Shakespeare Writing Assignments
Wednesday, April 18th, 2007I just gave an assignment that might be of interest to readers of this blog. It’s for a graduate course in English Education, so the students are all either currently English teachers or are studying to be. This is an extra-credit assignment for students who need to make up for missing class, but other years I have assigned it to everyone.
1. Translate a scene from Shakespeare (minimum 36 lines) from Shakespeare’s Early Modern English to our American English of the 21rst century. This should be a line-by-line translation.
2. Take a text that was written in the last ten years (most likely a song) and annotate it for an audience reading it 400 years from now who might not understand our idiomatic language or our cultural references. Please choose a text that is conducive to this activity. Minimum 14 footnotes.
3. Write an original piece in iambic pentameter. It can be anything you want, as long as it’s one cohesive piece that is at least 14 lines of iambic pentameter.
4. Discuss your experience completing these three activities and your assessment of their value as assignments in the English classroom.
Does anyone have anything to add to the list? I’m not looking for more work to give my grad students; I’m just starting a brainstorm of writing assignments that would give high school students a broader view of Shakespeare.