2 - Sonnet 18 Comic with Shakespeare PDF

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Teaching Sonnets...

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Sonnet 18 By William Shakespeare Cartoons and instructional materials

By David Rickert

Questions: 1. Find three examples of personification in the poem.

2. Let’s take another season: fall. Provide three reasons why you might not want to compare someone to fall.

3. Does this poem have to be about romantic love, or could it be about the love your share with a close friend or a sibling?

Before you Read

Below is the text of Sonnet 18 with some of the words removed. Try to guess which words go in the blanks. There will be many options that will make sense. Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more _________________. Rough winds do shake the darling __________ of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a _____________. Sometime too hot the _______________ shines, And often is his gold ______________ dimmed; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed; But thy eternal ______________ shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that ____________ thou ow’st, Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his ____________, When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st. So long as men can _______________, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives _______________ to thee.

Introduction to Sonnets

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So what is a sonnet? How do you write one? 1. A sonnet is written in iambic pentameter. An “iamb” is two syllables. The first syllable is unstressed and the second syllable is stressed. (The opposite of iambic is trochaic.) When they are sounded together you get a fall and a rise. Penta means five, so iambic pentameter is five iambs strung together. This is what it looks like: he TURNED the FOURteenth GLASS and SAID, “beGIN.” and I had FOURteen MINutes LEFT to LIVE; and I had FOURteen UNrePENted SINS, and FOURteen PEOple WHOM i WOULD forGIVE,

2. A sonnet has fourteen lines. A traditional Shakespearean sonnet has three quatrains (a quatrain is group of four lines), followed by a couplet (a couplet is a group of two lines). 3. Most sonnets have a set rhyme scheme: abab cdcd efef gg. Another might be: ab ab cd cd ef ef gg. Yet another might be: abba cddc effe gg. 4. All sonnets feature a turn. The turn could be a change in tone, a change in subject, or a change in theme. The turn generally occurs between the second and fourth quatrains. An easy example of a turning point you might see in a sonnet would be that lines 1-8 ask a question or series of questions and lines 914 answer the question or questions.

So why would you write something this structured? For one thing, humans are hardwired for poetry. We like rhythm and we like rhyme. Sonnets give us repetition and variety, both of which we like when they are paired together. Furthermore, it gives you a set of boundaries or rules to work with, which we also like. This isn’t to say that we always have to follow the rules, and some poets like to change up the form a bit, just like sometimes it’s fun to make up a game as you go along.

Sonnet 18 (“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”) 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. Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed; But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st, Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade, When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st. So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

1. Chart out the rhyme scheme of the poem.

2. Check the iambic pentameter. Are there any lines where Shakespeare doesn’t follow it?

3. Sometimes poets have to change around the words in a line to make it fit the iambic pentameter of a sonnet or to make the line rhyme with another line. Choose a line in which the syntax seems to be out of order and rewrite it so that it is more like how we would actually say it.

4. Where is the “turn” in this sonnet? How do you know?

The Lesson: 1. Hand out the “Before you Read” activity. Have students complete it. 2. Hand out the cartoon and read the poem. Have students answer the questions at the end. 3. Go over the “Introduction to Sonnets” worksheet and complete the activities at the end.

Answer Key: Sonnet comic: 1. Rough winds shake; eye of heaven; gold complexion; death brag. You can make a case for some others as well. 2. Answers will vary. Sonnet 18 Worksheet ! 1. The rhyme scheme does follow the tradition rhyme scheme for a sonnet. However, students will need to be taught that same words technically rhyme although they don’t sound the same. You can introduce the concept of “eye rhymes” (words that look like they rhyme but they don’t) and “slant rhymes” (words that sound similar but aren’t identical.) 2. This poem works perfectly if read properly.

3. A good example is line 5, which would ordinarily be: “Sometimes the eye of heaven shines too hot.”

4. The turn occurs, as it usually does with sonnets, at the end of line 8, although students can be encouraged to provide alternate ideas. They should look at the change in subject (talking about his love now); change in tone (death is mentioned); the use of words that indicate a change in direction (but); change in

rhetoric (before the speaker was working through whether or not he should compare his love to a summer’s day. Now he seems more definite.)

Other things you can cover: An interesting fact about this poem is that many believe that it was written about a young male that Shakespeare was in love with and not a woman as in my interpretation. Depending on the class, you can bring that up. If you want to do more with metaphors you can talk about implied metaphors, such as the one in lines 5-6. The word “sun” is never mentioned, but that is what is being compared to. Ask students how they know that the “eye of heaven” is the sun, and not the moon, for instance.

COPYRIGHT © 2015 David Rickert.

Printed in the United States of America

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All rights reserved David Rickert 2015. Permission is hereby granted to the individual purchaser to reproduce student materials in this book for noncommercial individual or classroom use only. Other than the heretofore specified limited permission for reproduction, the text of this publication, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronics or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher. The Publisher makes no representation or warranties of any kind, including but not limited to, the warranties of fitness for particular purpose or mechantability, nor are any such representations implied with respect to the material set forth herein, and the publisher takes no responsibility with respect to such material. The publisher shall not be liable for any special, consequential, or exemplary damages resulting, in whole or part, for the readers’ or students’ reliance upon, this material. Thanks, David Rickert

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