Lesson overview
Detailed practice
Story - Narrative
Young adult and up
Macbeth
Shakespeare
soliloquy
dramatic verse
- This is an almost foolishly ambitious lesson... which is perhaps ironic given the subject. But nevertheless we tackle one of the greatest pieces of dramatic verse in the English language and build our own version step by step. We talk about the meaning and performance of Macbeth's famous speech, identify possible sources of disappointment in life, brainstorm imagery, experiment with distinctively Shakespearean phrasing, write a scaffolded version of the whole speech and then introduce iambic pentameter. While this lesson is narrowly about learning to write in a Shakespearean style, it also provides a valuable entry into a study of Shakespeare in general.