How many of you can remember attempting to read Shakespeare for the first time and coming away frustrated and confused? Maybe your students seem to resist the Elizabethan English that sounds so different from Modern English and have trouble understanding the basic plot structures. Fear not- we’ve all been there before. Chances are, we will find ourselves confused or perplexed many times in any in-depth study of Shakespeare. However, Shakespeare’s plays offer us all, both young and old, teacher and student, an incredible opportunity to learn about the power of language, figurative language, character, important life issues and themes, etc.
Rex Gibson, in his book, Teaching Shakespeare, offers a number of activities to make Shakespeare more accessible to students who might otherwise miss the beautiful opportunity in front of them without our guidance. Some of my favorite suggested activities include: casting the plays with well known figures (classmates, pop culture icons, sports stars, etc.), conducting job interviews of characters from the plays or allowing the character to conduct an interview, writing obituaries of dead characters, having students enact the story through a select ten lines “which give an outline of the play” while the teacher fills in narration in order “to give students an active grasp or the outline of the story and to help them learn by heart some of Shakespeare’s language” (p. 95,98).
3 responses so far ↓
1 Michelle // Sep 20, 2006 at 1:38 pm
Like you and many others, I have often felt confused and overwhelmed while studying Shakespeare and have had a difficult time comprehending it. I also like Gibson’s many ideas for active approaches as it makes studying Shakespeare more fun, interesting, and accessable to students. My favorite activities include having students write narratives from a particular character’s point of view or having a character meet the media.
2 Colleen // Sep 20, 2006 at 2:36 pm
I think that both of you have some great points here. I too remember reading Shakespeare for the first time in high school and being frustrated and confused. Both of you touched on some classroom activities to help students connect with Shakespeare’s plays. I like this idea of using classroom exercises that help students get in the mind of characters in order to better understand the play. Michelle, I also really liked the idea of having students write a narrative from a particular character’s point of view. I also liked Gibson’s idea of having students rank the characters in different lists: character I like most /least, character I learned from most/least, character I identify with most/least, etc.
3 EDLA 7550 » How can you help students understand the power of his language, appreciate the beauty of his speeches and recognize the universality of characters and themes in Shakespearean and contemporary discourses? // Sep 27, 2006 at 2:59 pm
[…] Delbert suggests an examination of the use of language as reflective of the Shakespearean and contemporary times. Such close language analysis is also reinforced through a practical application in the posts, Who Loves Shakespeare Now? and Much Ado about Shakespeare. The application in the former post is meant to help students to examine the ways in which literary devices such as repetition or rhyme, just to name but a few, can enhance the writer’s intent. The application recommended in the latter post focuses on the ways to make Shakespeare’s language more accessible to the student. […]