A Workshop Approach to Shakespeare's Sonnets

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