matching tracksuits

We began today by going over the latest article of the week, looking at a complete of connections that I wanted students to make within the text.

Afterward, we returned to the work of tracking down some of the ways that Shakespeare has characters start echoing each other. For example, we covered this unique echo:

Excerpt 1

Parallel from Play

Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow’d night, Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night And pay no worship to the garish sun. O, I have bought the mansion of a love, But not possess’d it, and, though I am sold, Not yet enjoy’d: so tedious is this day As is the night before some festival To an impatient child that hath new robes And may not wear them.

Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven, Having some business, do entreat her eyes To twinkle in their spheres till they return. What if her eyes were there, they in her head? The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars, As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven Would through the airy region stream so bright That birds would sing and think it were not night.

They’re both comparing the other in terms of brightness so intense that it would overpower the night and turn it into daytime. There are a few differences, though:

• Juliet frames it in the future (Romeo’s death) whereas Romeo frames it in the present. This reflects their personalities as well.
• Juliet begins to hint at the coming conclusion of the play. “Death is just around the corner for them both,” I reminded them.

I’m tempted to give a little spoiler tomorrow as we finish act 3 and Romeo climbs out of the house in a sort of bookend balcony scene: “This is the last time they will see each other alive.” Tempting…

As we move toward the end of the play, I want students to start picking up on how characters echo each other. I want them to see that Juliet in act three echoes Romeo's words in the balcony scene in act two:

Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow'd night,
Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
O, I have bought the mansion of a love,
But not possess'd it, and, though I am sold,
Not yet enjoy'd: so tedious is this day
As is the night before some festival
To an impatient child that hath new robes
And may not wear them.

I want them to see that Juliet expresses her anger in act three the same way Romeo does in the first scene of the play, with a litany of oxymorons:

O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face!
Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?
Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical!
Dove-feather'd raven! wolvish-ravening lamb!
Despised substance of divinest show!
Just opposite to what thou justly seem'st,
A damned saint, an honourable villain!
O nature, what hadst thou to do in hell,
When thou didst bower the spirit of a fiend
In moral paradise of such sweet flesh?
Was ever book containing such vile matter
So fairly bound? O that deceit should dwell
In such a gorgeous palace!

I want them to see that Juliet echoes Friar Lawrence when they learn that Romeo has killed Tybalt. She says about the situation:

Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband?
Ah, poor my lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name,
When I, thy three-hours wife, have mangled it?
But, wherefore, villain, didst thou kill my cousin?
That villain cousin would have kill'd my husband:
Back, foolish tears, back to your native spring;
Your tributary drops belong to woe,
Which you, mistaking, offer up to joy.
My husband lives, that Tybalt would have slain;
And Tybalt's dead, that would have slain my husband:
All this is comfort; wherefore weep I then?

He says:

What, rouse thee, man! thy Juliet is alive,
For whose dear sake thou wast but lately dead;
There art thou happy: Tybalt would kill thee,
But thou slew'st Tybalt; there are thou happy too:
The law that threaten'd death becomes thy friend
And turns it to exile; there art thou happy:
A pack of blessings lights up upon thy back;
Happiness courts thee in her best array;
But, like a misbehaved and sullen wench,
Thou pout'st upon thy fortune and thy love:
Take heed, take heed, for such die miserable.

Echoes.

To do this, I've developed what's called a gallery walk: each passage is printed out and put on a large piece of butcher paper. Kids circulate in groups with Post-It notes, making comments about vocabulary, motifs, inversions, elliptical constructions, and, most importantly, other portions of the play about which given passages remind them.

As they circulate, the passages become covered with comments, and students learn from each others' observations. With each rotation, it becomes increasingly difficult to say something original. They have to dig a little deeper, think a little more critically.

And sometimes, a bit of humor appears. While one group was reading this passage

O, I have bought the mansion of a love,
But not possess'd it, and, though I am sold,
Not yet enjoy'd: so tedious is this day
As is the night before some festival
To an impatient child that hath new robes
And may not wear them.

I overheard an outspoken girl -- one of my favorite students this year, though I'm not supposed to have those, right? -- summarize it succinctly to her group: "Juliet just wants to get laid."

It’s funny how much meaning a few notes scribbled on the board can have for a group of fourteen-year-olds and yet be completely incomprehensible to others — to other students, to other teachers, to other adults in general.

Below are the notes from today’s class. The scribbles don’t look like much, but to the kids with whom I’ve been working now for several months, they represent the last little bit (though critical bit) of guidance for a major writing assignment. These few words and abbreviations include notes about organization, notes about planning, notes about content, guidance for self-correction, potential problems and their solutions

We’ve developed our own shorthand, or own codes, or own abbreviations, as I do with every class every year. And it all moves the students toward writing that they would have found impressive a few months ago and now is their new-normal, their new standard.

It’s an honor to be a part of that growth, to play a small part in it.