Seeing Ghosts: Storyboarding Shakespeare
Introduction
Seeing Shakespeare means seeing double and triple. Words collide— characters shift in and out of focus.
Seeing Shakespeare means seeing with more than our eyes. When Hamlet says, “…methinks I see my father…In my mind’s eye, Horatio,” he sees through the lens of memory and emotion, while Horatio sees (or does he?) a harrowing night vision of King Hamlet’s ghost.
Seeing Shakespeare sometimes means seeing what isn’t there— Juliet’s waking nightmare of the tomb, Macbeth’s “dagger of the mind,” Henry V’s “kingdom for a stage.”
“Writing,” observes Randy Bomer, “leaves almost everything out, and one of the jobs readers can take on is to put some of the world back in” (528). One of my favorite strategies for training students to see and hear a richly imaginative speech or scene is the storyboard. The storyboard is a natural Shakespearean reading tool in that it requires the reader to attend closely to the words, imagine the poetry, play with the possibilities, and “put some of the world back in.”
Objectives
To read a highly imaginative speech or scene closely, observing the imagery; to explore the connections between imagery and mood; to draw conclusions about a character based on what he/she sees and/or doesn’t see; to synthesize the analysis of language, mood, and character into a storyboard that demonstrates the reader’s interpretation of the text.
Lesson Sequence
This lesson utilizes the speech, “Angels and ministers of grace, defend us!” (1.4.42-62) in which Hamlet first sees the Ghost of his dead father. This speech is a good choice for storyboarding because it employs rich, disjointed imagery to evoke what Hamlet sees or thinks he sees, and it expresses powerful but ambiguous emotions.
Although storyboarding works particularly well with text that evokes images of the supernatural, it works equally well with any speech or scene that begs imagination. Suggestions for other speeches and scenes that lend themselves to storyboarding are listed at the end of this lesson.
1) First reading: Unlocking the surface details
Organize an oral reading of lines 42-62, asking students to concentrate on the vocabulary of death and the supernatural. For example, my students often stumble over words like “canonized,” “cerements,” and “sepulcher.” Discuss and define difficult words; clarify archaic spellings like “corse” for “corpse.”
2) Second reading: Seeing beneath the surface
Distribute colored highlighters. Because the imagery here is so contradictory, tell students to use one color to highlight the positive imagery and another color to highlight the negative imagery.
To scaffold this, model at the board or overhead:
| spirit of health | goblin damned |
| airs from heaven | blasts from hell |
| charitable | wicked |
Encourage students to question the positive/negative interpretations they and their peers make. For example, is “questionable shape” a positive or negative image? Do we need a third color?
After discussing these disjointed images, ask students to imagine possible sounds suggested by these words. For example, what might “blasts from hell” sound like?
3) Drawing conclusions about imagery, character, and mood
Ask students to examine their positive/negative and sight/sound imagery. What conclusions can they draw about the characterization of this Ghost? What conclusions can they draw about Hamlet? Students can respond to these questions in writing and/or in small group discussions.
As they share their conclusions with the whole class, encourage students to “see” more than one Ghost and more than one Hamlet. In his essay, “On the Value of Hamlet,” Stephen Booth writes, “Hamlet is the tragedy of an audience that cannot make up its mind,” and that this is exactly the source of its greatness. “Hamlet allows us to comprehend— hold on to— all the contradictions it contains” (244).
These activities have prepared students to interpret the dominant mood of this scene. Point out that some film productions emphasize the bittersweet sorrow and joy of this father-son reunion (Zefferelli 1990) while others emphasize the terror (Branagh 1996). The interpretation of mood becomes a controlling factor in a production. Imagine, for example, how the Ghost’s costume and makeup would be influenced by a production that conveyed a mood of terror.
Finish reading to the end of the scene, with continued attention to imagery and mood.
4) Storyboarding the speech
Too often, our students approach Shakespeare as consumers instead of as producers, believing there is only one right way to read and perform his plays. Constructing a storyboard of a speech or scene requires students to literally draw their own conclusions about the text and to acknowledge that there is no single “right” way to read Shakespeare’s words. Storyboarding requires students to read and think like producers.
Share with students this definition of storyboards from a reference book entitled, The Elements of Screenwriting: A Guide for Film and Television Writing, by Irwin R. Blacker:
Storyboards are made by sketch artists in the preproduction months before shooting begins. They help the director, cameraman, set designers, and others to visualize key scenes and to save valuable production time. If the script is in the proper form and carries all of the relevant description, the director and sketch artist together can easily visualize what is going to be shown on the screen (92).
See the Storyboard Definition and Directions Handout.
Encourage students to consider using voiceovers (V/O) for some of the lines: we hear a character speak but he/she is not onscreen— what is onscreen is some appropriate visual image suggested by his/her line.
Display the Sample Storyboard of Macbeth’s second soliloquy, “Is this a dagger that I see before me,” drawn in 2005 by Revere High School student Jennifer Pollard. (Displaying samples of Hamlet’s speech in advance may rob students of their own mind’s eye!) Reassure students that it is the quality of their ideas and not their ability to draw that matters. Many of my students produce stick figures with written explanations for what they tried to draw.
Since some students confuse the storyboard format with comic books or graphic novels, I have found it necessary to address some of the “don’ts” of storyboarding. See the What Not To Do! Handout for examples.
Refer to the Storyboard Rubric if you plan to assess student work.
Further Suggestions
This lesson can be adapted to many speeches and sonnets, including these:
- Romeo and Juliet 4.3.15-60: Juliet’s waking nightmare before drinking the potion
- Macbeth 2.1.44-77: Macbeth’s hallucinatory speech before killing Duncan
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream 5.1.1-23: Theseus’s pronouncement on lunatics, lovers, and poets
- The Tempest 4.1.165-180: Prospero’s revels, ended
- Henry V Prologue: No ghosts, dreams, or hallucinations, but a panorama of imaginary armies clashing on imaginary battlefields
- Julius Caesar 4.3.309-330: The brief appearance of Caesar’s Ghost offers subtle possibilities, in part because, as Coppelia Kahn points out, “the ‘monstrous apparition’ that appears to Brutus in his tent on the eve of battle calls itself not Caesar but ‘Thy evil spirit’ and says only ‘thou shalt see me at Philippi’” (224)
Works Cited
Blacker, Irwin R. The Elements of Screenwriting: A Guide for Film and Television Writing. New York: Macmillan, 1986.
Bomer, Randy. “Reading with the mind’s ear: Listening to text as a mental action.” Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy. Vol. 49 No. 6 (2006): 524-535.
Booth, Stephen. “On the Value of Hamlet.” Shakespeare: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory 1945-2000. Ed. Russ McDonald. Malden: Blackwell, 2004. 225-244.
Kahn, Copellia. “Julius Caesar: A Modern Perspective.” Julius Caesar. Ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine. New York: Washington Square Press, 1992.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine. New York: Washington Square Press, 1992.