I’m currently working on a project with eighth-graders who are learning about civil rights. The other day, we were talking about Rosa Parks. I told them that she wasn’t just some random bus passenger who was too tired to move, but rather (and more impressively) an experienced protester who allowed herself to get arrested on purpose. This surprised the students, who then wanted to know – if that was true – why all of their other teachers had told them otherwise. I said that their other teachers probably heard the story that way, as this is a well-circulated account of what happened.
As an example, I mentioned that it was a popular myth that Columbus proved the earth was round. This time, it was one of the other adults in the room who challenged me on this. I told the students that they didn’t have to believe anything was true, just because I said it was. They could put it on their Google List.
When I visit this class, the teachers asks me if the students should take notes. I encourage the students to keep a Google List. If we broach a topic we don’t have time to cover fully, you put it on the Google List. If there are questions I didn’t have time to answer, or didn’t know the answer, you put it on the Google List. If something I say doesn’t ring true, or contradicts what you already believe, you put it on the Google List. In the Information Age, there’s no reason that learning needs to be completely guided by the teacher, or that it needs to stop when the bell rings.
When I was in graduate school, I kept a “Library List” with me during my classes, so when a professor brought up a reference I didn’t know, I could go to the library and look it up. For me, that’s who these questions were addressed Before Google. What a difference the Internet has made! Today, I’m all over Google (and Wikipedia, actually), expanding my knowledge and filling in gaps on a daily basis. These are real 21st century skills. We should be encouraging our students to develop them.
I subscribe to a service called “SiteMeter” which allows me to see a limited amount of information about my visitors. One thing that I can see is if someone finds my site via a Google search, and what they were searching for.
It’s been a while, but every now and then I check in on what searches people have done to find themselves at Shakespeare Teacher, and to respond to those search terms in the name of fun and public service.
In celebration of the fact that I’m moving the Googleplex to Sundays, I’m going to double my usual 6-for-me/6-for-you format and give you 12 of each. Full disclosure: I actually started this post some time ago. All of the following 24 searches did bring people to this site in the same week; it just wasn’t this past week.
Enjoy!
william shakespeare’s teachers
I kept getting hits for this search, and couldn’t for the life of me figure out what people were looking for. Then, I realized that they were searching for this TED lecture on how schools kill creativity, given by Sir Ken Robinson in 2006. It’s almost 20 minutes long, but well worth watching. I should have posted this a long time ago.
freud and arrested development
I think they were looking for the actual psychological phenomenon, and not my analysis of a sitcom. But this post now ranks fourth in this particular Google search. The Internet is a funny place.
if shakespeare were alive today, who in history would he write tragedy about?
Shakespeare’s take on George III would have been well worth the staging. He probably would have also had a go at William III and the Glorious Revolution. We’d probably still be staging the famous Battle of the Boyne scene and debating whether or not Shakespeare was a secret Jacobite.
two monarchs reigned during shakespare lifetime. the bu
The two monarchs were Elizabeth I and James I. I’m not really sure what the rest of your question was going to be.
what do shakespeare’s play show about religion of the time
Shakespeare lived between two periods of severe religious strife. The mid-16th century was marked by radical shifts in English religious life described in greater detail here. After Shakespeare’s death, growing religious tension between Catholics and Protestants would lead to civil war and the execution of King Charles I. Compared to these two periods of violence, Shakespeare’s England was relatively stable religiously, though obviously there was still some unrest.
People have looked to Shakespeare’s plays for clues of where he fell on the question, but there’s no concrete evidence either way. Most of his plays are set either before the Protestant Reformation or in Northern Italy (which was solidly Catholic at the time) so Shakespeare – seemingly by design – didn’t have to deal with the religious issue much. One notable exception is Measure for Measure, which takes place in Vienna. If you would like to read Shakespeare’s scenes depicting a Protestant official debating the death penalty with a Catholic novice, you will find them here and here.
the religion in king lear
King Lear takes place in pre-Christian Britain. The characters make various references to Roman gods such as Jupiter and Apollo.
what inspired shakespeare to write macbeth?
Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, and Shakespeare had spent much of his career writing popular plays about her famous ancestors. When James I ascended the throne, Shakespeare wrote a play about his ancestors to honor the new king.
Note that the bloodthirsty Macbeth is not one of these ancestors. Rather, the noble Duncan, Malcolm, Siward, Banquo, and Fleance are the ancestors of James depicted in the play. Oh yeah, and the first seven of the show of eight kings. See below.
how does the vision of the eight kings make macbeth feel
Not good. Concerned about a prophecy that says that Banquo’s decendants will be kings, Macbeth demands to know whether all that he has done has been for the benefit of another’s line. The witches show him eight kings, and Banquo’s ghost who points to them as his. These eight kings correspond with the eight actual Stuart kings of Scotland. The eighth king is James himself.
shakespeare plays for junior high students
Well, I suppose the conventional answers are Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. But I’ve had some success with Othello and Cymbeline which aren’t exactly the first plays that come to mind when I think of the term “age appropriate.” If you can find a way to help students make it their own, the experience will encourage them to appreciate Shakespeare, no matter which play you choose. Go with a selection that you’re passionate about, and maybe your enthusiasm will be infectious. Or, if you’re really daring, describe a few of the plays to the students, and let them choose which one they want to work with.
jack cade henry 6th monologue
Ah, Jack Cade – one of Shakespeare’s most under-recognized comic characters. Propped up as a claimant to the throne, the rough-hewn Cade promises to kill all the lawyers and ban literacy. The famous scene is here and you can find Cade monologues here and here.
does everyone play the queen from cymbeline as purely evil?
She’s pretty clearly evil, and I’ve never seen her played any other way, but that’s as far as I can go. I’m sure someone has played her otherwise. Does anyone have another experience, or an idea of an alternate interpretation?
“nymph fly” tempest
This makes me very curious. Were they looking for my Tempest lipogram? Or did they have another reason to search for this? It seems pretty specific to me. Hmmm.
I leave the task of responding to the remaining search terms to my readers:
why teach shakespeare
what would you change about macbeth
henry vi jimmy carter
romeo juliet boal technique
what creative artists did shakespeare admire?
why people like genghis khan
3 levels of shakespeare
activities to introduce macbeth
what technology did william shakespeare used
shakespeare “they fight”
how has shakespeare changed our expectations of tragedy to aristotle in romeo and juliet
I’ve been finishing up some end-of-the-year work, which is why posting has been light. But I did want to give an update on the Elementary Education Conference at the Folger last week.
The conference was two days, and was aimed at exploring ways to teach Shakespeare in the elementary school classroom. I had a great time attending the other presentations, and took away a lot of great activities to use with my students.
For my own presentation, I did this activity, and showed this project, both of which were very well received. The latter was done with 8th grade students, but it gave me a chance to talk a little bit about the cognitive differences between students in elementary school and students in junior high school. This was mostly taken from my dissertation, which was specifically on teaching Shakespeare in the elementary school.
Perhaps that’s why what struck me the most seemed to be the novelty of it all. When I worked for the Folger’s Teaching Shakespeare Institute, all of the participants were experienced teachers of Shakespeare. In fact, we hand-picked teachers who would be most likely to be able to implement what we were teaching them. But for this conference, about half of the elementary school teachers had never taught Shakespeare before, and were attending because they were intrigued by the idea. Plus, there were a number of junior high school teachers in attendance as well, looking for adaptive activities they could use to make Shakespeare more accessible to their students.
Elementary school is the best time to introduce Shakespeare to children (unless they happen have a dad like Duane who does it earlier) because they’re too young to be afraid of it. Once they get past the strangeness of the language and develop an appreciation for real human emotion and masterful storytelling of the plays, they have the whole rest of their lives to learn everything else.
Clearly, we still have a lot of work to do to get the word out!
The 8th grade class I’ve been working with on Othello has finished their video project, and it is now available for public viewing. Enjoy!
The students watched last year’s Cymbeline video before we began the project, so they could think about what they’d like to do as they read Othello. I’m really happy with the way it turned out. Feel free to share this video with anyone you think would be interested.
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.
shakespeare john talbot monologue
There are two John Talbots in Shakespeare, both in Henry VI, Part One. Shakespeare distinguishes them by calling them Lord Talbot (the father) and John Talbot (his son). The son, I believe, only appears in two scenes, found here and here, and doesn’t really have what you’d call a monologue. In both scenes, Lord Talbot wants his son to flee the battle, but the young John Talbot prefers death to dishonor. The father has a larger part in the play, including a number of long speeches throughout the play, but I’m not sure which monologue you’re looking for. Perhaps you could look for a monologue here or here.
ugliest monarchs in history
Well, that’s entirely subjective, but I will nominate Charles II of Spain who is a classic example of what happens when cousins marry.
fairytale influece in shakespeare
For Shakespeare at his most fairy-tale-esque, check out the four Romance plays he wrote towards the end of his career: Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest. If it’s actual fairies you’re looking for (and even a talking animal), then I’d recommend A Midsummer Night’s Dream. But one play that you might not expect to be influenced by fairy tales is none other than our own King Lear. Check out Love Like Salt to see the retelling of the source fairy tale across a variety of cultures.
utube 5th grade a midsummer night dream
It’s YouTube, and if you go there and search, the most relevant find seems to be this claymation version of the play, created by a fifth-grade class. I’ve directed Midsummer with fifth-graders, and even taped it, but the quality of the tape is too poor for posting. I am working on a number of video projects with 8th graders right now, and I hope to be able to share them with you by the end of next month.
romeo and juliet act 2 scene 1
This is the scene before the famous balcony scene, and it can be found here. Romeo appears on stage, having just left the party where he has met Juliet, and decides to hide from Benvolio and Mercutio so he can go back and find her. As Romeo’s friends search for him, they mock his preoccupation with love. Finally, they give up and leave. The next scene begins with Romeo’s response: “He jests at scars that never felt a wound.” This would seem to indicate that the action is continuous, and that a scene break is unwarranted. But tradition breaks the scene here, and really, who wants to be the first one to mess with the numbering of the balcony scene?
henry viii catherine of aragon using rapidshare
Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon used Rapidshare until Henry’s break with the Catholic church in the early 1530’s. The Act of Unlimited Bandwidth was introduced into Parliment in 1532, and made Live Mesh the only permissible file hosting service in England. This enraged the Pope, who sent Henry a papal bull of excommunication as a PDF file via YouSendIt. It was his sixth wife, Catherine Parr, who convinced Henry to use Megaupload, which he did until his death in 1547.
I leave the task of responding to the remaining search terms to my readers:
who becomes claudia’s plot against hamlet?
the tempest crossword shakespeare
vitruvian man, thomas jefferson
riddle “marvin the martian” dice
macbeth:in shakespeare time
character analysis of anne boleyn in shakespeare’s henry the eighth
Remember that Karl Fisch video “Did You Know?” that I posted in March 2007? Well, DeLisa just sent me the 3.0 version, and I think it’s worth a repost, not only because of the snazzy new visual design, but also to note the updates over the past two years.
One of the interesting changes is that, while both videos end with the question of what it all means, only the original goes on to answer the question – “Shift happens.” The newer video discards the lame pun, and leaves it to the viewer to decide what it all means. And so, here’s what it all means to me.
Oh, did I mention that I’m giving a presentation at the Folger in June?
Readers in the Washington DC area should definitely check this conference out, considering the quality and variety of the two-day program. My co-presenters are an amazing collection of top-notch Shakespeare educators, and I feel incredibly honored to be listed among them.
I will be presenting my research into how technology can help facilitate the collaborative project-based learning that helps younger students make a meaningful stretch into Shakespeare. This study was recently accepted for publication as well, so it’s good news all around.
I subscribe to a service called “SiteMeter” which allows me to see a limited amount of information about my visitors. One thing that I can see is if someone finds my site via a Google search, and what they were searching for.
It’s been a while, but every now and then I check in on what searches people have done to find themselves at Shakespeare Teacher, and to respond to those search terms in the name of fun and public service. All of the following searches brought people to this site in the past week.
how many days does it take to read macbeth
Obviously, this depends on how much time you spend reading per day, how quickly you read Shakespeare, and how deeply you want to examine the text. But Macbeth is a play, and is one of Shakespeare’s shorter plays at that. You could probably stage an uncut production in about two and a half hours. A first-time reader should be able to make it through the text in two evenings. Reading it out loud in a group should not take more than four hours, including breaks between acts.
the promised end slings and arrows connection to king lear
“The Promised End” is the last episode of the Canadian television series Slings & Arrows. As with all Season 3 episodes, the title is taken from King Lear. In the last scene of the play, Lear enters carrying his dead daughter and, in a mixture of delusion and denial, believes it is possible she is still alive. Kent looks at the pathetic scene and laments “Is this the promised end?” After a lifetime of power and majesty, Lear has become an object of pity. And if a king can be reduced to this, what end can the rest of us be promised?
analysis of othello’s arrogance in act 2 scene 1
The word analysis makes me think this is a homework assignment, but no matter. Here’s the scene. Othello’s hardly in it, and doesn’t seem all that arrogant to me. Did you mean Iago’s arrogance?
direct descendants of the tudors
I still get a lot of hits for this. But we should clear up the difference between descendants of the Tudors, and descendants of King Henry VIII. Henry VIII has no known descendants, though the conversation continues. But the Tudor line was founded, not by Henry VIII, but his father, Henry VII. His line continued, not through son Henry, but through daughter Margaret. She was ancestor to all future English monarchs. So there are many, many people descended from the Tudors alive today.
instruction of king lear
This may be controversial, but I’m not a big fan of teaching King Lear in a K-12 setting. I know there are people who have done wonderful things with it, but I think there are better choices. The themes of the play are really more relevant to more mature audiences. I think kids relate better to young lovers, revenge killings, and battles for power than they do to the strained relationships between aging parents and their adult children. It’s one of the greatest works of literature ever written, but I think it takes some life experience to digest. I’ve only ever taught it once, in an advanced graduate course in Shakespeare, and it was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had teaching Shakespeare.
I admit I could be wrong about this, but I hold this belief firmly. I look forward to one day being convinced otherwise.
shakespeare teacher name
This is probably not what you were looking for, but my name is Bill.
I leave the task of responding to the remaining search terms to my readers:
We come to school expecting answers, but what we really learn is how to ask good questions.
Any work of drama must ask a question. We see it on television all the time. Who killed Laura Palmer? Will Jack Bauer stop the terrorists? What do the “numbers” mean? We also see a number of television shows and movies where the main characters have jobs that require them to ask good questions. Journalists and police detectives are quite common. We see doctors and lawyers in this role too.
When creating dramatic activities for the classroom, it’s often useful to think of the power of the dramatic question. Putting students in roles (like detectives) that ask questions can help stimulate their inquiry process.
Last night was the last class in my Dramatic Activities in the English Classroom course, and I invited my graduate students to write any remaining questions they may have about the course material on an index card, and I would try to address them. One student wrote “Why don’t you post your Macbeth lesson to your website?” – a reference to a lesson on Macbeth that I had demonstrated earlier in the course. So now I share it with you.
This is an actual lesson I have taught many times to introduce Macbeth to a class that is new to it. I originally created it for a fifth-grade class that would be studying the play, but I have taught the lesson in many grades, and in this course many times. The lesson is meant to be taught before the students begin reading the play, so they are not expected to have any prior knowledge.
The students are put in role as police detectives. The teacher is in role as the chief of police. The chief informs the detectives that they will be traveling back in time to the 11th century, and gives them an overview of the crime – Duncan, the King of Scotland, has been murdered. There were nine people in the castle at the time the body was discovered. They must choose which suspects to interview and form a theory of the crime. The chief reviews each of the nine suspects:
MACBETH – The Thane of Glamis and Cawdor. It was his castle at Inverness where the murder took place.
LADY MACBETH – Macbeth’s wife.
MALCOLM – The King’s older son, and the Prince of Cumberland. It is assumed he will become king.
DONALBAIN – The King’s younger son.
BANQUO – Kinsman to Macbeth and Duncan.
FLEANCE – Young son to Banquo.
MACDUFF – The Thane of Fife. He discovered the body.
LENNOX – The Thane of Lennox.
PORTER – Keeper of the gate. Nobody can enter the castle unless the gate is opened from the inside.
The chief asks the detectives who they would like to interview. The detectives vote, and whoever is chosen is played by the teacher, who sits in a chair to indicate the change in role. The detectives interview the suspect and take detailed notes until they are satisfied. They may then choose to interview another suspect, who will also be played by the teacher. At the end of class, students have to write a police report, stating who they believe committed the murder, and why they think so.
Though the interviews, intriguing details emerge. The porter was not at his post all night! There were two other people in the castle, and they were killed by Macbeth after the body was discovered! Malcolm and Donalbain have fled, and are not available for questioning! Other details provoke further questions. Why won’t Macbeth give a straight answer about what he discussed with Banquo on the battlements last night? Were Macbeth and Lady Macbeth both woken by Macduff’s knocking this morning? How did Malcolm respond to hearing his father was murdered?
Obviously, the teacher needs to be very familiar with the play to pull this off. But if done well, it gives the students the opportunity to dig around a little bit in the world of the play before approaching the text. The teacher should not overact the role; the activity should be driven by the questioning of the students. Also, I try to avoid giving any information that’s not in the play, if possible.
It really doesn’t matter who the students ask to talk to. I don’t have any particular information that it’s necessary for students to gain from this activity. The focus is not on giving students any particular answers; the value is in getting them to ask the right questions. And when they leave, they should still have questions. It just might motivate them to want to read the play, and help them understand it better when they do.
I learned this morning that Brazilian theatre activist Augusto Boal passed away yesterday at the age of 78. His death has received little attention in the news, which shouldn’t be too surprising, but I thought there was a chance that his Nobel Peace Prize nomination last year might at least get him on Stephanopoulos this morning. It did not.
There are many places on the Internet to learn about Boal, so there’s no need for an obituary from me, but I did want to say a few words about how Boal has impacted my life and my work. I can easily say that Boal’s writings have had a greater influence on me than any other author’s. (Shakespeare doesn’t really count as an influence.) I apologize in advance if this post seems indulgent, but I could think of no better place to record my thoughts about the man whose work has meant so much to me over the years.
In 1993, as a young graduate student, I read Theatre of the Oppressed for a class, and it blew my mind. Boal examines the conception of theatre from Aristotelian, Hegelian, and Brechtian standpoints, and redefines the theatrical event as a political act. Aristotle’s concept of a catharsis, explains Boal, purges the audience of the impulse to act and to make a change in society. The spectator gives away the right to act to another person, who is even referred to as the actor. Just as Paolo Freire before him had demonstrated the need for teachers to learn from their students, breaking down the artificial barrier between them, Boal calls for a new theatre, one where the barrier between actor and spectator is broken down, and the theatrical event increases the impulse to act instead of purging it.
My interest stimulated, I sought out Boal’s other key work, Games for Actors and Non-Actors, which contained a wealth of activities I’ve been able to draw from for the past 15 years. In 1996, I had the opportunity to take a class with Boal himself at the Brecht Forum here in New York City. The class was on the then-new techniques he had developed for using Theatre of the Oppressed techniques for therapeutic purposes. It was an incredible experience. I had read Boal’s book on the subject, The Rainbow of Desire, but wasn’t able to make any sense of it. Actually getting a chance to use the techniques under Boal’s guidance was an invaluable experience I’ll never forget.
Boal was not like I thought he would be. I was expecting him to be a serious revolutionary type, but he had a jovial, even avuncular, demeanor. Even when telling a story about how he was tortured in Brazil, he had such a positive energy and good humour that you’d think he was talking about riding his bicycle in the park. (The punchline was that he was being tortured for going to other countries and saying that Brazil used torture.) He also told us about his recent experiment in what he called legislative theatre. He returned to Brazil (many years after his torture experience) and successfully ran for public office. As an elected official, he had his theatre group conduct Theatre of the Oppressed workshops with the people to learn what they needed, and then he would introduce the ideas into legislation. The experience is chronicled in an entertaining and enlightening way in Boal’s book Legislative Theatre.
In 1997, I started using Boal’s Forum Theatre technique as a staff development activity within the organization where I work. I have since used it in a variety of settings and it remains the sharpest tool in my kit. For a while, it looked like I might do my doctoral dissertation on Boal, though I ended up returning to Shakespeare in the end. But while I was doing my coursework, I was planning to write about Boal, so a great deal of my graduate studies focused on his work.
For the past twelve years, I’ve been teaching a graduate class at NYU on using drama as a teaching tool in the English classroom, and Boal’s influence is ubiquitous. Not only do I devote an entire class session to using Theatre of the Oppressed techniques in the classroom, but a major theme of the course is taken directly from a speech that Boal gave when Paulo Freire died, which I read during the second session of class each year. (The speech can be found in Legislative Theatre.) Boal describes how power relationships too often create a monologue, where only one party has the right to speak. Freire’s insight, according to Boal, is that education is much more effective when it becomes a dialogue between teacher and student. This forms one of the core philosophical principles of my course. The theatrical metaphor is significant, as dramatic activities can empower students to find their voice, drawing upon their prior experience and cultural values. This makes the learning experience more relevant to them.
You may have noticed this blog is more interactive than most. I certainly share my own opinions about the matters at hand, but almost all of my regular features are interactive. This blog is nothing without you. That’s because I believe that the power of Web 2.0 tools is that they break down the barrier between writer and reader. This is a philosophy I may not have embraced if it weren’t for Boal and Freire.
We lost a giant this weekend. But his legacy lives on in me, and the many, many others who have been influenced by his work and his writings. And I invite here all of them who wish to say along with me what Boal said upon Freire’s passing:
I am very sad. I have lost my last father. Now all I have are brothers and sisters.