the first at something doesn't make you the best. Did we stop with the first cell phone and say "Hey, its a classic! It's perfect!"? No. We realized that no one wants to walk around with a messenger bag full of electronic stuff and a giant boxy brick against our ears. Literature, like technology, gets progressively better over time as it is redesigned and reorganized. You're free to disagree, but you'd be wrong.

I'd say that when it comes to Shakespeare plays, everyone's favorite is something different. It might behoove you to read a synopsis of each one, or even catch a modern interpretation of one. I find that using No Fear Shakespeare on Sparknotes is the best way to read the plays. You have the original text side-by-side with an interpretation of it (if you're new to this stuff, you'll really need the translation).

I spent an entire semester on "Romeo and Juliet". Most of our class wrote papers. A clever friend and I boiled the actions down to a three-minute skit and acted out the entire thing with wigs and props, each playing dozens of characters, both male and female. All in all, though, an entire semester was far too long to linger on this. Three to four weeks at the most is more than enough Shakespeare exposure.

And that concludes my freshman year of high school. Join me next time for Elie Wiesel's Night. It's gonna be a good one.

You are free to choose a topic on your own, but I've chosen "What happened to you today?" as a loyal go-to. Without further adieu:


I washed my plate today within the sink,
and brought my tired muscles out to play.
I stretched them far and long enough, I think
To last me through this busy Boston day.

I packed my books inside my bag and went
onto the trolley, train, and crystal bus.
T'was with a heavy sigh I did lament
another day in UMass Boston's trust.

Then in a flash I swore my ears did lie-
My teacher sang a song unknown and true,
And though I thought I would at once have died,
I quietly absorbed this something new.

We may be wasting time, our tickets punched,
But sometimes teachers teach, and thanks a bunch.