Veronica G.

Fernandez

BSED-III

Children and Adolescent Literature

I. AUTHOR’S BACKGROUND

William Shakespeare was an English poet, playwright, and actor. He was born on
April 26, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon. He died on April 23, 1616, at the age of 52. His
father was a successful local business man and his mother was the daughter of a landowner.
Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway at the age of 18. She was eight years older than him.
They had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. He is widely regarded as the
greatest writer in the English language and the world’s pre-eminent dramatist. He is often
called England’s national poet and nicknamed the Bard of Avon. Shakespeare produced most
of his known work between 1589 and 1613. He wrote about 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long
narrative poems, and a few other verses.

William Shakespeare’s Important Works

 Macbeth
 Romeo and Juliet
 Hamlet
 Much Ado About Nothing
 Julius Caesar
 King Lear
 Sonnets
 The Tempest

II. VOCABULARIES
Hideous –ugly or disgusting to look at.
Sable – of the color black, dark or gloomy.
Prime – the period of perfection.
Lofty – rising to a great height or very tall.
Barren – not producing or not productive.
Erst – long ago or formerly.
Girded – to prepare (oneself) for action.
Sheaves – a bundle of objects of one kind.
Borne – carried or transported by the thing specified.
Bier – a frame on which a dead body is carried before a funeral.
Bristly – covered with short, stiff hairs.
Forsake – to give up or leave entirely.
Scythe – to move very quickly through s group of people or things.
 III. DISCUSSION (POEM)

Sonnet 12: When I do count the clock that tell the time
by William Shakespeare

When I do count the clock that tells the time,

And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls all silvered o’er with white;

When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,

Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer’s green all girded up in sheaves,
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,

Then of thy beauty do I question make,

That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see other grow;

And nothing ‘gainst Time’s scythe can make defence

Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

IV. LESSON

Sonnet 12 implicitly suggests that, although putting on a brave face when confronted with
death won’t save you from him, any more than the ‘day’ or sun was kept in the sky when night
came on, you will, in a sense, ‘rise again’ as the sun does, through your children

Time is omnipresent in everyone’s life, just passing and passing inexorably, relentlessly, so
unstoppable. It is a universal problem: people have always been very worried about time, trying
to gain some, or angry that they have lost this precious element.