6 ways to make Shakespeare more teachable
Shakespeare scares people. Parents, teachers, students, theatre goers, actors, everyone. His works can be intimidating. For all their brilliance, the Bard’s plays are long, complex and technical.
It’s hardly surprising that many of us shy away from reading his works, let alone teaching them. Sitting in a theatre watching them is slightly easier, although I have never seen a live Shakespeare play without falling asleep at least once (apart from a highly entertaining outdoor performance of Romeo and Juliet where it rained the ENTIRE time that Juliet lay unconscious on stage – it felt rude to fall asleep in the face of her suffering).
There are ways to make Shakespeare more teachable though, which go beyond merely ploughing through his words. Here are some ideas for making Shakespeare more entertaining for kids and adults.
1. Sling some Shakespearean insults
Shakespeare had some great insults, and the best thing is that most of them aren’t insulting anymore. Kids can happily call one another “a cream faced loon”, a “scullion”, “rampallian” or “fustilarian”, while you bask in the sunshine of being a parent of educated hellions.
Other witty favourites include:
“I do desire we may be better strangers”
“Thine face is not worth sunburning”
“You base football player!”
Plus, of course there’s the classic of biting your thumb at someone.
2. Imagine an animal’s perspective
I have fond memories of this exercise, having spent an entire term imagining Macbeth from the perspective of a bat hanging from the rafters of the castle. This is a really fun activity for kids who are familiar with one play in particular. Get them to pick an animal (dog, cat, mouse or bat are great ones) observing the action of a Shakespeare scene. Ask them to write about it or describe what it would have looked like from their perspective. This is a great prompt for kids’ imagination and helping them make the play seem real.
3. Draw a relationship tree
Shakespeare plays are often relationship driven. In fact, one of the reasons given for the fame of Shakespeare’s work (there were loads of other playwrights from the same period who are nowhere near as famous today) is his characters, and how sensitively they are observed.
The relationships can get tricky though. There’s often lots of coincidences or people changing their minds. It’s even worse when magic gets involved (see A Midsummer Night’s Dream for detail).
Get kids to try drawing a relationship tree for a play. Write out each character on a big sheet of paper and draw lines between them, labelling them with the relationship. You might put down who is love with who, who is related to who, who hates who and so on. It’s a fun way to remember characters and explain everyone’s behaviours.
4. Visit some locations
If you’re lucky enough to live in the UK there are some great Shakespearean locations you can visit, to get a feel for the Bard. Stratford-upon-Avon is his birthplace, where there’s a museum or you can go and see the Royal Shakespeare Company, who are based there. London is filled with Shakespeare related locations, from the Globe Theatre to St Paul’s cathedral. We’ve made a list of Shakespearean locations in London here.
You can also use your imagination to find Shakespearean locations. A Midsummer Night’s Dream takes place in a wood on a warm summer’s evening, Macbeth requires lots of castles or The Tempest could take place on any island.
If you don’t like near an authentic or imagined Shakespearean location, you can always make your kids stand up while they watch a movie, like groundlings in Shakespeare’s Globe.
5. Live the play
Studying Shakespeare isn’t just about the stories, it can also be the jumping off point to think about plays and theatre in general. Kids can take many aspects of play writing and make them their own. Writing a whole play might be ambitious, but a scene from a play probably isn’t. Kids can take inspiration from the character lists at the beginning of Shakspeare’’s plays – who are the key characters in their lives and how would they describe them?
6. Make up some words
Shakespeare made up a lot of words – hundreds if not thousands. Many of them we still use today, like:
Rant
Zany
Fashionable
Mimic
See if your kids can make up some of their own words. You can combine words, like challicult (challenging + difficult) or use combine words from another language with your own to make something new.
Shakespeare’s longest made-up word was 27 letters long (‘Honorificabilitudinitatibus’) so shoot for the stars in terms of length.
Here are some excellent tips for giving your new words a Shakespearean twist.
Planning on learning about Shakespeare with kids aged 6-12?
Try our Shakespeare workbook.
It’s got 6 Shakespeare themed activities, including:
Navigating around Shakespeare’s London
Match the animal to the Shakespeare play
Translating some Romeo & Juliet into plain English
Recognizing the pitfalls of The Scottish Play!
Our Shakespeare workbook is available as part of our online platform, DTK Online. DTK Online uses educational workbooks, which are a mixture of online and printable activities, to teach about different countries around the world. We want to spark kids’ interest in learning more about the world. Currently 22 workbooks available.