I like Shakespeare. You gotta admire a guy who used a vocabulary of over 40,000 words in his writings, when most of us stumble around using an average working vocabulary of 8,000 words, and for a great percentage of the population this includes sophisticated terms such as “dude” and “cool.” You may need to make extensive use of the footnotes in your Portable Shakespeare in order to follow the action, but Will coined many expressions in use today, such as, “You’ll eat us out of house and home” (Henry IV, Part 2) and “There’s a method in my madness” (Hamlet).
A couple of years ago I taught a class on Shakespeare for our homeschool group, once a week for six weeks. As happens when I teach something, I learned a lot, too. I taught junior high and high school students about Hamlet, and we discussed Shakespeare’s life, literature and poetry, the Reformation and Queen Elizabeth, the origin of the theater and we performed an abbreviated version of Hamlet. I also designed a class for the elementary students which a couple of other moms taught. I have thought about putting all this together into a booklet which other homeschoolers can use to teach their children about Shakespeare.
I acquired quite a lot of Shakespeare resources during the course of my course. I thought you might be interested in some of them, a couple of which are more obscure treasures I unearthed. First, however, let me share with you a poem which my friend Shirlee (who visited with her sweet family for lunch today) forwarded to me:
Somebody entered this in a weekly humor contest in the Washington Post. The contestants had been told to rewrite something using the style of a different writer. This person rewrote “The Hokey Pokey” in the style of William Shakespeare.
O proud left foot, that ventures quick within
Then soon upon a backward journey lithe.
Anon, once more the gesture, then begin:
Command sinistral pedestal to writhe.
Commence thou then the fervid Hokey-Poke,
A mad gyration, hips in wanton swirl.
To spin! A wilde release from Heaven’s yoke.
Blessed dervish! Surely canst go, girl.
The Hoke, the poke — banish now thy doubt
Verily, I say, ’tis what it’s all about.
—by William Shakespeare channeled by Ralph Besser
The Resources:
A Child’s Portrait of Shakespeare by Lois Burdett, from the “Shakespeare Can Be Fun!” series. For young children, the life of Shakespeare, told in couplets and illustrated by young children (very cute!). For example, it begins:
On a day that was just like today, but many years ago,
A boy was born in England who we think you all should know.
This lad grew up to write a lot of bright and famous plays;
Ideas that consumed his mind could fill up many days.
There are several other books in this series by the same author, too, based on the plays. I have Hamlet for Kids (”High on the battlements, the sentinels stare round. The biting wind is the only sound. For the past two nights, they’ve seen a strange sight, A phantom ghost who stalks the night.”) and Romeo and Juliet for Kids (”As Romeo watched from his hiding place, To the stars above, Juliet stated her case, ‘Oh Romeo, Romeo!’ her eyes were aglow, ‘Wherefore art thou Romeo?”)
The Tempest retold by Ann Keay Beneduce, illustrated by Gennady Spirin. This book appears to be out of print, but copies are available through ABE Books. It is a lushly illustrated picture book, and the illlustrations are reminiscent of Renaissance paintings.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, retold by Bruce Colville, illustrated by Dennis Nolan. Another beautifully illustrated picture book, will help untangle the complicated plot for any confused by the various stories within the play.
Shakespeare Stories by Leon Garfield, illustrated by Michael Foreman. This has twelve of Shakespeare’s plays, masterfully rewritten in narrative form, retaining some of the original language so the flavor of the actual plays shines through. This is a beautiful book with many color plates. Garfield also has another volume with more plays retold.
Twisted Tales From Shakespeare by Richard Armour. Hilarious retellings of some of the plays, reads like P.G. Wodehouse meets the Bard. (”As is frequently pointed out by the critics, Macbeth was probably written in haste. No one knows why Shakespeare was in a hurry, unless he was nauseated by all the bloodshed…Shakespeare, who never could think up a plot all by himself, found this one in Holinshed’s Chronicles, changing it just enough so that no one would recognize the source. He didn’t count on the resourcefulness of modern scholars, who have to discover things like this to become associate professors.”)
Green Eggs and Hamlet. This video is subtitled “The Scrambled History of the Prince of Denmark.” It is the tragic story told in Dr. Seuss rhyme, and one of the main characters is “Samiamlet” who tries to get the prince to sample an unusual dish. This is really funny, although crude in a couple of spots (and lots of cleavage is on display). If you click on the above link, you can preview the first five minutes of the video. You might want to search the website of The Writing Company for other Shakespeare resources, too.
A book which may not be a secret but is a valuable resource for studying Shakespeare, particularly six of his most famous plays, is Brightest Heaven of Invention by Peter Leithart. This book not only helps explain the stories in each of the plays, but it is indispensable for understanding the biblical themes permeating the plays. It discusses Henry V, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing and The Taming of the Shrew.
