a workshop approach to:
Shakespeare's Sonnets:
This Powerful Rhyme
Ken Watson & Millard Dunn
This photocopiable selection gives teachers the freedom to select the sonnets they wish to use in class, and presents these in units designed for small group discussion and activity. A unique feature of the book is that it includes, for comparison, sonnets by such contemporaries of Shakespeare as Sir Philip Sidney, Samuel Daniel, Michael Drayton, Fulke Greville, Bartholomew Griffin, and Edmund Spenser.
Follow-up activities include opportunities for students to explore the development of sonnet writing after Shakespeare, to investigate the ever-present controversy about the true authorship of Shakespeare's works, and to consider how recent developments in critical theory might colour or shape how one reads Shakespeare's sonnets in the 21st century.
Dr Millard Dunn was formerly Professor of English at Indiana University Southeast in New Albany, Indiana. He has taught at Washington and Lee University, the University of Louisville, and McKendree College. His publications include poetry and fiction in literary magazines, a chapbook of poetry titled Engraved on Air, and, as co-editor, Quick Hits: Successful Strategies by Award-Winning Teachers.
Dr Ken Watson was formerly Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of Sydney. He has also taught at Cambridge University, the University of British Columbia, New York University and Macquarie University. He is co-editor of the St Clair Shakespeare Workshop Series and of From Picture Book to Literary Theory, and is author of English Teaching in Perspective.
photocopiable
Shakespeare's Sonnets Contents
(NB Those sonnets generally considered the greatest are marked with an *)
To the teacher
INTRODUCTION Reading Shakespeare's sonnets
Unit 1: The sonnet form: a brief history
Unit 2 : Shakespeare's England: Some background documents.
Unit 3: Shakespeare's sonnet cycle
PART I: THE PROCREATION SONNETS
Unit 4: The opening sonnet
Unit 5: Sonnets 2 and 4
Unit 6: Sonnet 10
Unit 7: Sonnet 12
Unit 8: Sonnet 14
Unit 9: Sonnet 17
PART II: THE YOUNG MAN AND THE POET
Unit 10: Sonnet 18*
Unit 11: Sonnet 19*
Unit 12: Sonnet 20
Unit 13: Sonnets 27 and 28
Unit 14: Sonnets 29* and 30*
Unit 15: Sonnets 33,34 and 35
Unit 16: Sonnets 40 and 42
Unit 17: Sonnet 55*
Unit 18: Sonnet 65
Unit 19: Sonnet 66
Unit 20: Sonnets 71 * and 73*
PART III: THE RIVAL POET
Unit 21: Sonnets 76 and 78
Unit 22: Sonnet 79
Unit 23: Sonnet 86
PART IV: ESTRANGEMENT AND RECONCILIATION
Unit 24: Sonnet 87
Unit 25: Sonnet 90
Unit 26: Sonnet 95
Unit 27: Sonnet 97
Unit 28: Sonnet 104
Unit 29: Sonnet 106*
Unit 30: Sonnet 116*
PART V: THE DARK LADY
Unit 31: Sonnet 130
Unit 32: Sonnets 131, 139, 140, 141
Unit 33: Sonnets 135 and 136
Unit 34: Sonnet 146
Unit 35: Sonnets 153 and 154
ADDITIONAL ACTIVITIES
Unit 36: Looking back
Unit 37: The authorship controversy
Unit 38: Playing with Shakespeare's sonnets
Unit 39 . Some famous sonnets
Unit 40 : Oscar Wilde's Portrait of Mr W.H.
Elizabethan sonneteers
Glossary of terms
Works consulted