Shakespeare for Beginners

Inspired by William Shakespeare’s

Avengers:The Complete Works
By Ian Doescher

Includes excerpts from William Shakespeare’s Avengers: The Complete Works by Ian Doescher. Art by Danny Schlitz. © 2021 MARVEL.
Permission to reproduce and distribute this page has been granted by the publisher, Quirk Books. All right reserved.
 INTRODUCTION: SHAKESPEARE WHO?
This guide offers a brief introduction to Shakespeare to help you as you read
William Shakespeare’s Avengers: The Complete Works.

William Shakespeare (1564—1616) was the author of around thirty-eight plays

that still exist today; the number isn’t exact because scholars aren’t certain about
how much Shakespeare contributed to certain plays. He also wrote several poems,
including 154 sonnets. Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon,
England, but he primarily worked in London. His most famous plays include
Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, King Lear, Richard
III, and Much Ado About Nothing. Often, his plays are separated into four genres—
tragedy, comedy, history, and romance/fantasy—but those genres are fluid and
many plays fit multiple categories.

If you’re new to Shakespeare and want to try reading or watching his plays, Romeo
and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream are two good plays to start with. They’re
both love stories with fairly simple plots, and they’re both pretty short. Watching a
film adaptation of these movies can help you understand the plot and the language
more easily.

William Shakespeare’s Avengers: The Complete Works imagines that Shakespeare

wrote four more plays telling the stories of Super Heroes protecting the universe.

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Includes excerpts from William Shakespeare’s Avengers: The Complete Works by Ian Doescher. Art by Danny Schlitz. © 2021 MARVEL.
Permission to reproduce and distribute this page has been granted by the publisher, Quirk Books. All right reserved.
 THE LANGUAGE: IAMBIC PENTAMETER AND MORE
Most often, Shakespeare wrote in iambic pentameter, which is a line of verse with a
specific syllabic pattern. An iamb has two syllables—the first is unstressed (or soft)
and the second is stressed (or emphasized). An iamb sounds like “da-DUM”, as in
the following words:

Defend (de-FEND)
Beyond (be-YOND)
Forsooth (for-SOOTH)

Pentameter means there are five iambs in a line, so iambic pentameter is a line of
ten syllables: da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM. Here’s a classic line,
with the unstressed part of each iamb in regular text and the stressed part of each
iamb in bold: “I’d rath
rather be a ham
hammer than a nail
nail.” So, in other words, the five
iambs in this line are (1) I’d RATH- (2) er BE (3) a HAM- (4) mer THAN (5) a NAIL.

Shakespeare also sometimes breaks the rules of iambic pentameter. The most
famous Shakespearean line has eleven syllables: “To be or not to be be, that is the
question.” That last -ion is known as a weak ending and is common in Shake-
quest
speare. It’s also common for Shakespeare to slip two unstressed syllables into a
space where there should be just one, or he’ll leave out a syllable entirely. As much
as we associate Shakespeare with iambic pentameter, he broke the rule almost as
much as he observed it. William Shakespeare’s Avengers: The Complete Works uses
stricter iambic pentameter than Shakespeare himself used.

If iambic pentameter or the whole idea of stressed and unstressed syllables

don’t make sense to you, don’t worry. Just read the lines and forget about the
meter. Let the punctuation help you make sense of the sentences. You don’t have
to pause at the end of each line of Shakespeare; unless there’s a comma, a period,
or other punctuation, each line should follow immediately after the preceding line.

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Includes excerpts from William Shakespeare’s Avengers: The Complete Works by Ian Doescher. Art by Danny Schlitz. © 2021 MARVEL.
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 Here’s a short speech from William Shakespeare’s Lo, the Age of Ultron
(V.i.118 - 137), followed by some things to notice:

Barton:
—Look thou at me:
’Tis thy fault, ’tis the fault of all—who cares?
The only question is: hast thou the will 120
To carry on the mission we’ve set forth?
I need to know, for now the city flies—
The city flieth, we an army of
Robotic monsters fight, and I have here
One bow and arrow wherewith I may shoot. 125
Naught of this situation maketh sense,
Yet I shall venture out because it is
My job, which I cannot fulfill should I
Be call’d upon to babysit as well.
What thou once didst or what thou wert is naught. 130
Thou must a firm decision make at once:
Go out and fight, and fight to kill, I pray—
Or stay, ’tis well, I’ll send thy brother soon.
Yet if thou stepp’st outside the door, thou art,
Upon the instant, an Avenger true. 135
’Twas good to chat with thee; now must I go.
Yea, yea, the city flieth—what a world!

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Includes excerpts from William Shakespeare’s Avengers: The Complete Works by Ian Doescher. Art by Danny Schlitz. © 2021 MARVEL.
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Barton’s speech illustrates a few points:

• As noted above, the punctuation should guide how these lines are said,
not the actual ends of the lines themselves. Lines 123—125, for example,
represent a single thought that happens to be split across three lines. Any
line that doesn’t end with any punctuation should roll into the next line.

• These twenty lines follow the rules and rhythm of iambic pentameter.
You can hear the rhythm clearly in line 135: “Upon
pon the in
instant an Aveng
venger
true.”
true

• For multisyllabic words, it’s important to figure out which syllable has the
main emphasis. Here are three examples of three-syllable words, each with
an emphasis on a different syllable:
Orisons (emphasis on first syllable)
Or
Robo
botic (emphasis on second syllable)
Understand stand (emphasis on final syllable)

This can get trickier with four- and five-syllable words. With most words, you can
determine which syllable should be emphasized, and then see if another syllable
has a minor emphasis. The word America is a good example. The main emphasis
is on the second syllable, Amer
merica. In iambic pentameter, it makes sense for the
first iamb to be A-mer
mer and the next iamb to be i-caca. So “-ca” at the end of the word
America has a secondary stress that fits the meter nicely.

• About words that end in -est and -eth: In general, the -est (or -st or just -t)
ending is used with the pronoun thou, like “thou stepp’st” in Barton’s
speech, referring to a singular you. The -eth ending is used for she or he or a
neutral (but always singular) it, like “the city flieth” in Barton’s speech.

• Words that would normally end in -ed, like the word “called,” might be
spelled like “call’d” or “callèd” (as in line 129 of Barton’s speech above).
• In Shakespeare’s plays, the ending was sometimes pronounced, so it might
be pronounced as one syllable, “calld” (as we say it now), or as two
syllables, “cal-led.” When a word was meant to be shortened to fit the meter,
the word was turned into a contraction: “call’d.” Often, in modern editions
of Shakespeare—and in William Shakespeare’s Avengers: The Complete Works—
if there’s a word ending in -ed that is supposed to have the that
ending pronounced as a separate syllable, it will appear with an accent over
the e: “callèd.”

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Includes excerpts from William Shakespeare’s Avengers: The Complete Works by Ian Doescher. Art by Danny Schlitz. © 2021 MARVEL.
Permission to reproduce and distribute this page has been granted by the publisher, Quirk Books. All right reserved.
 • On thees and thous:

• thou = you (as the subject of a sentence, like “thou thinkest,” “thou
wert”)
• thee = you (as the object or of a sentence, like “they are part of thee”)
• thy = your (before a word starting with a consonant, like “thyself”)
• thine = your (before a word starting with a vowel, like “thine ears”)
• ye = you (as the subject of a sentence for more than one person, like
“ye Avengers”)

A final note: When in doubt, look up words you don’t know and write the
definitions in the text next to those words. This will help if reading the text
aloud doesn’t do the trick.

THINGS TO LOOK FOR : HALLMARKS

OF SHAKESPEARE’S PLAYS
William Shakespeare’s Avengers: The Complete Works borrows several conventions
from Shakespeare’s plays. Here are some things to look for:

Plays in five acts. This is the most common editorial structure for Shakespeare’s
plays. It draws on the tradition of ancient Roman plays, many of which also
had five acts. There can be any number of scenes within each act. When you’re
referring to a specific act, scene, and line from that scene, the typical written con-
vention for Shakespeare is like what you saw above, before Hawkeye’s speech:
V.i.118 - 137. This means Act 5 (represented by V, the upper case Roman numeral),
scene 1 (represented by i, the lower case roman numeral), lines 118 through 137.
Sometimes this is written as 5.1.118-137.

Minimal stage directions. For the most part, Shakespeare included very few stage
directions. William Shakespeare’s Avengers: The Complete Works mostly follows this
convention. It has more stage directions than a Shakespearean play would have,
though, for the benefit of making action sequences clear.

Rhyming couplets at the end of scenes. A rhyming couplet is two lines of

verse that rhyme with each other, like “Alack, that ever I should see this day—
/Gamora, darling, spirited away!” Shakespeare often ended his scenes with a
rhyming couplet to mark a narrative shift, similar to a final cadence in music.

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Includes excerpts from William Shakespeare’s Avengers: The Complete Works by Ian Doescher. Art by Danny Schlitz. © 2021 MARVEL.
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Language that is meant to be spoken, not just read! It may sound obvious,
but Shakespeare wrote his plays to be performed. They were not meant, primarily,
to be put in a book and read silently. If you’re trying to make it through a Shake-
speare play—or William Shakespeare’s Avengers: The Complete Works—try reading
aloud. The words will make more sense when you hear the rhythms and cadences.

Asides to the audience. An aside is a line spoken so the audience can hear
but the other characters on stage (supposedly) cannot. Often, an aside explains a
character’s motivations or inner thoughts or a background situation the audience
wouldn’t otherwise know. Today, an aside in theater is sometimes called breaking
the fourth wall (i.e., the imaginary divide between stage and audience). Asides in
Shakespeare tend to be short, though not always.

Speeches known as soliloquies. Soliloquies are similar to asides in that they often
explain why characters act the way they do. They are generally longer than asides,
and often occur when the speaking character is alone on stage.

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Includes excerpts from William Shakespeare’s Avengers: The Complete Works by Ian Doescher. Art by Danny Schlitz. © 2021 MARVEL.
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 about the book
Assemble, Ye Avengers! All four Marvel Studios films featuring the Avengers are
presented as Shakespearean plays in this must-have for Marvel fans.

What if the most epic cinematic

franchise of all time had been penned
by the greatest playwright of all time?
Wonder no more! In William Shakespeare’s
Avengers, the best-selling author of the
William Shakespeare’s Star Wars series
has reimagined the Avengers films as
plays penned by the Bard himself,
including:

• Assemble, Ye Avengers
• Lo, The Age of Ultron
• Infinity War’s Tale
• The Endgame’s Afoot

Authentic meter and verse, stage directions, and clever references will delight
fans of the Avengers and Shakespeare alike. Readers will experience their favorite
scenes, characters, and lines in a fresh—yet fully faithful—way, through
soliloquies and dialogue by everyone from Captain America to Groot (“’Tis I!”).

The lavish two-column format recalls Shakespeare’s folios, and dozens of vibrant
illustrations capture all the iconic movie moments. William Shakespeare’s Avengers
celebrates the films and is a must-have for fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe
and the Avengers.

About the Author

Ian Doescher is the New York Times best-selling author of the William
Shakespeare’s Star Wars® series, the Pop Shakespeare series, and MacTrump.
He has written for Marvel Comics and is a contributing author to the story
collection Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View. He lives in Portland, Oregon,
with his family. Visit him at IanDoescher.com.

Includes excerpts from William Shakespeare’s Avengers: The Complete Works by Ian Doescher. Art by Danny Schlitz. © 2021 Marvel.
Permission to reproduce and distribute this page has been granted by the publisher, Quirk Books. All right reserved.