In honor of Shakespeare’s birthday this week, I thought it would be fun to have my students create Shakespeare-like insults, but with vocabulary! 

SHAKESPEARE VOCABULARY ACTIVITY

I shared with my students a few of my favorite Shakespeare insults (see my downloadable handout for examples); you can also find many websites devoted to Shakespearean insult generation if you search for them online.

Students laughed at the specific and detailed insults that truly captured a humorous, if scathing, tone.  Once students understood how Shakespeare formed many of his insults-either with the “adjective, adjective, noun” formation or with a more metaphorical turn of phrase, they had a sense of how to write their own

Next, I had them go through their vocabulary books and make a list of insulting vocabulary words from all of our units so far. This part of the activity you can do in groups, individually or as a class.  Using these words, they started to string together truly lovely phrases including “Thou scurrilous, callow hugger-mugger,” and  “Thou motley, squalid turnip!” 

Finally, for students who wanted a challenge, I encouraged them to use any word-not just the ones that were originally negative-to come up with a great phrase.  The results have been awesome, including ““thou art a bovine in visage!” and others.

What’s great is that this is a silly vocabulary activity designed to get students to feel more comfortable with Shakespeare’s language, but I have adapted it to also demonstrate to students how they too can coin phrases to make erudite, if vitriolic, points. This vocabulary activity really works with most age groups as students can quickly catch on to form and meaning, and use the words they have studied to create their insults.

I will note that I stressed with students that these were insults directed at no one in particular, and they were not to be used in any negative manner towards a peer (it also notes that on the downloadable).

Check out some of the insults my students created:

-Thou corpulent, bovine abomination!

-Thou art crass in thy speech, bovine in thy thoughts, vitriolic in thy stench, and corpulent in thy body.

-Thou cadaverous, vapid devil-monk.

-Thou art nominal in speech, corpulent in stature, and crass in nature.  With your megalomaniac ways, thou speakest scathing drivel, thereby debasing you to the level of a bovine.

-For fun-Your mother is so excessively corpulent, she sits next to everyone in the theatre.

IN SUMMARY

In the end, my students had a great time crafting their phrases, and many students were quite proud of their end results-especially students who do not always find vocabulary rewarding.

I would love to hear some of your students’ best examples or how you might have modified this vocabulary activity-made them positive phrases rather than insults, ask for a quick written dialogue to provide context for the situation, etc. Go forth and create (insults)!