Drawing Shakespeare’s Sonnets

Lesson Introduction

These two sonnets are a great lesson in the use of metaphor, personification, and paradox—Shakespeare loves to play with figures of speech. In this exercise, students will learn about the structure of a sonnet; how to isolate imagery; how to use drawings to learn about the meaning of metaphors; and how to pay attention to other figures of speech, like personification and paradox, in order to understand the meaning of the poems.

Learning Objectives

In this lesson, students will have opportunities to:

  • Learn about how a sonnet is made.
  • Find metaphor, personification, and paradox in the poem.
  • Draw metaphors to understand the meaning of the sonnet.

Materials and Resources

To teach this lesson, you will need:

Sonnet XV: When I consider everything that grows

Sonnet CXVI: Let me not to the marriage of true minds

  • pencils and paper for drawing

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