Willow Cabin picture that I show my students, because they have no idea what a willow cabin is.
Today's lesson revolves around a close reading of the Willow Cabin speech, followed by the students writing their own versions of the love poem. At this point, we have already read the speech and the students have seen the scene from the Trevor Nunn film. So, while they understand the gist of the speech as a whole, they need to dig deeper. (They don't want to, because it feels unnecessary. But, they will get over it.)
After they have thoroughly unpacked the original speech, then I tell them to adopt a persona of a famous, familiar or imaginary person and to write a "Willow Cabin" speech to that person's love.
Some examples:
After they choose their characters, they are supposed to create a love speech in the style of the Willow Cabin speech, but substituting other elements and terminology, as appropriate.
We conducted this as a writing workshop, with students sharing ideas and helping each other.