How To Teach Your Children Shakespeare

by Ken Ludwig

Since my early teens, I’ve felt strongly about Shakespeare—about the value of studying and memorizing significant passages by the greatest writer who ever lived—but it wasn’t until I became a father that I figured out how to share my passion with the people I loved.

One day, when my daughter Olivia was six years old, she came home from first grade spouting a line of Shakespeare:  “I know a bank where the wild thyme grows.”  Her first grade teacher was an English woman who took a particular interest in the hero of her youth, and she had decided to pass the torch on to the younger generation.  When I heard my daughter happily quoting this line from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a light went off in my head.

From that day on, I set up a routine.  My daughter and I would spend one hour on Saturday and one hour on Sunday memorizing my favorite speeches from Shakespeare’s plays.  We started with short accessible passages from the comedies and, gradually over time, increased the length and complexity of the passages.  To my delight, my daughter took to it immediately, and it turned out that these hours spent together learning everything from As You Like It to King Lear were some of the best family times of our lives.   For two hours each week, we sat next to each other totally engaged in something we both loved, and we had enormous fun doing it.

Sir Derek Jacobi in Twelfth Night – who, along with Richard Clifford and Frances Barber, made special recordings of passages from the book. Photo by Geraint Lewis.

About two years ago, it occurred to me that other parents and teachers might enjoy hearing about our family’s adventures with Shakespeare, and I sat down and started writing this book.

What I have tried to do in How To Teach Your Children Shakespeare – which will be published in early June by Random House – is offer to parents and educators the techniques and strategies I developed over the years for my own children.  I realized early on in this process that Shakespeare is a lot like a foreign language.  Some of his words are unknown to us, even as adults; Shakespeare’s sentence structure can sounds odd to our modern ears; and Shakespeare is constantly speaking in complex metaphors that can sometimes be difficult to understand.

So what I did for my kids – as I do in the book – was teach them how to understand every word in the Shakespeare passage being studied, then memorize the passage so that their knowledge of Shakespeare became fluent, the way a foreign language can become fluent.

In total, the book presents the first 25 passages that I taught my kids, ordered into a specific sequence to make learning them as easy as possible.   And as each passage is discussed, from A Midsummer Night’s Dream to The Tempest (with a lot more plays in between), I talk about the stories, the characters and the meanings of the works so that, ultimately, the kids get the kind of knowledge of Shakespeare they’ll need to become great students, great thinkers, and great teachers.

Recently, I had the opportunity of trying this method out on a large group.  I was invited by Random House, as part of Take Your Children to Work Day, to spend a couple of hours with the 9-11 year olds, about 35 of them.  I thought it would be fun to see if they could memorize a few facts about Shakespeare, along with one of my favorite passages from A Midsummer Night’s Dream:

Captain of our fairy band,
Helena is here at hand,
And the youth mistook by me,
Pleading for a lovers fee.
Shall we their fond pageant see?
Lord, what fools these mortals be!

The kids had a fantastic time. At the end, when their parents came in, they proudly recited what they’d learned from memory.  Shakespeare triumphed again!

There is no doubt in my mind that knowing Shakespeare will make our children better citizens of the world.  It will better prepare them for the joys, as well as the whips and scorns of time (as Hamlet says).  It will introduce them to the rich world of literature, and, from there, to the universe of cultural references embedded in that literature.  It will give them confidence.  And it will, ultimately, by giving them Shakespeare’s perspective on the world, make them more moral human beings.  To quote Hamlet again, it’s a consummation devoutly to be wished.

Ken Ludwig is an author, theatre educator, and award-winning playwright of Lend Me a Tenor and Crazy for You. Ken will give the keynote address at our Conference for Teaching Shakespeare in the Elementary Classroom on June 24 (early bird registration discount ends June 3!). and a demonstration from  How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare to be released June 11, 2013. Copies will be available for signing after the session. Find out more about his work and new book at www.kenludwig.com.

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Shakespeare: Worlds Together Conference

Bob Young, Carol Kelly, me, and Chris Shamburg at Worlds Together Conference.

Team Folger just returned from  the Worlds Together Conference, part of the World Shakespeare Festival in London.

Worlds Together was a collaboration between Tate Modern, Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre and British Museum. This international conference brought together artists and educators to explore the place of Shakespeare and the arts in young people’s learning today. Held at the Tate Modern Museum on Bankside, it hosted over 100 speakers and contributors from 23 countries across three days.

Day 1 included Keynotes from Shirley Brice Heath and James Shapiro.  In addition, Peggy O’Brien, Cis Berry, and others led a provocative Panel Discussion on “Why Shakespeare’s Words Matter.”

The Folger Team led our workshop on Day 2 with an emphasis on language and performance. In addition, Chris Shamburg showed some wonderful techniques to make Shakespeare’s words come alive with technology.

Another partner in the Conference was the British Museum where we saw their exhibit, Shakespeare Staging the World. That exhibit is well-worth attending and it runs until November 25.

In our off time, we attended a performance of The Taming of the Shrew at Shakespeare’s Globe.

Bob Young and I also saw a fabulous production of Timon of Athens at the National Theater starring Simon Russell Beale. 

Next stop for Team Folger: The NCTE Conference in Las Vegas. We hope to see you there.

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The Globe to Globe Festival on Your Computer

As I mentioned in my post, “Oh, to Be in England” on May 3,  Shakespeare’s Globe is presenting a marathon of 37 plays with acting companies from around the world. But if you can’t get to the Globe to Globe Festival, there is now an alternative. A UK site called The Space is running  full-length videos of them for free. And the best part is, you don’t need to stand in the cold and rain as the audiences seem to be in these videos.

Here are the ones available at this posting:

• Twelfth Night by Mumbai’s Company Theatre is a colorful and musical version, filled with dancing, performed in Hindi with scene descriptions in English . Lyn Gardner in London’s Guardian wrote, “The beguiling, melancholy heart of the play is ignored in favour of non-stop jokes. Fun? Definitely. Accessible? Completely, even if you didn’t speak the language.”

• Measure for Measure is performed in Russian (with English subtitles) by Moscow’s Vakhtangov Theatre. Critic Veronica Lee said of this production in The Arts Desk, “What a joy this once-in-a-generation season is. From Moscow comes this free-wheeling production of Shakespeare’s great morality play.”

• Pericles is performed in Greek with scene description in English. “Thanks to a slapstick production courtesy of the National Theatre of Greece, and the Globe’s ambience (helped by the fact that the rain stayed off), better than you might imagine – not least because London’s Hellenic community seemed to be out in force to watch it,” wrote Alex Needham in The Guardian.

• Venus and Adonis is performed in a variety of languages by the Isango ensemble from Cape Town, South Africa. Spoken in IsiZulu, IsiXhosa, SeSotho, Setswana, Afrikaans & South African English, the production is musically and visually thrilling. While this is not a play but a narrative poem, it counts as number 38 for the Globe.

• Richard III is  performed in Mandarin (with scene descriptions in English) by the National Theatre of China. According to the Year of Shakespeare Blog, “the production was preceded by Dominic Dromgoole, the Globe’s Artistic Director, announcing that all of the production’s equipment was in a shipping container stranded somewhere between Beijing and London.  The costumes and props we were about to see, he explained, had been cobbled together at the last minute from the Globe’s stores.”

• A Midsummer Night’s Dream is performed in Korean (with scene description in English) by the Yohangza Theatre Company. According to Adele Lee, “Performed in a mixture of Korean theatre styles, including song, dance, mime, acrobatics and martial arts, the production was vibrant, energetic and immensely enjoyable, and the cast did a great job of overcoming the language barrier and forming an excellent rapport with the predominantly English-language speaking audience. “

So far that’s all the videos that The Space has posted, but if you want to see the rest of the Globe’s season, keep checking it out. And if you do watch any of these full-length productions, be sure to add your comments below.

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Bard-Art

Sometimes before jumping into the physical art of performance, we like to explore other media with students to expand their discussion of Shakespeare. We’ve mentioned the myriad of ways students approach an Illumination Project in our High School Fellowship Program, shown you examples of “remixing” Shakespeare’s text with audio effects, tried our hand at animating scenes with free online programs, explored the crossover potential of Shakespeare with comics, and considered creative writing projects centered on Shakespeare’s plays (with or without Vampires)…

What else?

Students at St. Peter's create collages for Macbeth

Two of our Shakespeare Steps Out projects during the 8-visit program are visual art projects. In one the students draw a picture based on the Queen Mab speech from Romeo and Juliet of what they see in their imagination when they listen. The colorful and inspired images that come from this project never cease to amaze us. The second project takes place after the students have been cast for their festival performance – they are then given magazines and publications in which to find words and images they believe describe or represent their character. They have a lot of fun cutting and gluing – yes – but they also have to determine who their character is, what that character wants, what it is that defines them, in order to put it into pictures.

Art is a big part of the Folger’s collection, as well. Our Library has been collecting paintings, statues, and other renderings of Shakespeare and his characters from the last 400 years, and the variety of ways people imagine certain scenes or characters is worth the effort to study.

What is it about Shakespeare’s text that makes it so ripe for picturing? Besides Queen Mab, are there any passages that leap out at you for students to listen and create from?

Have your students created any artwork related to Shakespeare?

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Shakespeare in other worlds

Shakespeare is taught all over the world, both in English-speaking and non-English speaking countries. Suzanne Worthington, RSC Education has created the World Shakespeare Classroom Wiki for the 2012 World Shakespeare Festival in London that looks at how Shakespeare is taught around the world.   Here are a few highlights:

• Algeria: Some students  from Ahmed Lamarchi High School discuss Shakespeare  and do a short choral reading.
• Azerbaijan: 100% of pupils following the national curriculum will study Shakespeare at least once in their school career, generally in grade 8. They study a general biography and short introduction to his works.
• Brazil: Shakespeare is usually studied in translation to Portuguese and mostly at the University level.
• China: Pupils aged 15/16 study Act 1 Scene 4 from The Merchant of Venice in translation into Mandarin Chinese.
• Denmark:  Shakespeare is studied both in original English and in translation to Danish. Because it is set in Denmark, Hamlet is a favorite play of the Danes.  Shakespeare’s Elsinore is widely acknowledged to be Kronborg Castle near Helsingor in the North-East of Denmark.
• Georgia: Less than 15% of pupils following the core curriculum will study Shakespeare, and when they do, they are translated into Georgian.
• Germany: 15 – 50% of pupils following the German curricula are likely to study Shakespeare in English at least once in their school career.
• Greece: Shakespeare is not a named author on the curriculum, although there are options for teachers to use him. When they are taught, they are read in translation to Greek or modern English.
• Hungary:  Shakespeare is usually studied in translation to Hungarian. Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet,  King Lear, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest are the most popular plays and 85 – 100% of pupils following the national curriculum will study Shakespeare at least once in their school career, mostly between the ages of 14 and 16.
• India: Shakespeare is a compulsory or suggested author for pupils aged 14 to 16, depending on the state. Shakespeare is predominantly studied in English-medium schools. Popular studied plays include Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet, and Othello.
• Iraq: Less than 15% of pupils will study Shakespeare in their school career, usually the most academically able, between the ages of 16 and 18. The rest will probably leave school without knowing who Shakespeare is.
• Italy: Romeo and Juliet is the most popular play for Italian students. Guess why? The plays are read in English.
• Kuwait: An abridged version of Henry V, in a modern English translation, is taught at Year 12 (16 – 17 year olds)  because Henry V helps pupils reflect on history, politics and universal human values.
• Mexico: All pupils follow the core national curriculum. Compulsory schooling ends at aged 16. Shakespeare is named on the curriculum.
• Nigeria: Students in Nigeria are unlikely to study Shakespeare unless they are taking literature courses in private education or at university.
• Pakistan: Less than 15% of pupils will study Shakespeare in their school career.
  Shakespeare is taught in elite private schools and occasionally at some middle-ranged private schools.
• Poland: 85 – 100% of pupils following the core curriculum will study Shakespeare in Polish at least once in their school career, and most will study him more than once. Hamlet and Macbeth are the most-commonly taught plays.
• Russia: Many of pupils following the national curriculum will study Shakespeare at least once. He is mentioned as a suggested author for 14 – 16 year olds. Shakespeare is read in the original English or in a modern English translation.
• Serbia: Shakespeare is mentioned on the curriculum in Serbia and most children will learn about him before they are 16.
• Slovakia:  Shakespeare is taught in either in English or Slovak  and is listed as a suggested author on the national curriculum for the 14 – 16 age group.

If you have anything to add to this excellent site, the Wiki directions are pretty clear.

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Shakespeare…in other words

Why are there so many “modern” versions of Shakespeare’s plays?

There are plenty of great books that don’t need translated versions. We don’t look for easier versions of Dickens, Hawthorne, Melville, or Fitzgerald (or at least, I hope we don’t.) But re-doing Shakespeare seems to be a favorite sport of publishers.

In a way, we can trace it back to Nahum Tate in the 1680′s and Thomas Bowdler in 1818, but they had totally different agendas than today’s creators. Tate wanted happy endings and Bowdler wanted to clean up the naughty bits.[I'll talk about them in my next post.]

We at the Folger have a standard answer when someone asks us what we think of “modern” versions of Shakespeare’s texts:

“IF YOU’RE NOT GOING TO USE SHAKESPEARE’S WORDS, DON’T DO SHAKESPEARE.”

Why dumb down all those beautiful words and images for the sake of making it easier? We’ve found that if you’re teaching Shakespeare in an active, performance-based approach, the language becomes less of on obstacle.

It’s the words that matter. Here’s an example of a passage from R&J which I’ve written with an interlinear version with the No Fear version:

Shakespeare: Oh, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!

No Fear: Oh, she shows the torches how to burn bright!

Shakespeare: It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night

No Fear: She stands out against the darkness

Shakespeare: Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope’s ear,

No Fear: like a jeweled earring hanging against the cheek of an African.

Shakespeare: Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear.

No Fear: Her beauty is too good for this world; she’s too beautiful to die and be buried.

Shakespeare:  So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows As yonder lady o’er her fellows shows.

No Fear: She outshines the other women like a white dove in the middle of a flock of crows.

Shakespeare: The measure done, I’ll watch her place of stand,

No Fear: When this dance is over, I’ll see where she stands

Shakespeare: And, touching hers, make blessèd my rude hand.

No Fear: and then I’ll touch her hand with my rough and ugly one.

Shakespeare: Did my heart love till now?

No Fear: Did my heart ever love anyone before this moment?

Shakespeare: Forswear it, sight!

No Fear: My eyes were liars, then

Shakespeare: For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.

No Fear: because I never saw true beauty before tonight.

See the difference? Post your comments below as to the effect of the translation.

I almost hesitate to mention more of these, but they are worth discussing here. The following are for the print empaired student:

• If your students find reading Cliff’s Notes too difficult, Cliff has a better idea. They’ve boiled the plays down to 5-minute videos with ridiculous animation.
• The Shakespeare Made Easy videos boil the plays down to 2-minute versions, but are pretty awful.
• I do like the Folger videos that we’ve made, both the Insider’s Guides and the One-minute versions.

But back to print. Here are the candidates:

• Kent Richmond has created what he calls “verse translations” of several plays and shows why his versions are superior to what he calls the “dumbed down prose versions.”  Here’s his translation of the Prologue from R&J.
• No Fear Shakespeare is part of Spark Notes. Here’s their parallel-text version of the same Prologue.
• Barrons have moved on from their Shakespeare Made Easy series with the death of  their author, Alan Durband. They now have a series called Simply Shakespeare which seems equally bad.
• There’s also a series of Shakespeare Novels by Paul Illidge.  Here’s the opening line from Macbeth: “A summer storm moves on over the barren and deserted countryside of Scotland during the Middle Ages, leaving the rain-soaked fields cloaked in clouds of fog.” Oh my.

I won’t get into the manga and graphic versions of the plays, most of which retain the original language and are quite good.

One of my students recently said to me, “You have some strong opinions.” Yes, I do, but if you feel that there’s room for these translations in your class, I encourage you to post your comments below.

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Shakespeare at the Movies

I was fortunate recently to see 10 scenes from Coriolanus, starring and directed by Ralph Fiennes. The presentation at the NY-based Shakespeare Society was part of an informative discussion by David Scott Kasten.

 The film doesn’t officially open until January, but here is the trailer.  In addition to Fiennes, the film stars Vanessa Redgrave as his mother, Volumnia and Jessica Chastain as his wife, Virgilia. Also in the cast are Gerard Butler, Brian Cox, and John Kani.

Also coming soon to a theater near you according to IMDB are a host of Shakespeare-related titles. Here they are:

•  Much Ado About Nothing, directed by Joss Whedon  was “filmed in just 12 days entirely on location in exotic Santa Monica.”  on the film’s site, director Whedan says, “The text is to me a deconstruction of the idea of love, which is ironic, since the entire production is a love letter – to the text, to the cast, even to the house it’s shot in.” Shot in black & white, the film stars Amy Acker  and Alexis Denisof  as Beatrice and Benedick, features Castle star Nathan Fillion as Dogberry.
• Messina High also based on Much Ado About Nothing.  It seems that Beatrice and Benedick’s  names have been changed to Bernice and Benny and the “teen comedy” is set in Marin County, California, but not many more details are available yet.
• Hamlet A.D.D. is probably the strangest film to watch for. According to the film’s Website, “Hamlet is an easily distracted prince who is not quite ready to do the task at hand. Challenged to kill his uncle Claudius by the ghost of his recently dead dad, Hamlet enthusiastically proceeds to do everything but. From practicing stage acting in the 1800s to producing a television drama in the 1950s, from dancing at the discotheque in the 1970s to culinary prankery in the distant future, Hamlet always manages to find something to distract himself from taking revenge for his father’s murder. Shot entirely in front of a green screen, HAMLET A.D.D. features live-action characters in a colorful cartoon world.

Also in pre-production are a new version of Romeo and Juliet starring Hailee Steinfeld as Juliet and Douglas Booth as Romeo and a film simply called Rosaline also starring Steinfeld. According to IMDB, the latter film, based on a novel by Rebecca Searle,  tells the story of a young girl  who is dumped by a guy who immediately falls for another girl with whom he forms a suicide pact. Sound familiar?

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Shakespeare Goes to the Movies

Lots of new Shakespeare films are in the pipeline, so now may bew a good time to post some updates:

• Coriolanus, directed and starring Ralph Fiennes is scehduled for a November 2011 release. It also stars Vanessa Redgrave, Gerard Butler, and Brian Cox and was filmed in Serbia and Montenegro.
• King Lear, directed by Michael Radford and starring Al Pacino is in pre-production, and no other cast members have been announced.
• Also in pre-production is a new version of Romeo and Juliet, starring the 14-year old Hailee Steinfeld, who recently appeared in True Grit. Her appearance has already caused some controversy since the director calls for a nude scene.

And then there are the odd ones like:

• // Hamlet A.D.D  Here’s the descriptiion from imdb.com: “Hamlet is an easily distracted prince who is not quite ready to do the task at hand. Challenged to kill his uncle Claudius by the ghost of his recently dead dad, Hamlet enthusiastically proceeds to do everything but. From practicing stage acting in the 1800s to producing a television drama in the 1950s, from dancing at the discotheque in the 1970s to culinary prankery in the distant future, Hamlet always manages to find something to distract himself from taking revenge for his father’s murder. Shot entirely in front of a green screen, HAMLET A.D.D. features live-action characters in a colorful cartoon world.”
• Messina High is based on Much Ado About Nothing, and not much info is available on it at this time. It is directed by and stars Owen Drake as Benny Highcliff (get it?) and Kandice Melanokos as Bernice Leonard. Not unexpectedly, you can finf the film on Facebook.

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Shakespeare in New York

After a summer with hundreds of outdoor performances everywhere, from Central Park where Al Pacino starred in The Merchant of Venice to the Parking Lot which featured Julius Caesar and Love’s Labor’s Lost, Shakespeare is back and he’s alive and well and living  in NYC. Here are some highlights:

• Not only is Shakespeare back, but so is Al Pacino, but this time The Merchant of Venice has moved to Broadway. In addition to Pacino, the show features Lily Rabe as Portia,  Byron Jennings as Antonio, the Merchant and Jesse L. Martin as Gratiano.
• The Public Theater, which produced Merchant, recently introduced their Mobile Unit, which will bring free Shakespeare to audiences with little or no access to the arts. For their first production, the Mobile Unit will tour Measure for Measure, directed by Michelle Hensley, to correctional facilities, homeless shelters, facilities for battered and abused women, drug rehab facilities, senior centers, centers for youth-at-risk, and other social service organizations that support the disadvantaged, underserved, and marginalized.
• Meanwhile at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), there will be lots of Shakespeare. In March, Edward Hall’s all-male  troupe, Propeller, will bring The Comedy of Errors to the Harvey Theater. Then in April, England’s Cheek by Jowl’s Macbeth comes to BAM, directed byDeclan Donnellan, and starring Will Keen in the title role. BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE:  later in April, Sir Derek Jacobi takes on the title role in King Learin a major new production from director Michael Grandage and the renowned Donmar Warehouse.
• I know it’s along way off, but BAM has also announced that Kevin Spacey will star in the title role of Richard III in February 2012. R3 will be directed by Academy Award winner Sam Mendes with whom Spacey worked on the film American Beauty.
• But the really big event doesn’t happen until next summer when the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 44 member acting ensemble will perform five plays in six weeks at Park Avenue Armory as part of Lincoln Center Festival. The event takes place July 6 through August 14, 2011. All five productions are currently playing in repertoire to critical praise at the Company’s home in Stratford-upon-Avon. Included are: As You Like It, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, and The Winter’s Tale. These five plays will be performed on a specially-built thrust-stage based on the newly transformed Royal Shakespeare Theatre, where the audience is wrapped around three sides of the action bringing actors and audiences closer together (see below).
• 

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Lord, what fools these mortals be!

The first of April, some do say
Is set apart for All Fool’s Day;
But why the people call it so
Nor I, nor they themselves, do know,
But on this day are people sent
On purpose for pure merriment. – Anonymous

What better day to discuss Shakespeare’s Fools than April 1. So here are some of the fools that appear in the plays:

Bottom and Puck  in A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing
Touchstone in As You Like It
The Fool in King Lear
Trinculo in The Tempest
Costard in Love’s Labours Lost
Feste in Twelfth Night
Launcelot Gobbo in The Merchant of Venice
Lavache in All’s Well That Ends Well
The Gravediggers (and Yorick) in Hamlet
A Fool in Timon of Athens
Thersites in Troilus and Cressida
Clown in Othello
Dromio of Syracuse and Dromio of Ephesus in The Comedy of Errors
Launce and Speed in Two Gentlemen of Verona
Citizen in Julius Caesar
Pompey in Measure for Measure
Clown in The Winter’s Tale
Grumio in The Taming of the Shrew
The Porter in Macbeth

 It also seems that the word fool appears in every play. Here are a sampling:

• A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Lord, what fools these mortals be!
• All’s Well That Ends Well: Go to, thou art a witty fool.
• Antony and Cleopatra: Out, fool! I forgive thee for a witch.
• As You Like It: ‘The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.’
• Hamlet: Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!
• Julius Caesar: What should the wars do with these jigging fools?
• King Lear: Dost thou know the difference, my boy, between a bitter fool and a sweet fool?
• Macbeth: Why should I play the Roman fool, and die on mine own sword?
• Othello: Thus do I ever make my fool my purse.
• Romeo and Juliet: O, I am fortune’s fool!
• The Taming of the Shrew: Away, you three-inch fool! I am no beast.
• The Tempest: Was I, to take this drunkard for a god and worship this dull fool!

And finally, in Twelfth Night, where the word “Fool” appears 53 times, Viola says:

This fellow is wise enough to play the fool;
And to do that well craves a kind of wit:
He must observe their mood on whom he jests,
The quality of persons, and the time,
And, like the haggard, cheque at every feather
That comes before his eye. This is a practise
As full of labour as a wise man’s art
For folly that he wisely shows is fit;
But wise men, folly-fall’n, quite taint their wit.

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