1. Motivation:
   Death is an event or process hat occurs to all living beings. Poets sometimes personify Death. Imagine that you are casting a movie in which Death is a character. What actor or actress would you choose for the role? What would death look like? Compare your description of Death with the character Of Death in this poem later.
2. Reading and response:
   • How does the gardener recognize Death?
   • Why does he run away?
   • According to Death why was the gardener mistaken in running away?
   • Describe Death's personality.
   • Interpret the lines "Sir, I knew your father/ and we were friends at the end."
   • What does the final line imply? In what way is the ending of the poem ironic, or the opposite of what is expected?
   • How does the poet create suspense? What developing situation is suggested?
   • Why is it appropriate that Death is wearing black and "thin as a scythe.."? How would you personify death?
3. Follow up Activities:
   If the poet had to continue the poem, what might the master's reply to Death be? Write one or two three-line stanzas in which the master replies to death. Then write another stanza or two in which Death speaks. If Death has the last word, what might he say? When you write you continuation, try to follow the poet's verse pattern: short lines, with three accented syllables, or beats, in each line. When you revise your work, try to make the speakers sound as they do in the poem as Justice wrote it.
4. Evaluation:
   The creative dialogue

1. Motivation:
   Summarize the main stages you have passed through in your own lives so far. Share with each other examples of people you know who are at various stages of life. What
2. Aim question:
   How accurate is the description of each stage of life in the poem?
3. Reading and response:
   • List the seven types of persons the speaker uses to represent the seven ages of life.
   • What period of life does each of these persons represent?
   • What are the qualities or characteristics of the periods of life represented by the soldier and the judge?
   • In the poem, Shakespeare states," And one man in his time plays many parts." What parts have you played in your life so far?
   • How does the last stage bring us back full circle to the start?
   • What attitude toward life does the speaker seem to be expressing?
   • Do you think that most people who live long lives pass through seven periods similar to those described in the poem? Give reasons to your opinion.
   • Writers often compare life with a journey. The road takes unexpected turns, but there are signposts that mark our progress. What helps you to recognize that you are moving from one stage of your life to the next? Are changes just physical or are interests and knowledge important signposts as well?
   • Describe the organization of the poem. How are the various details arranged in relation to one another?
4. Follow up Activities:
   Write an essay titled " The Stage of Life." Like Shakespeare, choose a type of person of a kind of activity, to represent each stage of life. Into how many stages will you divide life? What characteristics will each stage have? When you write the essay, use a systematic organization like the one in the poem "The Seven Ages of Man". When you revise, make sure that each person or activity you have selected is described in a way clearly suggests a stage of life.
5. Evaluation:
   The essay on "The Stage of Life".

Class Notes:

Dramatic Poetry- Presents the voice of an imaginary character (or characters) speaking directly, without any additional narration by the author. Strictly speaking, the term dramatic poetry describes any verse written for the stage.

Vocabulary

Woeful: Full of sorrow mewling: crying like a baby pard: a leopard capon: a roasted chicken

Treble: high-pitched voice pantaloon: a thin, foolish old man hose: stockings wise saws: wise sayings

ROBERT BROWNING (1812-1889)

THE LABORATORY: ANCIEN RÉGIME

1 Now that I, tying thy glass mask tightly,
2 May gaze thro' these faint smokes curling whitely,
3 As thou pliest thy trade in this devil's-smithy--
4 Which is the poison to poison her, prithee?

5 He is with her, and they know that I know
6 Where they are, what they do: they believe my tears flow
7 While they laugh, laugh at me, at me fled to the drear
8 Empty church, to pray God in, for them!--I am here.

9 Grind away, moisten and mash up thy paste,
10 Pound at thy powder,--I am not in haste!
11 Better sit thus and observe thy strange things,
12 Than go where men wait me and dance at the King's.

13 That in the mortar--you call it a gum?
14 Ah, the brave tree whence such gold oozings come!
15 And yonder soft phial, the exquisite blue,
16 Sure to taste sweetly,--is that poison too?

17 Had I but all of them, thee and thy treasures,
18 What a wild crowd of invisible pleasures!
19 To carry pure death in an earring, a casket,
20 A signet, a fan-mount, a filigree basket!

21 Soon, at the King's, a mere lozenge to give
22 And Pauline should have just thirty minutes to live!
23 But to light a pastile, and Elise, with her head
24 And her breast and her arms and her hands, should drop dead!

25 Quick--is it finished? The colour's too grim!
26 Why not soft like the phial's, enticing and dim?
27 Let it brighten her drink, let her turn it and stir,
28 And try it and taste, ere she fix and prefer!

29 What a drop! She's not little, no minion like me--
30 That's why she ensnared him: this never will free
31 The soul from those masculine eyes,--say, "no!"
32 To that pulse's magnificent come-and-go.

33 For only last night, as they whispered, I brought
34 My own eyes to bear on her so, that I thought
35 Could I keep them one half minute fixed, she would fall,
36 Shrivelled; she fell not; yet this does it all!

37 Not that I bid you spare her the pain!
38 Let death be felt and the proof remain;
39 Brand, burn up, bite into its grace--
40 He is sure to remember her dying face!

41 Is it done? Take my mask off! Nay, be not morose;
42 It kills her, and this prevents seeing it close:
43 The delicate droplet, my whole fortune's fee--
44 If it hurts her, beside, can it ever hurt me?

45 Now, take all my jewels, gorge gold to your fill,
46 You may kiss me, old man, on my mouth if you will!
47 But brush this dust off me, lest horror it brings
48 Ere I know it--next moment I dance at the King's!

 Claude Mckay

 ADOLESCENCE

There was a time when in late afternoon
The four-o'clocks would fold up at day's close,
Pink-white in prayer. Under the floating moon
I lay with them in calm and sweet repose.

And in the open spaces I could sleep,
Half-naked to the shining worlds above;
Peace came with sleep and sleep was long and deep,
Gained without effort, sweet like early love.

But now no balm-nor drug nor weed nor wine-
Can bring true rest to cool my body's fever,
Nor sweeten in my mouth the acrid brine,
That salts my choicest drink and will forever.

The Seven Ages of Man(Excerpt from As You Like It)

Monologue by

JAQUES

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formalcut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.