Wrapping your head around and Rapping Shakespeare Sonnets

Get familiar with pronouncing and thinking about some of Shakespeare's most famous and greatest sonnets. Shakespeare wrote in Elizabethan English, the kind of English spoken during Queen Elizabeth's reign, 1559-1603.

Click on "play audio" to hear a spoken or, further below, a rap version for some of the sonnets. With the rap version, after you hear a line recited, say the line yourself, trying to match the pronounciation, the intonations, and the cadence (the balanced, rhythmic flow) of the poem.

The rhythm for these sonnets is mostly "iambic" (unstressed, then stressed pattern) with five "feet" or five "pairs of iambs" in a line, so it's called "iambic pentameter." There are some variations, especially when the "iambs" would force a stress on a syllable of a word that normally doesn't get stressed. I marked up the rhythm, as I hear it, in most of these stanzas in each sonnet, but not all, so you could think about the rhythm yourself and recite the whole poem for us when your group presents.

I took the liberty (poetic license) of separating the sonnet into three quatrains and one final couplet, for the purpose of seeing how the poem is arranged in terms of rhyme and shifts in metaphor and its "argument."

The rap version emphasizes the rhythm and the accented syllables, but naturally there are other ways to emphasize certain lines or images. Feel free to cultivate your own style. The goal is that not only will you get to know this poem, but your poetry reading skills in general will improve. This is called elocution: "The art of public speaking in which gesture, vocal production, and delivery are emphasized." Exploring these sonnets over several sessions should help prepare you for presenting yours with your group. -- Mr. Chamberlain

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