How Shakespeare Taught Me to Annotate

And how I've taught myself to implement his teachings in HumCore

Annotations: From Shakespeare, to Me, to You

Annotation, tedious as it can be, is a skill that seems to become increasingly important as I get older. Thankfully, my experience at the San Diego Old Globe Theatre's Summer Shakespeare intensive in sixth grade taught me everything I need to know about annotation. When presented with a Shakespearean text, instructor Katie Sapper told us, there's four necessary steps of textual analysis before you can delve into your performance of the monologue: scansion, unknown words, operative words, antithesis, and primary thoughts. The same steps, I've since realized, can be followed when tasked with annotating a scholarly text (minus scansion, unless the text happens to be written in iambic pentameter). The process makes annotation seamless, and ultimately leaves me with an even more engaged understanding of what I've just read.

Shakespeare's 5 Steps vs. Mine

  • Unknown words: words like 'forsooth', 'maypole', or 'lily-livr'd' that I had never seen before.

  • Operative words: words to emphasize when I'm performing the speech, because of their importance to the tone of the monologue.

  • Antithesis: words, characters, or phrases that contrast one another

  • Primary Thoughts: discoveries that my character makes throughout the speech that advance the plot or emotional journey that they're on.

  • Unknown words: people, phrases, and words that I don't recognize.

  • Operatives: phrases and sentences that make notable claims and advance the author's argument.

  • Antithesis: opposing views or opinions, or progression of the argument that shows contrast.

  • Primary Thoughts: the central claims, theses, and arguments that underline the flow of the text.

This is an example of a finished Shakespeare monologue, after it's undergone all the steps.



As you can see in the example on the left, color coding is essential in the process of annotation. Not only does it make the chaos look slightly more organized, it creates color associations that make the text easier to read if I need to refer back to it in review.

Annotating Johnson

To demonstrate how I implement Shakespeare's four steps, I'm using Sarah Johnson's "You Can Give Them Blacks to Eat": Waging Inter-American Wars of Torture and Terror. My annotations pictured here were done via Adobe Acrobat, though I much prefer to print my sources out and use pencils, pens, and highlighters in various colors!

Johnson writes on the use of violence used by colonizers towards Indigenous American and African people, specifically in the use of trained canines to hunt and brutalize people of color. Johnson discusses the use of dogs as torture weapons, and in the passage I'm annotating (found on page 19), notes the significance of this tactic in the colonizers' avoidance of responsibility for the violence they inflicted. I would also like to acknowledge that the passage references violence against marginalized peoples and could potentially be triggering to certain readers.

The Four Steps in Practice

Unknowns

My first step in approaching annotation is immediately identifying and highlighting words, phrases, or names that I don’t recognize. In the case of Johnson’s text, this meant a couple phrases and words that I hadn’t seen or interacted with before. The identification of the ‘unknowns’ in the text, and its position as Step One, are crucial - you cannot annotate what you don’t know! After noting these words, I search for context clues within the text that might clue me in as to what they might mean. Finally, if that doesn’t work, to the Google Search bar I go!


Operatives

After a brief scan of the text, I like to highlight ideas, topic sentences, or claims that seem important. I typically look for sentences coming at the beginning or end of a paragraph, or that tie into an overarching or commonly recurring theme or topic. After noting these points in the piece, I like to make related side notes in the margins to more easily access, summarize, or analyze the idea and interpret it in my own thoughts.

Antithesis & Opposites

As I mentioned, reading and decoding Shakespeare is significantly different from annotating a scholarly article. When the text you are reading is going to be read aloud in front of an audience, finding antithesis has an entirely new significance. I considered cutting this step from my routine, but in searching for contrast in Johnson’s text, I realized that antithesis in this context could also be viewed as indication of movement or progress. Noting opposites, contrasts, or change in the text in place of the antithesis step led me to find moments of change - either contrast between the authors’ opinion and the opinion of the populations she was writing about, or a general shift in societal opinions or views throughout time.

Primary Thoughts & Claims

Now that I’ve skimmed the piece more than once, it’s time to start reading it in depth. Along the way, I highlight (in a very prominent color) the claims and ideas most central to the text. As I did earlier with my operatives, I tend to make written annotations in the margins that pertain to the claims I highlighted: connections to my personal life or other pieces of literature I’ve read, questions I have about the author’s intent, or any other thoughts that further my interaction with the text.


Preparing a Shakespearean soliloquy requires an in-depth process of decoding, researching, analyzing, and interpreting the text, much like annotation of an academic journal or essay does. Applying what I know about Shakespeare has allowed me to better understand difficult readings, whether they are written from an unfamiliar time period, about a topic I know nothing about, or just incredibly complex. No matter what body of text I’m reading, Shakespeare has taught me that taking it step-by-step (and, of course, color coding) will result in a thorough understanding of the author’s argument.

Works Cited

Johnson, Sarah E. “ La Guerre Outrance: The Proslavery Discourse of Self-Defense.” "You Should Give Them Blacks to Eat:" Waging
Inter-American Wars of Torture and Terror, vol. 61, American Quarterly. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009, p. 19.