It’s time once again to check in on what searches people have done to find themselves at Shakespeare Teacher, and to respond in the name of fun and public service. All of the following searches brought people to this site in the past week.

That’s a good question. For the past five years, I’ve been using “Mosh” by Eminem. It was great for teaching repetition, rhyme, rhythm, alliteration, antithesis, allusion, and emendation (where I edited out the profanity). Useful as it is, though, it’s starting to get a little old, so I’d appreciate any good suggestions. Are there any popular hip hop songs today that use a lot of poetic devices that might be good for teaching Shakespeare?

Well, the Tudors were English, but it’s important to remember that they reigned from 1485 to 1603, a time of extraordinary changes in publishing, literacy, and what would be considered “the English language.” This was the time of the Great Vowel Shift, as Middle English transitioned into Early Modern English, and the Middle Ages gave way to the Renaissance.

Probably the most famous work written by a Tudor monarch would be the Defense of the Seven Sacraments, which Henry VIII wrote in Latin, a very common written language at the time. However, his personal letters are in English.

Bloody Mary refers to Queen Mary I, another Tudor monarch who reigned from 1553-1558. She was daughter to Henry VIII (by Catherine of Aragon) and older sister to Elizabeth I. She died before Shakespeare was born, and does not appear in any of his plays, not even the one that bears her father’s name.

The phrase “ghost the fine worth” is an anagram of “Twelfth Night, or Shoe” if you add an extra “L” into the mix. But “Shoe” is not the subtitle of that play, and the extra “L” is cheating, so that’s probably not it. If you do allow substitutions, you can swap “S” for “KNURY” and make “King Henry the Fourth, Two.” The closest I can come is to remove an “O” from the original phrase and replace it with “AEM.” What play title could you anagram then?

UPDATE: Play title discovered by Dharam. See comments for answer.

It’s hard to really put a play at a particular grade level. I prefer to teach the play I want to teach, and plan instruction to fit the students I’m teaching. I’ve only taught As You Like It twice, once to 7th graders and once to graduate students. The lighthearted tone of the play and the fun situations that it depicts make this a fun choice for even the youngest students studying Shakespeare. So if you’re wondering if As You Like It would be a good play for your students, it probably is!

The historical Macbeth died in 1057, so the event you’re looking for is most likely the Battle of Hastings in 1066. This completed the Norman invasion, and basically defined what we think of England even today. William the Conqueror became King William I of England, and every English monarch since – whether King John or Richard III or Henry VIII or George III or Victoria or Elizabeth II – has been a direct descendant of his. That is one impressive legacy.

I leave the task of responding to the remaining search terms to my readers:

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 17th, 2010 at 6:23 pm and is filed under As You Like It, Classroom Ideas, Education, Googleplex, History, Macbeth, Music, NYU, Poetry, Richard III, Shakespeare, Teaching Shakespeare, The Tudors, Twelfth Night. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.