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Hi, welcome to today's English lesson.

This is lesson four of the "Sonnet 18" by William Shakespeare series of lessons, and today is our final lesson.

In today's last lesson, we're going to be looking about how we write about Shakespeare's "Sonnet 18", looking both at language and also structure.

But before we make a start, make sure you've got something to write with and something to write on, a pen and paper would be ideal, but also just check that you don't have any apps or notifications running in the background on your device that might interrupt you during our lesson.

If you'd like to take a moment to do that now, then pause the video and do that.

Okay, fantastic, let's make a start then.

So, what do we know about "Sonnet 18" so far? Well, William Shakespeare wrote "Sonnet 18", and a Shakespearean sonnet is one of the most well known types or variations of sonnets that we've come across.

"Sonnet 18", like all Shakespearian sonnets and indeed all sonnets in general, is a 14-line poem where the main theme is love.

In "Sonnet 18", like a significant chunk of Shakespeare's sonnets, the speaker is addressing a young man who is the object of the speaker's love and desire.

So let's remind ourself then of "Sonnet 18".

"Sonnet 18" by William Shakespeare.

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? "Thou art more lovely and more temperate: "Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, "And summer's lease hath all too short a date; "Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, "And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; "And every fair from fair sometime declines, "By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd; "But thy eternal summer shall not fade, "Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st; "Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade, "When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st: "So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, "So long lives this, and this gives life to thee." As we can see here, this is a classic sonnet.

It's 14 lines in length.

The first 12 lines are in three quatrains or three groups of four lines, and then we get a final romantic or rhyming couplet to end with.

Those first 12 lines follow an ABAB rhyme structure, that means that each four lines has got two pairs of rhymes, the first and third line, and second and fourth line of each quatrain rhyming.

So what we get there is that the first, third, second, fourth, fifth, seventh, sixth, eighth, et cetera, et cetera, rhyme.

And then that final rhyming couplet at the end, the romantic couplet, sees our couple coming together after the wooing of the three quatrains, and they come together in that rhyming or romantic couplet.

Let's take a moment now to check our understanding of the sonnet so far.

In a second, I'm going to ask you to pause the video and complete the three-part exercise that follows.

"Sonnet 18", the first quatrain.

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? "Thou art more lovely and more temperate: "Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, "And summer's lease hath all too short a date." The key term here is summer's day.

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" This simile is all-important to our understanding of the poem.

Shakespeare here, or at least the speaker of the poem, is comparing his lover to a summer's day.

Something positive and pleasant and enjoyable.

But he says here that his lover is more lovely and more temperate than the summer's day he's compared him to.

He's actually saying that his lover is better than a summer's day.

"Summer's lease hath all too short a date." Here on this last line of the quatrain, Shakespeare, or the speaker in the very least, is saying that summer actually has some imperfections.

It's lease hath all too short a date.

Summer is over too quickly, whereas his lover is ongoing, and his beauty is everlasting.

In a moment, I'm going to ask you to answer two questions.

Firstly, what does the speaker compare the object of his love to? And secondly, why does the speaker say his lover is better? Pause the video now and answer these two questions in as full a sentence as you can.

Firstly, what does the speaker compare his object of his love to? And secondly, why does the speaker say his love is better? Pause the video now.

Okay, hopefully you didn't struggle too much with that, let's see what you could have written.

The speaker in "Sonnet 18" compares the object of his love to a summer's day.

He says, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?", and then explains that he feels his lover is better in a lot of ways.

Why does the speaker says lover is better? Well, however, the speaker also says that his lover is better than summer.

A summer is fleeting and can be too rough at times.

So we have here, Shakespeare, or the speaker of the poem at the very least, comparing his lover to summer, but at the same time saying that summer is too short and sometimes too rough, and the lover is better in every way.

Let's move on to the next part of this activity.

The second quatrain.

"Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, "And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; "And every fair from fair sometime declines, "By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd." Here we see this first element, "Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines." Sometimes, the sun is too hot, so much so that it makes it uncomfortable and unpleasant to be involved in.

Often, his gold complexion is dimmed.

Now, the sun is beautiful on the summer's day, but sometimes the clouds go across, and his complexion is dimmed.

He isn't as beautiful as he could be.

"And fair from fair sometime declines." So it was a suggestion here that the fair summer's day, something that is beautiful, sometimes declines, it becomes not as fair as it once was as time goes on.

The implication here is that over time, the summer is not as positive as it always can be in comparison to the lover, who is always as beautiful and fantastic as the speaker in the poem first sees him.

"By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd." The implication here is that nature changes summer all the time, nature changes summer and trims it and shortens it and makes it unpleasant.

As we know, the summer days shorten as time goes by.

However, the lover himself, his beauty does not shorten.

It remains untrimmed.

And again, in a second, you're going to answer some questions on this and see exactly if your understanding is up to scratch.

What effect does the list of summer's negatives have on the reader? In a moment, you're going to pause the video and decide which of these four options answers that question, what effect does the list of summer's negatives have on the reader? Is it option one, the negatives show summer is imperfect? Is it option two, the negatives show that summer is perfect? Is it option three, the negatives take away from the lover's beauty? Or is it option four, the negatives show how terrible summer is? Pause the video now and make your decision.

Okay, let's see how you got on with that one.

What effect does the list of summer's negatives have on the reader? It is, of course, the negatives add up to show that summer is imperfect.

Shakespeare here is suggesting that summer, as beautiful as it is, is imperfect, unlike his lover, who is perfection itself.

Onto the third activity now then.

Third quatrain.

"But thy eternal summer shall not fade, "Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st; "Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade, "When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st." Here, we see that in the third quatrain, we have the line, "But thy eternal summer shall not fade.".

The comparison to the speaker's lover and summer is implying that the lover's summer, the lover's beauty, shall never fade.

"Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade." Implying that death, the personification of death, can never say that the lover's beauty has faded as he approaches death because his beauty and the concept of him will live on forever and ever.

So, in a second, I'm going to ask you to answer the question.

What does the speaker say about the object of his love in contrast to summer? And on top of that, what does he say will never happen to his love? Pause the video in a second and answer the two questions.

Firstly, what does the speaker say about the object of his love in the contrast to summer? And secondly, what does he say will never happen to his love? Answer in the fullest sentences you can.

Pause and complete this now.

Okay, let's see how you got on there then.

So that first question, what does the speaker say about the object of his love in contrast to summer? Well, the speaker says that unlike summer, his lover's beauty is eternal and will never fade.

He will always be beautiful and will live on forever.

What does he say will never happen to his love? Well, it says the speaker says that the lover will never grow old and start to fade near to death.

He will live on forever through his poetry.

This is something that we see in the final romantic couplet.

This final romantic couplet is incredibly important, and we're going to challenge ourself with it now.

"So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, "So long lives this, and this gives life to thee." Now, as we've spoken about before, that romantic couplet at the end, that rhyming couplet brings the two lovers together and makes the final point in the sonnet.

"So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, "So long lives this, and this gives life to thee." What we have there is the anaphora of so long, so long, a repeated opening to two lines.

And in both cases, Shakespeare, or the speaker in the very least, is saying so long as men can see and so long as this poem lives on, then you shall live on forever more.

It will give you life.

A question then, why does the speaker repeat the line opening "so long"? And what does the speaker say will happen to his lover? Pause the video now and have a go at answering these two questions.

Okay, let's see how you got on with that one then.

Why does the speaker repeat the line opening "so long"? Well, the anaphoric line opening, "so long", emphasises how long the speaker's love will live.

By using breath and eyesight, the speaker refers to things that are constant.

Anaphora means a repetition of an opening of a line.

Here, the anaphora, "so long, so long", emphasises the idea that eyesight and breath are constant things that continue forever and that as long as poetry goes on, then the young man will live forever more.

What does the speaker say will happen to his lover? Here, we have, he says his love will live forever through his poem.

So as long as his poetry exists and there are people around to read it, then the young man will live on forever.

If you wrote something similar to this, don't worry too much if the words aren't identical, then you're following along the right lines.

If you struggled with any of this at all, then feel free to go back into earlier video or earlier in this video and just recap your learning.

Here, we've come across a new word.

Anaphora or anaphoric.

Anaphora is the repetition of a line or sentence opening to emphasise its effect.

In "Sonnet 18", the repeated opening, "so long", is anaphoric.

This emphasises just how long the speaker is implying that his lover will live for.

If you feel that you need to write this down to remember the word anaphora or anaphoric, then do so now.

Okay, chance to recap in our learning now then.

In a second, I'm going to ask you to pause the video and copy out these three sentences, completing them by filling in the missing gaps.

Pause the video now and complete the three sentences.

Okay, let's see how you got on with that one then.

So sentence one, the speaker in "Sonnet 18" compares his lover to a summer's day.

It's the key purpose of "Sonnet 18".

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" Sentence two, the speaker says, however, that summer is imperfect and fades too quickly.

This is also the case in "Sonnet 18".

He's comparing his lover to a summer's day but saying that summer is imperfect, whereas his lover is perfect.

Sentence three, the speaker suggests that his lover will never fade and will live forever, through his poetry.

And that is the key purpose of those last two lines, that rhyming romantic couplet, where he says that as long as men can see and hear and read this poem, then the lover will live on forever through his poetry.

Let's recap "Sonnet 18" then for a moment and think this time about the rhyme scheme.

Now, we've covered this in previous videos, and if you want to go back and spend more time on that, you can always can do so with our earlier videos.

But for the moment, let's just see what we remember.

We have our 12 lines, our three quatrains, and then we have our rhyming romantic couplet at the end there.

Let's just remind ourself of the rhyme scheme.

The 12 lines that form three quatrains are ABAB, so each of those four lines is an ABAB rhyme scheme, or if you look at the entirety of the poem, it's ABAB, CDCD, EFEF.

And then that final rhyming romantic couplet forms a paired line, a GG, the coming together of the two lovers.

Iambic pentameter.

Most sonnets are written in the poetic metre known as iambic pentameter.

Let's recap what iambic pentameter means.

It comes, as we've said before, from the words iambic and pentameter.

Iamb meaning a pair of syllables, and I/amb, two syllables put together as a pair, and pentameter, meaning five lots of these syllables.

So we get five lots of paired syllables, de-dum, de-dum, de-dum, de-dum, de-dum, de-dum.

Like a heartbeat.

Here, again, we see from the first four lines of our poem how this works in practise.

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" Now just take a moment now to clap out the rhythm of the poem as I read it.

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? "Thou art more lovely and more temperate: "Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, "And summer's lease hath all too short a date." We can see there that repetition of that beat, of that ba-bum beat, that idea of this being a representation of a heartbeat, and that's it being symbolic of love itself.

This is exactly the reason why Shakespeare uses iambic pentameter in his poetry, to symbolise that human heartbeat and that very human emotion to do with his poetry.

True or false opportunity now then, please.

Four questions, I want you to decide which of them is true and which of them is false.

Sentence A, an ABAB rhyme scheme mimics the wooing of the two lovers.

Sentence B, an ABAB rhyme scheme mimics a nursery rhyme.

Sentence C, iambic pentameter mimics a beating heart, and sentence D, romantic couplets imply the coming together of the two lovers.

Decide which of these is true and which of these is false as you pause the video.

Okay, let's have a look at how you've done with that one.

So, only one false this time around, so let's have a little look at what we have here.

Sentence A, an ABAB rhyme scheme mimics the wooing of the two lovers.

That's exactly what we've said before.

Those three quatrains, those three sets of four lines with an ABAB rhyme scheme, it's like a pair of lovers, a pair of rhymed lines, but they're not quite coming together, they're wooing each other, dancing around each other.

Sentence B, an ABAB rhyme scheme mimics a nursery rhyme.

Some nursery rhymes do follow an ABAB rhyme scheme, but not all.

Most of them use rhyming couplets, and as a result of that, this cannot be true.

Sentence C, iambic pentameter mimics a beating of a human heart.

Well, we talked about that just a moment ago.

It's the ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum.

It does mimic the beating of the human heart and therefore represent love.

And sentence D, the romantic couplets, the rhyming couplets, at the end of the stanza, the end of the sonnet, they represent the coming together of the two lovers, the culmination or the climax of the actual sonnet itself.

Also true.

Hopefully, you got all three of those.

If you're not 100% sure, then you can always go back and recap your learning.

So, in a moment, we're going to pause the video and we're going to complete the three-part exercise that follows.

Now, this is the main chunk of our activity here, so what we've done is completed the first question for you as an example.

Make sure that you have a good look at it and make sure you understand exactly what you need to do.

So, part one of our three-part exercise.

In a moment, you're going to copy out the sentences below, adding a quotation from your notes as evidence to back up the point.

However, this time, we are going to do the first one for you.

So that first quotation we're filling in, so please follow through as we talk about this now.

If you'd like to copy out the initial statement, the quotation, and then the inference that we have in green at the bottom there, then that might help you later on as well.

The speaker compares his lover to a summer's day, but suggests that while summer is imperfect, his lover is perfect.

This statement is at the very heart of the purpose of "Sonnet 18".

The speaker says that summer is imperfect, where his lover is perfect.

However, both are beautiful and pleasant to be involved in.

We need a quotation here from your learning so far to back up what you say, but we've said our inference here is this suggests that the speaker thinks that his lover is better than a summer's day and highlights his love.

So what we now need to do is look at the poem itself and think about which quotation that we've encountered so far would fit in there.

Now, you've come across that poem several times so far this lesson, but if you need to go back in the video and recover it again, it was just a little while ago.

Let's see what we could have done.

The speaker compares his love to a summer's day, but suggest that while is imperfect, his lover is perfect.

"Thou art more lovely and more temperate." This suggests that the speaker thinks that his lover is better than a summer's day and highlights his love.

Here, what we have is this key quotation, "Thou art more lovely and more temperate.".

That keyword, more, suggests that he is better, he is more beautiful, he is more pleasant than a summer's day.

Let's have a go at sentence or question number two now, and see if you can do this yourself.

So in a second, you're going to pause the video, you're going to copy out the statement at the top and the inference at the bottom, but this time, you're going to add your own quotation from "Sonnet 18" that explains the point we're making.

The speaker suggests that while summer is short-lived and fleeting, his lover's beauty will never fade.

Find a quotation here that fits in.

This contrast suggests that while the speaker's lover is beautiful as a summer's day, his beauty is eternal and will not fade, unlike the beauty of summer.

Pause the video and find a quotation now.

If you need to, you can go back to earlier in the video where we can see the full poem in front of you.

Okay, let's see how you got on there.

What quotation did we decide to use? Well, a suggestion would be, "But thy eternal summer shall not fade." Here, we have the implication that your eternal summer, referring to the lover himself, will not fade.

Your beauty, your summer, your pleasantness will never fade, unlike the real summer.

So in totality, what we have here is the sentence that says the speaker suggests that while summer is short-lived and fleeting, his lover's beauty will never fade, "But they eternal summer shall not fade." This contrast suggest that while the speaker's lover is as beautiful as a summer's day, his beauty is eternal and will not fade, unlike the beauty of summer.

Hopefully, you got something similar to this or used a different quotation that proves the same point, but this is probably the most useful quotation when trying to prove the idea of the beauty of the lover not fading.

Let's move on to number three now.

Okay, this one requires you to do a little bit more work this time around, and it's a real challenge, so I'm hoping you're up to it.

We've started with our statement.

The speaker suggests that his lover will live on forever through his poetry.

So what we now need to do is find a quotation that shows that the speaker suggests that he will live on through his poetry, that the lover will live on forever through his poetry, and then you're going to explain that and give it some inference.

Take a few moments now to pause the video and give it your best shot at completing this paragraph.

Okay, let's see how you got on with this one then.

The speaker suggests that his lover will live on forever through his poetry.

"So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, "So long lives this, and this gives life to thee." We use those last two lines of the rhyming couplet, the last two lines of the sonnet, to prove this point, that the speaker thinks that the lover will live on forever through his poetry.

And the explanation here involves the anaphoric line that we learnt about earlier.

The anaphoric line opening suggests that the speaker's lover will live on as long as there is someone to read the speaker's poetry.

Hopefully, you got something similar to this or at least something in the similar sort of area with the key words involved.

That word, anaphora or anaphoric, is key to understanding the repetition of so long, so long, implying the length of the love and the length of the life that will continue with the lover as long as the poetry continues.

Now, you've done an absolutely fantastic job up to this point, but I think we can challenge ourself a little bit further.

Here's a challenge question.

This challenge question doesn't require you to do it here and now, you can have a go at this in your review work later on after the video has ended if you so wish.

But we've spent a lot of time looking at how we can write about "Sonnet 18" using Shakespeare's language, but what I want you to do now is think about how we can write about "Sonnet 18" considering structure.

Now, that might go into look at our last lesson where we looked at the structure of "Sonnet 18", and if you want to go back to that video, you can, or you might want to think about the recap that we've done to do with iambic pentameter and the ABAB rhyme scheme with that rhyming couplet at the end.

So here's your challenge question.

How does the structure of "Sonnet 18" present the relationship between the speaker and his lover? Remember, we're thinking about structure here.

So in your answer, you should consider the following.

How does the metre present the relationship between the two lovers? Remember, the iambic pentameter and what those two-syllable beats represent.

And how does the rhyme scheme present the relationship between the two lovers? Think about the ABAB rhyme scheme and how that translates to a rhyming couplet or romantic couplet at the end.

Try your best at having a go at that challenge question and complete a paragraph or two for this, and we'll really look forward to seeing what that happens and what that looks like when you've completed it.

Okay, we've reached the end of today's English lesson, and we've in fact reached the end of English Lesson 4 on "Sonnet 18" by William Shakespeare and the entire "Sonnet 18" series.

We've learnt an awful lot as we've gone through.

We've learnt about Shakespearean sonnets themself, about the language that Shakespeare uses as well as the structure, and today, we've learnt about how to write about Shakespeare's "Sonnet 18".

Hopefully, you've picked up lots of useful tips and tricks along the way.

Once this video ends in a moment, I'd like you to go back and review your learning using your notes that you've taken today.

The first thing I'd like you to do at some point in this near future is to go back and review any new pieces of vocabulary you've come across.

We learnt about that key new word, anaphora, today, and that anaphoric concept is really important to remember when thinking about repeated lines.

So go back and review that and make sure you know it very well.

Secondly, I want you to review the key learning from today's lesson.

So we've thought about how each of the key quatrains are referenced and how we can look at those, analyse them, and later write about them, and then we thought about structure as well.

And that's my key takeaway from today's lesson.

Don't forget to complete those exercises and activities.

There have been several throughout the video, but particularly that challenge activity at the end, 'cause I'd really like to see you push yourself and try for the best.

So, as we said a moment ago, we've now reached the end of the "Sonnet 18" series.

And as I've just asked a moment ago, I'd really like to see some of that work that you're producing.

So, if you'd like to take some of the work that you've done and ask a parent or carer to take a photograph of it or a picture of it and share with us on our various media outlets, then that would be incredible.

Please don't forget to email it to your teachers 'cause I know back at school, they'd love to see what you've been doing during this time.

But also, what I'd like you to do is to make sure you share it on Twitter if you can, get a parent or carer to take that picture, share it on Twitter with the tag @OakNational, #LearnwithOak.

And that gives us all an opportunity to share what you've been doing as well and lets me see the fantastic work that you've been putting in.

A brilliant effort today and a brilliant effort throughout the series if you've been involved all the way through.

Congratulations, and let's see you next time.

I've finished the video