Shakespeare as an Exam Problem

This is Unit Fifteen of Analyzing and Interpreting Literature, part one of two: Shakespeare treated as an exam problem, the writer who sits in three bands at once. Unit fourteen closed the drama band and said what remained was one author. Here is this unit's governing idea, and it pays off when his four difficulties are laid beside the four units that solved them: nothing in this unit is a new technique. Shakespeare is examinable as poetry, as drama and as the Renaissance band, and four of the board's ten sample questions work on one sonnet of his, but every difficulty he presents has already had a unit devoted to it, so the work here is consolidation. We begin with why one writer gets a unit and the three shapes a passage of his takes: a sonnet, a speech, an exchange. Then the sonnet, met with unit nine's procedure, with three sonnets read as exam passages. Then the speech, met with unit fourteen's, and an exchange from Twelfth Night where six words carry three layers. Last, his four difficulties, syntax, vocabulary, figures and theatre, each matched to the unit that built the answer. By the end you will be able to say why he spans three bands. To meet a sonnet of his by measurement. To meet a speech by its directions and an exchange by who knows what. And to name his four difficulties and where each was solved.

Three entries to start: why one writer occupies three bands, what the calibration set shows about how he is asked, and the three shapes a Shakespeare passage is likely to take.

Three bands, one writer.

AIL 1401 Why One Writer Gets a Unit

Shakespeare sits inside three of the exam's bands simultaneously. A sonnet of his is a poetry item and a Renaissance item; a scene from a play is a drama item and a Renaissance item. No other writer occupies so much of the paper, which makes him worth preparing directly; no other writer covers so much.

Four of ten, on one sonnet.

AIL 1402 What the Calibration Set Shows

Four of the board's ten published sample questions work on Sonnet forty-four alone. That is forty percent of the visible sample on fourteen lines of Shakespeare. Whatever the full paper looks like, the sample is evidence that he is asked about at length, and the sample is the only direct evidence.

A sonnet, a speech, an exchange.

AIL 1403 The Three Things You Are Likely to Be Given

A complete sonnet, a soliloquy or speech from a play, or a short exchange of dialogue. Each is short enough to print whole. Knowing there are only three shapes means the reading approach can be decided before the passage is seen; there are only three shapes to prepare.

Seven entries on the sonnet: unit nine's procedure, the recurring subjects, the person addressed, Sonnets twenty-nine and seventy-three as exam passages, the board's Sonnet forty-four, and why a sonnet supports four questions.

Measure, find the turn, track repeats.

AIL 1404 Meeting a Sonnet

Fourteen lines, usually five beats, rhyming A B A B C D C D E F E F G G in his hands. Unit nine established the procedure: mark the quatrains, look for a turn at line nine or the couplet, and track any repeated word. The measurements come first, unit nine's procedure unchanged.

Time, love, writing, worth.

AIL 1405 What the Sonnets Concern

Time and its damage, love's constancy or failure, the poet's own writing, and the worth of the person addressed. A candidate who knows the recurring subjects reads faster, because the poem's likely direction is available from its first quatrain; knowing the subjects speeds the reading.

The claims are aimed at someone.

AIL 1406 The Person Addressed

Most sonnets speak to someone, usually with thou or thee. Identifying the addressee is unit five's first move and it matters here because the poem's claims are aimed at a person, not offered to the world. Sonnet twenty-six addresses a patron in the language of service; identify the addressee first.

Four pointable features.

AIL 1407 Sonnet Twenty-Nine as an Exam Passage

Unit nine worked it: a complaint across eight lines, a turn on the word yet at line nine, a lark simile answering the complaint, and a couplet inverting the word state from line two. Four features, all pointable, and each could carry a question of its own.

No turn, three parallel images.

AIL 1408 Sonnet Seventy-Three as an Exam Passage

Three parallel quatrains offering a season, a day and a dying fire, with the intervals shortening, then a couplet drawing a consequence. No turn to find. A candidate expecting a volta in every sonnet would hunt for something that is not there, so do not hunt for a missing volta.

Four types, one poem.

AIL 1409 Sonnet Forty-Four

The board's four questions on it cover inference, syntactic restatement, further inference, and the speaker's state of mind. Unit two worked its fifth line for the subjunctive in inverted order. One poem carrying four different question types is the pattern to expect, and unit two supplied the grammar.

Short, dense, and structured.

AIL 1410 Why a Sonnet Supports Four Questions

A sonnet is short enough to print whole, dense enough that most lines carry a device, and structured enough to ask about movement. Those three properties together are rare, and they are why the form recurs on this paper more than any other; three properties, rarely combined.

Nine entries on speeches and exchanges: unit fourteen's procedure, blank verse breaks, the drop into prose, meeting an exchange, Viola's six words and their three layers, the plan told first, Orsino's opening, and the famous line in its sentence.

Directions, hearers, device, argument.

AIL 1411 Meeting a Speech From a Play

Unit fourteen's procedure applies: read the stage directions, establish who can hear, name the device, then read the speech as an argument with steps. The directions come first because they can change the situation entirely, as they do before Hamlet's best-known speech; unit fourteen's procedure, unchanged.

Short lines, shared lines, closing couplets.

AIL 1412 Blank Verse and Its Breaks

His plays run mainly on unrhymed iambic pentameter. A short line, a shared line between two speakers, or a rhyming couplet at a scene's end are all visible on the page and all carry meaning. The couplet usually marks an exit, and a closing couplet marks an exit.

Check the shape before the words.

AIL 1413 When His Characters Speak Prose

Unit thirteen noted the shift. In his plays prose tends to go to comic scenes, to servants and clowns, and to characters whose composure has broken. The shift is visible before a word is read, so check the shape of the passage first; the shift is visible on sight.

Who knows what, and who leads.

AIL 1414 Meeting an Exchange

A short passage of dialogue asks who holds the advantage and what each speaker knows. Unit thirteen's question about who can hear becomes a question about who knows what, and the answer usually explains the scene's tension, because knowledge distributes the power.

Literally true, and unhearable.

AIL 1415 "I Am Not What I Am"

In Twelfth Night, Olivia says that if she thinks so she thinks the same of Viola, and Viola answers that she thinks right, adding that she is not what she is. Viola is a woman disguised as a man, so the line is literally true and Olivia cannot hear it; the truth is safe because unbelievable.

A riddle, a fact, and a key.

AIL 1416 Three Layers in Six Words

Olivia hears a riddle, Viola states a fact, and the audience holds the key. That is unit thirteen's dramatic irony compressed into one clause, and it shows why disguise plots recur: they generate the device continuously and at no cost; disguise generates irony continuously.

The audience is told the plan first.

AIL 1417 "Conceal Me What I Am"

In act one Viola asks to be concealed and given such disguise as shall become the form of her intent, saying she will serve the duke. The audience is told the plan before it operates, which is unit thirteen's rule: the telling comes first, and here it is in practice.

He asks to be cured, not fed.

AIL 1418 "If Music Be the Food of Love"

Orsino asks for music as the food of love, calling for excess of it so that the appetite may sicken and die. He wants to be cured of love by overeating it. The opening line is remembered as romantic and the sentence it sits in is not; the famous line is misremembered.

Read the whole sentence.

AIL 1419 The Famous Line in Its Sentence

Both of this unit's best-known quotations mean something other than their reputation. Unit fourteen made the same point about to be or not to be. Read the whole sentence, which is unit three's first rule, and it applies with special force to quotations everyone knows; fame distorts the best-known lines.

Six entries to close: the four things that make him hard, each with the unit that solved it, syntax, vocabulary, figures and theatre, and the compression the sonnets and the speeches share.

Four difficulties, four earlier units.

AIL 1420 What Makes Him Hard

Four things: inverted and compressed syntax, words whose senses have shifted, dense figurative language, and unfamiliar theatrical convention. Every one has had a unit devoted to it, so the difficulty is distributed rather than new; here the governing idea pays off, since nothing here is a new skill.

Main verb first, then subject.

AIL 1421 His Syntax

He inverts, delays main verbs, and compresses clauses. Unit two's procedure is the answer: find the main verb first, then its subject, then the rest. Applied to a sonnet line it usually resolves in one pass, and it is the single highest-yield habit for this writer.

Twelve senses, all from his lines.

AIL 1422 His Vocabulary

Unit three worked want, still, prevent, conceit, wit, brave, rude, curious, several, quick, sad and fond, all on his lines. Those senses recur across his work, so the learning transfers from sonnet to play without adjustment; they transfer across his work.

Density, not difficulty.

AIL 1423 His Figures

Unit seven took metaphor, simile, personification, conceit, metonymy, synecdoche, symbolism and paradox. Sonnet seventy-three ran three metaphors in twelve lines; Orsino's four lines run a conceit about appetite. The density is the difficulty, not the individual figure, so expect several figures per passage.

Five conventions, all from unit fourteen.

AIL 1424 His Theatre

Soliloquy, aside, disguise, the play within a play and concealment on stage all appear in his work and all were defined in unit fourteen, none of them by the glossary. A candidate who has those terms reads his scenes with the conventions visible; the glossary defined none of them.

The same compression in both forms.

AIL 1425 One Writer, Two Forms

The same compression appears in both. A sonnet's fourteen lines and a soliloquy's thirty do similar work: state a position, complicate it, resolve or fail to. Reading one prepares the other, which is why this course worked the sonnets before the plays; sonnets prepare the speeches.

That is why one writer gets a unit, the sonnet, the speech, the exchange, and his four difficulties, with the governing idea paid off in four earlier units. You can say Shakespeare spans poetry, drama and the Renaissance at once, that four of ten sample questions sit on one sonnet, and that he arrives in three shapes. You can meet a sonnet by measurement, know it concerns time, love, writing and worth, identify its addressee, and read twenty-nine as four pointable features, seventy-three as three parallel images with no turn, and forty-four as four question types on one poem. You can meet a speech by its directions, read short lines, shared lines and closing couplets, check for prose before reading, and read an exchange for who knows what, with Viola's six words as a riddle, a fact and a key, the plan told first, and Orsino asking to be cured. And you can name syntax, vocabulary, figures and theatre with units two, three, seven and fourteen beside them, and say that sonnets prepare speeches. Part two takes what the exam will not ask.