If they could only read MY subtext.

After discussing Shakespeare-engagement techniques with a fellow student teacher (thanks RS!), I decided to go with his suggestion and try a little lesson on subtext and inflection.

To begin the lesson I put up on an overhead the phrase:

"It's not so much what you say, but _____________"

thinking that of course they would finish it with: "...how you say it". I assumed too much, and the class chanted together: "It's not what you say, but what you do!", or some variation on that. Strike one. Fortunately, this just cracked me up, which in turn cracked them up, so it wasn't a complete loss. I applauded their declaration that actions do indeed speak louder than words, but told them that the phrase I was looking for was: "It's not what you say, but how you say it." They gave me a collective "ohhhhh...."

Pause.

I then asked them to visualize a friend of theirs who is in a relationship.

Pause.

I asked them to think about how the relationship is going. Are they happy? Is the relationship so new that they're all rainbows and sunshine? Do they fight? Are they about to break up? and so forth. I asked them not to say anything out loud, yet.

Pause.

Then I gave them a scenario: Imagine that you are at a party with this friend, when their significant other shows up unexpectedly. I told them that their friend says:

"I didn't think you were going to be here" (this was also on an overhead)

I had several students say the phrase as they imagine their friend would say it, and the class guessed how the relationship was going, based purely on the inflection.

It worked great, and they really got into the subtleties of how emphasis and emotional content affect the meaning of words. This brought me to subtext. After they figured out the approximate meaning of the word "subtext", I explained some of the ways we decipher subtext, and how so much meaning exists under the surface of the dry text. I then told them that if they are stuck on some line in Macbeth that they consider what they already know about the character. What is the character feeling? What is going on in the play? Knowing the context is key to knowing the subtext, and since we are most of the way through Macbeth, they pretty much know what is going on.

They then read some lines from Macbeth, but I gave each reader a new hypothetical subtext, so each reading of the same lines had a different interpretation. They seemed to enjoy the exercise, and I think we all had fun. Since then, I have spiraled back to subtext, and it seems to have helped a little with their understanding.

p.s. I stole a part of this lesson from the book, Shakespeare Set Free.