PERFORMANCE CHOICES

One sign that you understand Shakespeare's sonnet is that you can perform it effectively, but it is also true that you can experiment with performance as a way of developing your understanding. You should experiment with different ways of saying the sonnet, but you should also be working toward some one way of reading the poem aloud that expresses your understanding and intuitions about it. Notice that you are not trying to find the one right way of reading the poem (which doesn't exist), but rather the way that expresses where you are in your understanding. The way you read Sonnet 60 tomorrow may well be different because you will understand it differently then. The following steps should help you to find your way of reading:

1. Read through the poem aloud, trying to follow the sentences and also to hear the iambic pentameter rhythm. Do this several times.
2. Look at each sentence and try to grasp its prose sense. Look at notes in an annotated edition like Duncan-Jones.
3. Print a copy of the poem, and underline all the verbs in one color. Then mark all the nouns in another color. Then mark all the adjectives (except a, an, and the) in a third color.
4. Now say the poem aloud emphasizing each verb. As you say the verb, try to picture the action in it and convey that action in how you say the word. Thus the word "make" in the first line expresses the energy with which each wave is moving. We give "make" that force in a phrase like "Make way!"
5. Now give stress to each noun, and picture how it is linked to a verb.
6. Now do the same for the adjectives, linking them to the nouns.
7. Look for repetitions of sound and for rhythmic irregularities; emphasize them in reading the poem aloud.
8. Imagine a dramatic situation in which someone is saying the words of the sonnet to someone else. Think out what each person is like, what he or she is feeling as each thing is said, what they are likely to say before and after these words. Then speak the poem aloud with that dramatic situation in mind. Pick out an object in your room to represent the person spoken to and actually talk to that person.

Of course you cannot include everything from all these exercises in one reading of the sonnnet, but say it aloud trying to convey what you have learned about the person speaking, the dramatic situation, the ideas, feelings, etc. Experiment with different readings until one satisfies you.

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