An introduction typically opens with several sentences that get the reader’s attention and concludes with the thesis. The opening sentences should set up the thesis. Here is an example of an introduction (the thesis is italicized):

The above introduction sets up the thesis by presenting an overview of alternative critical interpretations, interpretations which the thesis pushes against. When writing the sentences preceding the thesis, I hoped that a brief look at the Romantic and psychoanalytic interpretations would interest the reader. However, your introduction’s pre-thesis sentences can hook the reader in many other ways – for instance, by using or including one of the following:

• a quotation
• a surprising statistic or a striking fact
• a vivid example
• a description
• an anecdote
• an analogy
• some dialogue
• a paradoxical statement
• a question
• a joke

While the thesis usually comes at the end of the introduction, it can appear at the beginning. At one of the private schools where I taught English, a history teacher insisted that his students’ introductions begin with the thesis. It is also worth noting that thesis-first introductions are sometimes preferred in work settings. Let’s say the CEO of a company has asked her facilities manager to submit a report about whether providing more natural light in the workplace would be a worthwhile investment. The manager’s thesis-first introduction might read like this (the thesis is italicized):

Notice how short this introduction is. Such brevity is not uncommon in work settings.

Literary critics and layman alternatives such as SparkNotes and CliffsNotes will—with varying degrees of accuracy and depth—summarize and analyze scenes from Shakespeare’s plays. Even when these sources get it completely right—and they don’t always—they don’t necessarily leave you with permanent skills so that you can decipher Shakespeare’s language on your own. Accounting for inversion (words and phrases in places you don’t expect them) is one of several strategies that can help you understand what the great Bard intends to convey.

In Macbeth, when King Duncan sees one of his wounded soldiers, he declares:

                                    He can report,
As seemeth by his plight, of the revolt
The newest state.

With phrases moved into positions we’re more accustomed to, the passage might read like this:

                        As seemeth by his plight,
He can report the newest state of the
Revolt. 

Or:

                                    He can report,
As seemeth by his plight, the newest state
Of the revolt. 

So why does Shakespeare place phrases in such odd positions? Partly for emphasis. Partly to maintain each line’s iambic-pentameter structure. If these lines were from one of his sonnets or from a rhymed section of Macbeth for that matter, rhyme (i.e., getting words into rhyming position at the ends of lines) would likely have been an additional factor.

Let’s examine a longer passage from the same play:

Brave Macbeth,—well he deserves that name,--
Disdaining fortune, with his brandished steel,
Which smoked with bloody execution,
Like valour’s minion carved out his passage
Till he faced the slave.

Moving phrases around in line four helps clarify matters:

Brave Macbeth,—well he deserves that name,--
Disdaining fortune, with his brandished steel,
Which smoked with bloody execution,
Carved out his passage like valour’s minion
Till he faced the slave.           

Even with the change in line four, this sentence remains complex given that the subject, Macbeth, is still separated from its verb, carved, by two and a half lines, a reality that certainly challenges comprehension. Be that as it may, the change in line four has at least peeled away one layer of reading-comprehension challenge.

Anticipating Shakespeare’s profuse use of figurative language and translating such passages into something more prosaic can also aid understanding, but that is a subject for the next blog post.