Page 113 - SpringBoard_Writing_Workshop_Grade8_Flipbook

Writing Workshop 9 (continued)
My Notes
Prewriting/Drafting
1. With your partner or small group, read the script excerpt from A Midsummer Night’s Dream below. This scene is excerpted from earlier
in the play, when Demetrius is following Hermia and Lysander into the woods because he wants to marry Hermia. Helena pursues him in an effort to convince him to give up on Hermia and love her instead.
Mark the text with ideas for how you could transform the text into a modern version. Include suggestions for transforming dialogue and adding stage directions.
DEMETRIUS: I love thee not, therefore pursue me not. Where is Lysander and fair Hermia?
The one I’ll slay, the other slayeth me.
Thou told’st me they were stolen unto this wood;
And here am I, and wode within this wood, Because I cannot meet my Hermia.
Hence, get thee gone, and follow me no more.
HELENA: You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant; But yet you draw not iron, for my heart
Is true as steel: leave you your power to draw,
And I shall have no power to follow you.
DEMETRIUS: Do I entice you? do I speak you fair? Or, rather, do I not in plainest truth
Tell you, I do not, nor I cannot love you?
HELENA: And even for that do I love you the more. I am your spaniel; and, Demetrius,
The more you beat me, I will fawn on you:
Use me but as your spaniel, spurn me, strike me, Neglect me, lose me; only give me leave,
Unworthy as I am, to follow you.
What worser place can I beg in your love,— And yet a place of high respect with me,— Than to be used as you use your dog?
DEMETRIUS: Tempt not too much the hatred of my spirit; For I am sick when I do look on thee.
HELENA: And I am sick when I look not on you.
DEMETRIUS: You do impeach your modesty too much, To leave the city and commit yourself
Into the hands of one that loves you not;
To trust the opportunity of night
And the ill counsel of a desert place With the rich worth of your virginity.
HELENA: Your virtue is my privilege: for that It is not night when I do see your face, Therefore I think I am not in the night;
Nor doth this wood lack worlds of company, For you in my respect are all the world:
Then how can it be said I am alone, When all the world is here to look on me?
12 SpringBoard® Writing Workshop with Grammar Activities Grade 8
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