Unit 4 — Shakespeare in Extract

Learning objectives Link to heading

• I can close-read a Shakespeare extract (sonnet or short scene) and identify form, voice, and one figurative move.
• I can engage Early Modern syntactic inversion and lexical density.
• I can write a 400-word literary essay with sustained close reading.

curriculum framework (“Bildungsplan”) alignment Link to heading

• 3.4.1 / 3.5.1 Soziokulturelles Orientierungswissen / Themen
• 3.4.3.2 / 3.5.3.2 Leseverstehen
• 3.4.3.5 / 3.5.3.5 Schreiben
• 3.4.4 / 3.5.4 Text- und Medienkompetenz

(Sources: https://www.bildungsplaene-bw.de/,Lde/LS/BP2016BW/ALLG/GYM/E1/IK/11-12-LF / https://www.bildungsplaene-bw.de/,Lde/LS/BP2016BW/ALLG/GYM/E1/IK/11-12-BF)

Lead-in story Link to heading

The class read Sonnet 73 (That time of year thou mayst in me behold). Mr. Yilmaz asked: what does the speaker want from the addressee? The class argued for forty minutes. Maja said: for the love to be more, not less, because the time is shorter. The class agreed.

1. Activate Link to heading

Inversion scan. Slide shows a single line: “That time of year thou mayst in me behold”. With your partner, rewrite in modern English word order. Note what is lost.

2. Input Link to heading

Reading — Sonnet 73, ll. 1-4 Link to heading

That time of year thou mayst in me behold, When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

Vocabulary — Early Modern engagement Link to heading

syntactic inversion, periphrasis, metonymy, synecdoche, conceit, volta (the turn), iambic pentameter, Shakespearean (English) sonnet form: 3 quatrains + couplet (abab cdcd efef gg).

Close-reading move set Link to heading

1. Form — what does the form do that prose cannot?
2. Voice — who is speaking, to whom?
3. One figurative move — pick the most loaded metaphor / image / inversion.
4. Volta — where does the poem turn?

3. Practise Link to heading

Niveau E — controlled Link to heading

1. Modern word-order: That time of year thou mayst in me behold → ___ .
2. Match: volta → the turn; conceit → extended metaphor; synecdoche → part standing for whole.

Niveau E — productive Link to heading

3. Identify in Sonnet 73, ll. 1-4: form, voice, one figurative move, the implied volta location.

4. Produce Link to heading

Literary essay, 400 words. Sustained close reading of Sonnet 73. Use 4 integrated quotes + 6 academic discourse markers + 1 cleft + literary-analysis vocabulary throughout.

Sample Link to heading

Sonnet 73 is, on the surface, a poem about an ageing speaker watching late autumn from inside his own body. Beneath the surface, it is a sustained argument that the addressee should love the speaker more, not less, because the time is shorter. The argument is built across three quatrains, each offering a more compressed image of diminution. The first quatrain — “that time of year thou mayst in me behold” — opens with syntactic inversion that places the season-as-mirror image first. The yellowed leaves are not merely few; they are “yellow leaves, or none, or few”, a tightening rhythm that enacts the loss it names. Accordingly, the line “bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang” is the quatrain’s most loaded image: the choir-stalls of a ruined abbey stand, by metonymy, for the boughs themselves, but the ruination also recalls the dissolution of the monasteries — historical violence sitting inside an image of personal mortality. By contrast, the second quatrain narrows to twilight (a single day’s loss); the third narrows further to the dying fire (an hour’s). It is precisely this acceleration that earns the volta in the final couplet: “This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong, / To love that well which thou must leave ere long.” In this regard, the poem’s thesis is structural rather than ornamental: love is intensified by an honest reading of time. More specifically, the couplet refuses sentimentality. The speaker does not ask the addressee for grief; he asks for recognition of what the foreshortened time makes of the love itself. Sonnet 73 is, finally, the argumentative form (Shakespearean sonnet: 3 quatrains + couplet) doing what only this form can — building a case across three increasingly tight images and resolving it in two perfectly weighted lines.

5. Reflect Link to heading

• I can close-read Sonnet 73 with form, voice, and figurative move.
• I can engage Early Modern English syntactic inversion.
• I can write a 400-word sustained close reading.

One thing in your notebook: Write one sentence using something you learned in this Unit.

Exam example Link to heading

Part A — Comprehension (~24 BE) Link to heading

Read twice.

“That time of year thou mayst in me behold, / When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang / Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, / Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.”

1. Modern word order of l. 1: ___ . 2. The tightening rhythm of l. 2: ___ . 3. Image l. 4: ___ . 4. What the synecdoche is doing: ___ .

Part B — Analysis (~18 BE) Link to heading

Read the four lines above.

1. Form: ___ . 2. Speaker: ___ . 3. Figurative move: ___ . 4. Implied volta location: ___ .

Part C — Composition (~18 BE) Link to heading

Composition prompt: Close-read Sonnet 73 in 300 words. Use 3 integrated quotes + 4 markers.

Mediation (~30 BE) Link to heading

Mediation prompt: A 200-word German Shakespeare translation note (Schlegel-Tieck). Mediate the translator’s argument for an English-speaking literary reader. (Source provided in class.)

Downloads Link to heading

Common pitfalls Link to heading

• Don’t paraphrase Shakespeare — analyse what the form is doing.
• Conceit is an extended metaphor; don’t use it loosely.
• Volta in a Shakespearean sonnet is at line 13, not 9 (that’s the Petrarchan sonnet).

Further reading / listening Link to heading

• Stephen Booth, Shakespeare’s Sonnets — accessible annotations.
• Don Paterson, Reading Shakespeare’s Sonnets.

Downloads

Presentation

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Worksheet

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