Mini-Lesson
Decoding Shakespeare
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Key Concept

Shakespearean language can be very challenging for students, even when they have had experience reading it in the past. In order to help students overcome this challenge, teachers must discuss the evolution of language and create a scaffolding for decoding Shakespeare.

Teaching-Learning Strategies

Task One: Say What?

Part of the reason that students struggle with Shakespearean plays is because they dismiss the language as old and outdated. While this language may not be used anymore, it is important for students to see that language evolves over time to incorporate the changes in society.

Once students have a chance to see that some of the language they use may be just as difficult to understand as Shakespeare, they may begin to feel more comfortable trying to decode the language.

Using a part of the play you will be teaching in class, discuss the difficulty of Shakespearean language. Once the students have given some reasons why they feel Shakespearean language is difficult, hand out this conversation between Hamlet and Gertrude(.doc) or (.rtf).

Gertrude's part of the conversation is written in original Shakespearean language; Hamlet's part of the conversation is written in text messaging short hand.

The students' job, working in partners, will be paraphrase the conversation. They can use the following web sites to help them through the language used by both characters.

Absolute Shakespeare Glossary
Lingo 2 Word - online dictionaries and translators
Transl8it.com

Once students have had a chance to translate the language of both characters, take a bit of time to discuss the following:

1. What was the general content of the conversation?
2. Which section was more difficult to understand?
3. Which section do you think would be more difficult for your parents to understand?
4. What is the value in reading/working with language that may not be the same as our everyday language?

Use these questions to help students to see that while something may be challenging, it can still be worthwhile.

The benefit of learning text messaging is that you can communicate in a more efficient, concise way.

The benefit in learning to understand Shakespearean language is to look at how the language has evolved and how poetic language can be.

Most importantly, regardless of whether the characters were speaking in Shakespearean language or text messaging, the lessons learned by the characters were the same and therefore worth studying.

Task Two - Working Through It

In order to help students to decode Shakespearean language, it is useful to provide a set of scaffold activities.

You may want to start by having students complete a Cloze Procedure exercise(.doc) or (.rtf) such as the one provided in the activities for Hamlet - Act I.

This exercise gives students a side by side look at a speech in Shakespearean language and everyday language. Students take part in the activity by filling in important words from the speech.

The next step in helping students to decode Shakespeare is to allow them to look at parts of a speech and try to translate it. Students can do this in Act III with Hamlet's most famous soliloquy (.doc) or (.rtf).

The handout provided requires students to paraphrase the speech in chunks. The speech is separated by idea so that students can see where Hamlet is speaking about something different.

Finally, students should be able to paraphrase an entire speech on their own. They have been interacting and working with the language in a variety of ways; when Hamlet has his soliloquy in Act IV, they should be ready to paraphrase the speech on their own.

As you have modeled this skill throughout the earlier parts of the play, this may be an appropriate time for you to use a simple rubric (.doc) or (.rtf) to assess the students ability to paraphrase Shakespearean language.