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AcTIvITy 4.6
Understanding Shakespeare’s
Language
LeArNING STrATeGIeS: Summarizing, Collaborative Discussion, Chunking, Diffusing, Marking the Text, Note-taking, Drafting
AcAdeMIc vocAbULAry
When you annotate (verb) or
make annotations (noun), you
are writing notes to explain or
present ideas that help you and
others understand a text.
About the AuthorS
Barbara A. Mowat is director of academic programs at the Folger Shakespeare Library, executive editor of Shakespeare Quarterly, chair of the Folger Institute, and author of The Dramaturgy of Shakespeare’s Romances and of essays on Shakespeare’s plays and on the editing of the plays.
Paul Werstine is professor of English at Kings’s University College at The University of Western Ontario, Canada. He is general editor of the New Variorum Shakespeare and author of many papers and articles on the printing and editing of Shakespeare’s plays.
essay
immense: huge
Word coNNecTIoNS
Cognates
The Spanish cognate for annotate is anotar.
My Notes
Learning Target
• Explain unique aspects of Shakespeare’s language (orally and in writing).
• Annotate an essay to identify details that convey the central idea.
Preview
In this activity, you will read an essay and think about the central idea.
Setting a Purpose for Reading
• As you read the essay, underline words and phrases that tell what is unique and challenging about Shakespeare’s language.
• Annotate and highlight unknown words and phrases. Try to determine the meaning of the words by using context clues, word parts, or a dictionary.
“Reading Shakespeare’s Language”
The Taming of the Shrew
by Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine (editors)
1 For many people today, reading Shakespeare’s language can be a problem–but it is a problem that can be solved. [It requires] developing the skills of untangling unusual sentence structures and of recognizing and understanding poetic compressions [combining], omissions [cutting], and wordplay. And even those skilled in reading unusual sentence structures may have occasional trouble with Shakespeare’s words. Four hundred years have passed between his speaking and our hearing. Most of his immense vocabulary is still in use, but a few of his words are not, and, worse, some of his words now have meanings quite different from those they had in the sixteenth century. When reading on one’s own, one must do what each actor does: go over the lines (often with a dictionary close at hand) until the puzzles are solved and the lines yield up their poetry and the characters speak in words and phrases that are, suddenly, rewarding and wonderfully memorable.
264 SpringBoard® English Language Arts Grade 6
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