EnglishShakespeare and dramatic craft30 min★★ difficulty

Unlocking Shakespeare's language

Shakespeare is not a code to crack. Once you know how his lines are built, the meaning arrives quickly — and the pleasure arrives with it.

Part of your national curriculum

Reading: Read a wide range of fiction and non-fiction, including whole books and plays, and texts from the English literary heritage
Reading: Read and appreciate the depth and power of the English literary heritage through the study of Shakespeare, seminal world literature and poetry since 1789

Lesson overview

What you'll learn in this lesson

Read and appreciate the depth and power of the English literary heritage through the study of Shakespeare, seminal world literature and poetry since 1789

Key learning points

• Start with the sentence, not the word
• Blank verse and its heartbeat
• Imagery does the arguing
• Soliloquy: thinking out loud

This lesson at a glance

30 minutes
19 parts to scroll through
4 quick checks
Marked quiz at the end
Gentle pace: short sittings with pauses

Words to know

appreciateenglishliteraryheritageshakespeare

Scroll down — the lesson carries on below

Part 1 of 19 · Discover5%

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Part 1 of 19

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Unlocking Shakespeare's language

An English teaching video on this topic from Peekaboo Kidz. Watch it, then scroll down for the lesson.

In a nutshell

Read and appreciate the depth and power of the English literary heritage through the study of Shakespeare, seminal world literature and poetry since 1789

What you already know

Part 2 of 19

Before we start

What you already know

You should already be able to pick out a quotation and comment on the effect of a word choice.

Key words

Part 3 of 19

Key words

Words you'll need today

Blank verse: Unrhymed lines with a five-beat rhythm.
Iambic pentameter: Ten syllables, alternating unstressed and stressed.
Soliloquy: A speech where a character thinks aloud, alone on stage.
Imagery: Language that builds a picture and carries an idea.
Inversion: Word order shifted for rhythm or emphasis.

Learning cycle

Part 4 of 19

Learning cycle 1 of 2

Making sense of the lines

A short piece of teaching, then a check to make sure it has landed.

Explore the idea

Part 5 of 19

Learn

Start with the sentence, not the word

Shakespeare often delays the verb or puts the object first: ‘This sword, unbidden, to my hand returns.’ Rearranged into modern order it means ‘This sword returns to my hand without being asked.’ Find the subject, the verb and the object before worrying about any single unfamiliar word.

Explore the idea

Part 6 of 19

Learn

Blank verse and its heartbeat

Most speeches are written in blank verse: unrhymed lines of ten syllables with a light-heavy pulse (de-DUM × 5), called iambic pentameter. When a line breaks that pulse — an extra syllable, a hard stop halfway through — the character is usually under pressure. Prose, with no line breaks, often signals lower status, comedy or plain speaking.

Quick check

Part 7 of 19

Quick check

What is iambic pentameter?

Quick check

Part 8 of 19

Quick check

A character switches from verse into prose in a tense scene. What might this signal?

Reset break

Part 9 of 19

Pause

That's sitting 1 of 2 done

Stretch, get a drink, look out of the window. There is no timer and nothing is counting down — your place is saved, so you can come back in five minutes or tomorrow.

Stop here for now

Learning cycle

Part 10 of 19

Learning cycle 2 of 2

How meaning is built

A short piece of teaching, then a check to make sure it has landed.

Explore the idea

Part 11 of 19

Learn

Imagery does the arguing

Characters persuade through pictures. A ruler described as ‘a lantern set upon a cliff’ is being praised as a guide and warned that everyone can see him. Ask what field the image comes from — light, disease, animals, weather — and what that field suggests about the speaker's mind.

Explore the idea

Part 12 of 19

Learn

Soliloquy: thinking out loud

In a soliloquy the character is alone and honest, so the audience learns what other characters do not. Watch for a question, a swing of feeling and a decision. That three-part shape is what examiners mean by ‘the development of a character's thought’.

Quick check

Part 13 of 19

Quick check

Which is the best reading of ‘a lantern set upon a cliff’ used of a ruler?

Quick check

Part 14 of 19

Quick check

Why does a soliloquy matter to an audience?

Explore the idea

Part 15 of 19

Worked example

Model analysis

Shakespeare places the verb last in ‘to my hand returns’, holding back the action so the sword seems to move by its own will. The inverted syntax makes the speaker sound as if he is watching fate arrive rather than choosing it.

Common mix-ups

Part 16 of 19

Common mix-ups

Things people often get wrong

People often think Shakespeare's English is a different language. The grammar is the same; the word order and vocabulary shift.
People often treat a soliloquy as speech to another character. Nobody else hears it, which is why it is honest.

Challenge round

Part 17 of 19

Game · Sort it

Which of these are true?

Drag each card into the right column. Tap a card first if dragging is fiddly.

True

Not true

Mastery quiz

Part 18 of 19

Marked quiz

End of lesson quiz: Unlocking Shakespeare's language

6 questions, marked with the reasoning shown. No timer.

1. Blank verse is...
2. Iambic pentameter has how many beats per line?
3. A soliloquy is delivered...
4. The first useful step with a hard line is to...
5. Imagery in a speech mainly works by...
6. A shift from verse into prose often signals...

Lesson round-up

Part 19 of 19

Lesson round-up

Ready when you are

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Do the work

Your written work for this lesson

This is the part you'd do in your book at school. Pick the pieces below, write here or on paper, and photograph anything you draw or work out.

Extract

The last bus

The bus shelter smelled of wet coats. Mira pressed her timetable flat against the glass, as though staring at the numbers might make the 9:42 appear. Rain tapped the roof in small, impatient fingers. Somewhere behind her, a shop shutter came down with a sound like a full stop.

She had been brave all day. She had been brave in the corridor, brave at lunch, brave when the register reached her name and nobody looked up. Being brave, she decided, was mostly a matter of keeping your face still.

Headlights swung around the corner and lit the puddles gold. Mira picked up her bag. Tomorrow she would say something. Tonight she would simply go home.

Original extract written for Good Learning Co.

Reading questions

Find two words or phrases that show how Mira is feeling, and explain what each one suggests.
How does the writer use the weather and the sounds to build the mood? Use a short quotation.
Write the next paragraph in the same style, keeping the writer's short sentences at the moments that matter.

Reading response
Reading
Read the extract again, then write about how the writer makes you feel that way. Use a short quotation and explain your choice of words.
2 paragraphs (PEE)
Extended writing
Writing
Write your piece in full, then redraft the opening so it hooks the reader.
250–350 words
Reading log
Reading
Note the book, the pages you read and one thing you noticed about the writing.
20 minutes' reading

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Photos of paper work, diagrams or working outHow many minutes did the written work take?

Part 1 of 19 · Watch & discover

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Read a wide range of fiction and non-fiction, including whole books and plays, and texts from the English literary heritage
Not looked at yet
Read and appreciate the depth and power of the English literary heritage through the study of Shakespeare, seminal world literature and poetry since 1789