Quartos and Folios in the English Classroom

Hamlet. First Folio. Courtesy Folger Shakespeare Library.

By Sara Lehn

“Stand, who is that?”
“Tis I.”

“Who’s there?”
“Nay, answer me.  Stand and unfold yourself.”

What’s the difference between the two exchanges above?  Either not much or quite a lot, depending on your perspective.  Both indicate two people looking to identify each other.  Therefore, both imply a certain level of curiosity or suspicion, as well as the likelihood that they cannot see each other very well.

Both are the opening lines of Hamlet.

The first set of lines comes from the 1603 Quarto of the play.  The second set of lines comes from the 1604 Quarto, and is the one that appears in the First Folio. The second quarto is commonly considered the more authoritative version of the play.

In talking to some of my fellow teachers, I found that, while most were aware that there are quarto and folio versions of the plays, few had considered using the differences between them as a teaching tool.  Personally, it wasn’t until my time at the 2012 Teaching Shakespeare Institute, when I was able to hear a talk by Dr. Barbara Mowat, co-editor of the Folger Editions, that I really saw the worth of these different versions in the secondary classroom.

English teachers across the United States are feeling the pressure of the Common Core and are searching out techniques and tools to address standards such as RL.11-12.4, which asks students to “determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone.”

Many students find this kind of sophisticated close reading difficult, but by providing them with two different possibilities for just a small section of the play, students are able to see how even the tiniest change in diction can affect layers of nuance in the overall impact of the lines.

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What Sustains You As A Teacher?

Why is being a teacher worth it? What is it that draws you to the classroom?

English teacher Rachel Ravreby Lintgen, a 1994 graduate of Amherst College in Massachusetts, gives her own answers to these important questions in a recent blog post. The Folger has a special connection to Amherst since the college is Henry Folger’s alma mater. But anyway, we enjoyed her blog post, and we wanted to share some of it with you:

In the past year, especially, I have thought long and hard about why it is I chose teaching. After a six-year hiatus to stay at home with my two children, I decided to return to the classroom this last year. As I re-entered the workforce, I found myself wondering why and how I had, again, chosen teaching as my path. More precisely, I found myself reflecting on what sustains me in a field that is difficult, time-consuming, underpaid, often criticized, routinely scapegoated, and typically misunderstood. The answer is both simple and multi-faceted: Curiosity. In my classroom, I wonder aloud how a writer crafts her prose. I ask my students to be critical inquirers, to ponder the complexities of a text and resist easy answers. And among my colleagues, we question our practice and investigate new ways to engage with the content and with our students. As a community of teachers we, too, are a community of learners who puzzle over the how and why kids learn. At our best, teachers are explorers – curious about not only the material of the course but about how best to communicate our passion to students.

Read more at Well Mixed, an Amherst College alumni blog.

What sustains you as a teacher? Is it curiosity, or something else? Tell us in the comments.

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Silent Shakespeare

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By Deborah Gascon

Have you ever seen any silent films of Shakespeare’s plays?

During the 2014 Teaching Shakespeare Institute, I sat for hours in the belly of the Folger Shakespeare Library watching black-and-white silent films of Othello and Romeo and Juliet—and it was the best day ever.

I was fascinated—how does a play with such essential language become silent? I realized while sitting in that basement that this would be an effective and quick tool to teach emotion, facial expressions, and pantomiming in acting (which all lead to understanding tone!).

When you watch a silent film, the most important words and emotions pop up on the screen, which makes it an effective way to help students engage in close reading and narrow the text for the main idea (which leads to understanding theme!).

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Circle Performances with Shakespeare

By Deborah Gascon

It’s September and the weather is cooling down, but your students’ love for Shakespeare is warming up, right? Okay, maybe not love like, “will you go to the homecoming dance with me?” love, but maybe a lukewarm shyness sort of love? Your students aren’t ready to dance with Shakespeare, but definitely have been making eye contact and passing notes in class (or sending iMessages for you techie-teachers?).

My new batch of students haven’t experienced too much Shakespeare yet, but I have been dotting my daily lessons with a little bit of Shakespeare and performance-based instruction. By prom, they’ll all be asking their new love Super-Shakes to be their date.

Let me tell you about a quick and easy way to include the Folger’s approach to performance-based learning in our daily classroom lives.

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Field Trip for the Future: A First Folio

First Folio on display in the Exhibition Hall at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Just how important is the First Folio? Well, the First Folio is the only source for eighteen of Shakespeare’s plays, including Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Twelfth Night, The Tempest, and As You Like It, all of which would otherwise have been lost.

Imagine taking your students to see one of these books! The Folger holds 82 copies of the First Folio, about a third of those still in existence, and by far the largest collection in the world. If you happen to be teaching in the DC area, it’s not too difficult to arrange a class trip to the Folger Shakespeare Library.

But for those teachers in other parts of America, we have something for you to look forward to. In 2016, we’ll be taking the First Folio on the road – to every state in the U.S.

Encourage your local institutions to apply to host a First Folio! This opportunity is open to public, academic, and special libraries; small museums; historical societies; and other cultural venues. Online applications must be submitted by October 24.

This traveling exhibition is offered by the American Library Association (ALA) Public Programs Office, in collaboration with the Folger Shakespeare Library and Cincinnati Museum Center (CMC). The tour is made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor. Learn more at https://apply.ala.org/shakespeare.

 

 

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King Lear: A Government Official’s Perspective

In our most recent blog post, we featured a unit plan from our Shakespeare in American Life website about patriarchy in King Lear (onstage right now at Folger Theatre) and William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying.

Today, we return to Shakespeare in American Life for a look at some fascinating comments about King Lear by Janet Reno, who served as the U.S. Attorney General from 1993 to 2001.

Reno recalls how she organized a group reading of King Lear at the Department of Justice, and she offers insight about Shakespeare’s understanding of the human condition.

We’ll give you a small taste with these powerful words:

I don’t know of anybody that has so combined the power to express his thoughts as magnificently as Shakespeare, about human nature and all the challenges and the pitfalls that we face. I think he is for us all, I think he is for us all throughout the ages. I think every person can find something within the lines that Shakespeare wrote that applies to him.

These audio clips can serve as a jumping off point for a class discussion about how Shakespeare’s words affect us today, even at the higher levels of government.

Listen: Reading Lear at the Justice Department

Listen: Shakespeare and the Human Condition

 

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Shakespeare and Faulkner: Patriarchy in ‘King Lear’ and ‘As I Lay Dying’

Joseph Marcell as King Lear. Photo by Ellie Kurttz.

Performances of Shakespeare’s Globe: King Lear began last Friday at Folger Theatre, so we thought this would be an opportune time to share a unit plan based on Shakespeare’s famous play about a father and his three daughters.

The unit plan, featured on our Shakespeare in American Life website, comes from English teacher Keith Muller.

Over the course of several weeks, students will examine the relationship between tragedy and patriarchs in King Lear and William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying.

What else is involved:

• A discussion of the genre of tragedy and the qualities of a tragic hero
• Comparing and contrasting the protagonists, Lear and Anse
• Adapting As I Lay Dying as a play
• and more…

Visit Shakespeare in American Life to see the complete unit plan.

Find more Lear-related teaching resources on our website.

 

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Pop Sonnets: Shakespeare and Contemporary Music

Have you seen the Pop Sonnets tumblr?

It’s a simple yet ingenious formula: taking lyrics from popular songs and rewriting them in the form of a Shakespearean sonnet. The creativity on display here is delightful.

Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” receives this final couplet: “If truly you did wish to win my hand, you should have graced it with a wedding band.” Elsewhere, the theme song from “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” opens with “From western Philadelphia I hail, where in my youth I’d play upon the green”.

If you’re having difficulty getting students to take an interest in Shakespeare’s sonnets, maybe this could be a good way to capture their attention.

After all, as The Huffington Post excitedly puts it…

T-Swift in iambic pentameter! http://t.co/1UK10VkEp1

— HuffPost Books (@HuffPostBooks) August 28, 2014

We’ve got lesson plans for teaching the sonnets and a great resource in Folger Digital Texts that you can use, but for more on that, you should read a blog post that we published in August.

And if you really want to have an awesomely nerdy moment, this blog post insightfully points out how the distinctive typography of Pop Sonnets helps achieve an “old-timey” feel.

 

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Speaking Shakespeare: From fear to “the feeling that I could do it”

Why do we make such a big deal about performance-based learning?

We at the Folger strongly believe that Shakespeare is for everyone and that speaking the Bard’s words for yourself is essential to gaining an understanding of and appreciation for Shakespeare’s plays.

Lenny Henry, the British comedian turned acclaimed actor, recently shared his turn-around experience with Shakespeare, in an interview with The Telegraph:

What came next was a Radio 4 documentary series called What’s So Great About…? The first was on Shakespeare. “I had a real allergy to Shakespeare. I wasn’t really taught it at school properly and thought it was very much the reserve of middle-class white people with tights and a cabbage down the front. So I was very frightened of it. Everybody we interviewed on that show, Peter Hall, Trevor Nunn, Adrian Lester, Judi Dench, said, ‘You should try it. Don’t slag it off if you don’t know what you’re talking about. Get some of the words in your mouth and then you’ll understand why we all love Shakespeare so much.’”

Henry delivered 20 lines of Othello’s last speech for the documentary and he was hooked. “It gave me the feeling that I could do it. It’s almost like I had my head put on straight for me. ‘This is what it’s about, it’s a serious thing, take it seriously, learn your lines, do some research.’ So the rehearsal process was brutal and I was reading that play for months and months before we did it.” And it was a success.

Henry went from thinking Shakespeare was not for him, to going on to perform in The Comedy of Errors at the Royal National Theatre in London.

What a testament to the power of speaking – not just reading – Shakespeare.

How are your students engaging with Shakespeare this school year? Tell us in the comments.

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