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Romeo and Juliet – Working with Difficult Language

April 27, 2015 By David Rickert 1 Comment

I’m teaching Romeo and Juliet for the first time in eight years and it’s been a lot of fun to get back into the text with freshmen. One of the great benefits of teaching is getting to know a text really well, and I know Romeo and Juliet well enough that I don’t have to read it again.

When last I taught it I felt like there was an inexhaustible supply of things you could do with it. At the same time, I’m a better teacher than I was the last time and I have a better sense of what to do with the difficult language.

Here’s a good example. Here’s Lady Capulet explaining to Juliet that Paris will be at the Capulet ball and suggesting that she might fall in love with him:

What say you? Can you love the gentleman?
This night you shall behold him at our feast.
Read o’er the volume of young Paris’ face,
And find delight writ there with beauty’s pen.
Examine every married lineament
And see how one another lends content,
And what obscured in this fair volume lies
Find written in the margent of his eyes.
This precious book of love, this unbound lover,
To beautify him only lacks a cover.
The fish lives in the sea, and ’tis much pride
For fair without the fair within to hide.
That book in many’s eyes doth share the glory
That in gold clasps locks in the golden story.
So shall you share all that he doth possess
By having him, making yourself no less.

I had the students do something simple: go through the text and mark any word that has to do with books. They did really well with this, although most of them missed “clasps” (apparently, they didn’t have those journals as a kid that came with a small key). I’m not exactly sure, but I believe at the time the Bible was locked so that only certain people had access to it, and that’s where most of Shakespeare’s audience would have been familiar with the reference.

This is also a good opportunity to point out how the No Fear translation shortchanges Shakespeare’s language. Check it out. The extended metaphor is gone:

What do you say? Can you love this gentleman? Tonight you’ll see him at our feast. Study Paris’s face and find pleasure in his beauty. Examine every line of his features and see how they work together to make him handsome. If you are confused, just look into his eyes. This man is single, and he lacks only a bride to make him perfect and complete. As is right, fish live in the sea, and it’s wrong for a beauty like you to hide from a handsome man like him. Many people think he’s handsome, and whoever becomes his bride will be just as admired. You would share all that he possesses, and by having him, you would lose nothing.

Here’s another one I chose. This is when Romeo and Juliet first meet:

ROMEO,

taking Juliet’s hand editorial emendation

If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
JULIET
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.
ROMEO
Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?
JULIET
Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
ROMEO
O then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do.
They pray: grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
JULIET
Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake.
ROMEO
Then move not while my prayer’s effect I take.
editorial emendation

He kisses her. editorial emendation

Thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purged.
JULIET
Then have my lips the sin that they have took.
ROMEO
Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urged!
Give me my sin again.

One thing I never noticed until this year was that the first fourteen lines are a sonnet. Since sonnets were traditionally used to express feelings of love in poetry, this is a perfect example of form following function. It might be fun to ask students what media are used to express sentiments of love today. A pop song, maybe? I hope not Twitter!

Anyway, tomorrow I plan to have students find all the words that have to do with religion. (I’m sure most of them will miss “pilgrim” because of the demographics in my class.) We’ll then talk about why this extended metaphor works by thinking about how someone might say “I worship you” to someone they love. I think it’s also important to acknowledge that the church would have been one of the few common sources that Shakespeare could use that everyone would be familiar with.

Click below for a free intro to Shakespeare comic with activities.

The author of this article is David Rickert, who leads parallel lives as a cartoonist and teacher. When not creating comics out of thin air, David teaches high school English Language Arts in Columbus, Ohio. His witty and engaging cartoons turn abstract and complicated concepts into concrete and concise images to embed content into our long term memories. Let’s face it: he makes boring topics entertaining. Check out his Grammar Comics and more resources to bring life to your ELA instruction at his store.

Comic Myths: Icarus

April 26, 2015 By David Rickert Leave a Comment

This is a brand new product for me, and will be a series of about ten myths and activities. Each one for the low price of $3.50!

Students need to know the ancient myths because the great wisdom of humanity is contained in those stories. Myth Comics: Icarus gives teachers three days’ worth of activities to do with the myth.

Included in this bundle:

Pre-reading activities
A comic of the myth (fun!)
A modern retelling of the myth
Activities and questions with two poems based on the myth (perfect for teaching allusion)
An activity with a piece of artwork based on the myth
Post reading activities, including a narrative writing prompt and research activity
Answer key for everything

Even if you AREN’T interested in incorporating this into a mythology unit, this bundle can stand alone as a way to build critical writing, reading, and viewing skills and are an excellent preparation for state tests which tend to include activities where you read a myth and read modern interpretations of it.

Click here to purchase.

“Icarus” – Edward Field

April 17, 2015 By David Rickert Leave a Comment

Icarus

Only the feathers floating around the hat
Showed that anything more spectacular had occurred
Than the usual drowning. The police preferred to ignore
The confusing aspects of the case,
And the witnesses ran off to a gang war.
So the report filed and forgotten in the archives read simply
“Drowned,” but it was wrong: Icarus
Had swum away, coming at last to the city
Where he rented a house and tended the garden.

“That nice Mr. Hicks” the neighbors called,
Never dreaming that the gray, respectable suit
Concealed arms that had controlled huge wings
Nor that those sad, defeated eyes had once
Compelled the sun. And had he told them
They would have answered with a shocked,
uncomprehending stare.
No, he could not disturb their neat front yards;
Yet all his books insisted that this was a horrible mistake:
What was he doing aging in a suburb?
Can the genius of the hero fall
To the middling stature of the merely talented?

And nightly Icarus probes his wound
And daily in his workshop, curtains carefully drawn,
Constructs small wings and tries to fly
To the lighting fixture on the ceiling:
Fails every time and hates himself for trying.
He had thought himself a hero, had acted heroically,
And dreamt of his fall, the tragic fall of the hero;
But now rides commuter trains,

Serves on various committees,
And wishes he had drowned.

-1963

Bruegel’s “The Fall of Icarus”

April 16, 2015 By David Rickert 1 Comment

I’ve always likes this painting. It’s a great supplement to the Icarus myth, and a great lesson in composition.

The title is The Fall of Icarus, which would make you think that Icarus would be the most prominent image in the composition. But he isn’t. In fact, you have to look around a little bit to find him. The most prominent figure in the painting is the farmer plowing, followed by the ship.

So what’s going on here? Icarus’s fatal flaw is said to be hubris, or excessive pride or self confidence. He was too cocky, so he flew too close to the sun, his wings melted, and he fell into the water and drowned. Game over.

But this painting teaches us a great lesson for when we get a little too big for a britches and think that we are more important than we actually are. Icarus is too self-centered for his own good, and probably believed that the sun revolved around him (in pre-Galilean days, not as far fetched as you might think.) But in reality, our lives matter very little to most people. The farmer never looks up, the ship probably never stops, and life goes on even though Icarus’s doesn’t. It’s a lesson that plenty of self-centered people need to learn – we probably wouldn’t think overly highly of ourselves if we realize how insignificant we are in the grand scheme of things. The Greeks new this, which is we they had their gods.

Anne Sexton: “To A Friend Whose Work Has Come To Triumph”

April 12, 2015 By David Rickert Leave a Comment

To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Triumph

Consider Icarus, pasting those sticky wings on,
testing that strange little tug at his shoulder blade,
and think of that first flawless moment over the lawn
of the labyrinth. Think of the difference it made!
There below are the trees, as awkward as camels;
and here are the shocked starlings pumping past
and think of innocent Icarus who is doing quite well.
Larger than a sail, over the fog and the blast
of the plushy ocean, he goes. Admire his wings!
Feel the fire at his neck and see how casually
he glances up and is caught, wondrously tunneling
into that hot eye. Who cares that he fell back to the sea?
See him acclaiming the sun and come plunging down
while his sensible daddy goes straight into town.

-Anne Sexton