Lesson Plan #:AELP-LIT0002
Submitted By: Mary Barton, English instructor
School or Affiliation: Bishop Carroll High School, Wichita, KS Date: 1994

Grade Level(s): 9, 10, 11, 12

Subject(s):

• Language Arts/Literature

Description: The following is designed as a small group activity to help students appreciate Shakespeare’s art as well as reinforce literary terms and concepts. Students begin to appreciate Shakespeare’s genius as they struggle to compose six lines in iambic pentameter, knowing that he wrote tens of thousands in his plays. Concepts Covered:

epitaph, iambic pentameter, heroic couplet, blank verse, elision

Background Information:

Attached to the beginning of the assignment is background information on the epitaph on Shakespeare’s gravestone as well as the burial practices of the day.

Materials and Procedures:

A copy of the accompanying assignment sheet. In addition, classes should already be familiar with iambic pentameter, heroic couplets, and blank verse. Of course, the assignment may be modified in anyway the teacher chooses: four lines instead of six, or individualized epitaphs instead of group projects, etc.

Lesson:

Appreciating the Bard’s Art: Rewriting Shakespeare’s Epitaph Using Iambic Pentameter

During Shakespeare’s time when church graveyards became full, old corpses were often dug up and the bones burned in large fireplaces to make room for the burial of more bodies. Also, it was not uncommon for grave robbers to dig up and strip a corpse after burial, particularly if the deceased was known to have been wealthy. Shakespeare hated this type of treatment of the body after death, so he wrote his own epitaph, engraved upon his stone at the Stratford church.

Good Friends, for Jesus’ sake forbear,
To dig the bones enclosed here!
Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones.

Even to the end, Shakespeare knew his audience, and this little rhyme did the trick. People of the time were extremely superstitious, and no one ever bothered his corpse. The irony to this story, of course, is that while his epitaph served its purpose, it is little more than doggerel, hardly better than verse even the worst poetic hack could write. Who knows, maybe Shakespeare–with his boundless humor and heightened sense of the ridiculous–got a chuckle out of his little rhyme as some kind of self-deprecating joke.

Regardless of the original intent of the epitaph, however, it is time for us to right the wrong. The greatest writer known to the English language deserves a better epitaph, one which pays appropriate tribute to his genius and honors his literary contributions to all mankind. Your assignment is to compose a more suitable epitaph for Shakespeare’s headstone now that the danger of grave robbers is over.

Please follow these assignment guidelines:

Good Luck! And have fun!