Journal #6: Hip Hop and Shakespeare

What did you learn today?          

Today we learned that there are many rhythmic and sound devices not only in poetry but writing as well. Writers often use internal rhyme, imperfect rhyme, alliteration, assonance, half rhyme, masculine rhyme, end rhyme, and consent to help the flow and beat of the text. My favorite that rhyme that I believe is very useful and would like to try more is consonance. Consonance is the repetition of the final constant sounds. For example, He struck a streak of bad luck. There is definitely a reaction to it which makes it sound nice, but it isn’t too bold or rhymes like she sells sea shells by the sea shore which makes it easy to use in writing. I also learned the iambic pentameter. Iambic words are unstressed in the first syllable and stressed in the second syllable. There are many others like trochee, spondee, dactyl, and anapest. I think that iambic is the easiest and written the most without trying, but trying anapest continuously would be hard. It was very interesting from our normal lessons in analyzing scenes.

How did today’s class make you think about Shakespeare differently?            

Shakespeare is definitely a well-respected writer, but until today I didn’t understand why he was so great. I respected Shakespeare for his well-thought stories, not much on his language. His language to me was always difficult to understand but thought his queer language was a charismatic point that drew people into his work. However, I realized that many thought and time was put into his script with the use of iambic perimeter. He had chosen every word carefully to not only satisfy the audience with the story plot but the flow as well. Mrs. Pate also taught us that he also chooses very sexual words. My respect for Shakespeare grew even more once I realized how big of an impact he had on the modern world today. Shakespeare made many of the modern language words we use today, especially sarcastic claims. DR. Suess, I realize today just like Shakespeare uses iambic and different sound devices. Rappers today are also like Shakespeare. Using sound devices. If Shakespeare didn't bring those sound devices to modern world Dr.Seuss and rappers would have a very different approach on their work, as well as my respect for not only him but rappers. I regret thinking that till now Shakespeare had just stringed random words together to make it rhyme.

If you wanted to remix the rhyme and/or rhythm of Shakespeare for your summative, what ideas do you have? Brainstorm and discuss a few ideas.           

Today I learned that rappers have a very similar correlation to how Shakespeare writes his works. I was pondering whether I should try a rap battle with modern language using the iambic parameter between Shakespeare characters who are enemies like Lord Capulet against Lord Montague or Benvolio with Tybalt.