In the before-times, when social contact was allowed, one of my favorite things to do was to gather with friends and do readings of Shakespeare’s plays. We would choose a play in advance, meet together at an agreed-upon time, divide up the roles, and read the play out loud from beginning to end.

When the world shut down, I was part of four such groups, each of which met on a monthly basis. This seems like it would mean a weekly reading for me, but in practice, the dates tended to cluster, and I often attended several in one week.

Since the COVID shelter-in-place, all four groups have shifted online, and I now participate in regular readings via Zoom. To be clear, this doesn’t come close to replacing getting together with friends and reading live, but it does replace not having a reading at all quite nicely.

And it occurs to me that there may be some folks within the sound of my voice who might be looking for something fun to do with friends from a distance. If a Shakespeare reading sounds like fun for you, I want to show you how easy it can be to put together.

First, find some friends who like Shakespeare and want to do this. One person should have a Zoom account so they can create a room, but if that’s not available, there are alternatives like Google Meet that can also work.

Last year, I put together a resource page for groups who want to meet live to do Shakespeare readings. That’s not an option right now, but the page is just as useful for online readings.

You can choose the play in advance, or wait until everyone has met and choose a play based on the recommendations for the number of readers you have.

There are 24 plays that have sections on the page, and each play section links to the Folger Digital Text for that play, so everyone will be using the same text. Each section also contains divisions to assign roles from the play to 2 to 12 readers.

All that remains is to randomize who is assigned each reader number, which can be quickly done at this website.

So, if you’re looking for a fun way to connect with your long-lost Shakespeare-loving friends, online Shakespeare readings just might be the thing to try!

What if the events of Macbeth had taken place in 2020, and the witches were forced to hold their fateful meeting online? It just might look a little something like this:

Shakespeare Teacher (and Quincy) got a nice mention in the most recent issue of The Shakespeare Newsletter!

Click the image to read the entire article by Stephanie Cowell, who crafted a lovely write-up of our reading group, now running over ten years.

Or, you can click here to go directly to the resource page referenced in the article.

I’ve just updated the Shakespeare Reading Group Resource Page to include an additional 8 plays, for a total of 24.

So if your dream roles include Cleopatra or Falstaff, the Shakespeare Teacher has got your back. Enjoy!

I am pleased to announce the most significant update to this website since the addition of the blog in 2007.

I have just completed a project that I’ve been working on for many years. As long-time readers know, I’m part of a group that meets on a monthly basis to do readings of Shakespeare plays. To facilitate these readings, I put together a system for how to divide the plays into parts so that each reader gets a relatively equal-sized part and that nobody’s doing scenes with themselves. It makes everything run so smoothly, and I’ve always wanted to put those play divisions online so that others who wanted to do readings would have access to them. That website is now up. I hope that it will lead to more Shakespeare readings being held in the world, because they are a lot of fun.

Once my website had more than one thing on it (the blog and the reading group page), I thought it was time to create a home page, so I did. And, having a structure in place, I was able to elevate the Plantagenet family trees to have their own page, which is also now up. I also filled the home page with category links of blog features from over the years that I want to highlight.

So welcome to those new and returning! I look forward to our continuing this journey together!

My monthly Shakespeare reading group is gearing up to do the history plays. For the next eight months, starting this Sunday, we’re going to be working our way through the two tetralogies.

Shakespeare, working in the late sixteenth century, was writing about his own country’s history spanning most of the fifteenth century. He could assume his audience was familiar with the stories and the characters to some degree. Our perspective, over four hundred years later and in another country, does not provide the same level of context.

Imagine we were watching a play about the American Civil War and characters made various passing references to “the president,” “Lincoln,” and “Honest Abe.” We would understand these are all the same person, no explanation needed. But someone unfamiliar with our history might get confused. In Shakespeare’s histories, characters refer to each other by last name, nickname, and title interchangeably, and their iconic status in English memory requires very little exposition. When we do actually get a first name, it’s usually one of the same six or seven names recycled endlessly throughout the generations, relying again on context for specificity.

Thus, in order to facilitate the readings, I have created a family tree for the Plantagenets that spans all eight plays. For each play, I have put together a version of the tree that shows the current state of the family as the action begins. It shows who’s living, who’s dead, who’s related to whom, who is actually in the play, and what names might be used to reference them. What’s more, it all fits on one page, so it makes a convenient handout for a reading.

It was quite a project, but now that I’m finished, it’s my pleasure to share the results with the Shakespeare Teacher community:

• Family tree for Shakespeare’s Richard II
• Family tree for Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part One
• Family tree for Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part Two
• Family tree for Shakespeare’s Henry V
• Family tree for Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part One
• Family tree for Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part Two
• Family tree for Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part Three
• Family tree for Shakespeare’s Richard III

Whether these charts end up providing more clarity or only more confusion will remain to be seen. I’ll be field testing them with my group and may find a need to do a rewrite in eight months time. If anyone out there sees anything seriously wrong or just has a helpful suggestion, please leave a note in the comments so I can address it in the next round of revisions.

A few notes may be helpful. A shaded box means that the character is dead before the play begins. A bold-faced box means that the character appears in the current play. Each space represents the same character across all eight plays, but there are two characters (Anne Mortimer and Isabella Neville) that are duplicated on the chart because they married across family lines. These are represented by circled numbers.

For the most part, Shakespeare sticks with history as far as the genealogy and chronology are concerned, but where he breaks with history, I generally went with Shakespeare’s version. I did this because the purpose of the chart was to make the readings easier. So if Shakespeare, for example, refers to a character by a title he technically didn’t have yet, I used that title on my chart.

One major exception to this is the case of Edmund Mortimer. Historically, there were two different men named Edmund Mortimer in this story: Sir Edmund Mortimer, and his nephew Edmund, Earl of March. An Edmund Mortimer appears in Henry IV, Part One and an Edmund Mortimer appears in Henry VI, Part One. It appears that Shakespeare has conflated the two men into a single character, as he ascribes to the character biographical details from both men in both plays. I went with the more historically appropriate choice to put Sir Edmund in 1H4 and the Earl of March in 1H6, but you should know that when using these charts with those plays.

A lot of the information in these charts were taken from the plays themselves. But the charts also include a lot of historical information, and for that, I used other sources. I took advantage of the excellent genealogical tables in The Riverside Shakespeare (G. Blakemore Evans, ed.) as well as the Arden editions of Henry V (T.W. Craik, ed.) and Henry VI, Part Three (John D. Cox and Eric Rasmussen, eds.). I found The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare’s History Plays (Michael Hattaway, ed.) very helpful. I also consulted the official website of the British Monarchy, as well as other online sources as needed.

Enjoy!

UPDATE: The Family Trees now have their own page on this site.

New research from Liverpool University shows that Shakespeare (and other classical writers) can stimulate the brain. For me, what stood out from earlier studies, was the attention to the duration of the phenomenon:

The study went on to test how long the effect lasted. It found that the “peak” triggered by the unfamiliar word was sustained onto the following phrases, suggesting the striking word had hooked the reader, with their mind “primed for more attention”.

This means that if you’re experiencing a work by Shakespeare, who is constantly throwing these poetic curve balls, you can sustain the brain boost over long periods of time. I’ve certainly experienced this sensation many times. I’ll basically go to see any Shakespeare play, regardless of the venue, just so I can hear these words spoken to me. I participate in a monthly Shakespeare reading group, and feel the effect even more profoundly when I am the one reading the words.

Even seeing the text written can do the job, though I often pause a lot when reading and so the pace isn’t necessarily the same. But the research shows an increase in reflection as well, so perhaps that’s a different manifestation of the effect. I subscribe to a Twitter feed that only tweets the plays themselves, one line every ten minutes like clockwork. Every now and then I’ll hit a familiar line and feel the brain bolt. I don’t know why that should be, but I get my shot to the brain all the same.

If I’m doing something that requires no mental attention, I’ll listen to an audio lecture. If I’m doing something that requires my full attention, I’ll listen to music. But if I’m doing something tedious that needs some focus but provides no mental stimulation, I’ll listen to Shakespeare. I’ll typically choose an audio production that I’ve listened to many times before, so I don’t need to be an engaged audience member the whole time. But I find that I can keep my conscious mind engaged on the task much more easily if my subconscious mind is swept away on a wave of poetic bliss. And when a line or two does drift into my awareness, I know the play well enough that I can enjoy it out of context, much like I do the Twitter feed. I get the hit without having to break my stride.

This is your brain on Shakespeare. Any questions?

I’ve been asked by the good folks at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust to participate in a project with other bloggers in honor of Shakespeare’s birthday. The idea is to describe in a blog post how Shakespeare has influenced my life. My first impulse was to decline. First of all, it would require providing a name and bio, and I blog anonymously. Though I’ve linked to it several times, I’ve never posted my full name on the blog. More importantly, Shakespeare’s influence is an aspect of my life I don’t usually like to talk about. But perhaps this is an opportunity. By speaking out now, I can help others avoid the nightmare I have lived through. Because you see, my friends, Shakespeare has completely destroyed my life.

As a high school student, I showed a modicum of potential to become a productive member of society. I went into college as an undeclared major, with an array of exciting career options ahead of me. I took classes in a variety of disciplines, with the naive hope of discovering my passions. I took an acting class on a whim, and the professor suggested that I audition for her play. I was ready to do it, until I found that the play was by Shakespeare. Now, I was always taught to stay away from Shakespeare, but the professor was persuasive and I figured there wouldn’t be any harm in trying it just that once.

I was cast as Sebastian in Twelfth Night. I memorized my difficult lines by rote and went through the rehearsal process. One night, while I was waiting backstage and listening to the play, a single line caught in my ear and made me smile. “Hey, that’s pretty clever,” I admitted. A bit later, another line stuck in my head. “I see what he’s doing there.” Like popcorn popping, the revelations began to gradually speed up. Each weave of imagery, each implied metaphor, each beat of the iamb was like a jolt of adrenaline to my young brain. I was converted into a card-carrying Shakespeare fan.

I continued with acting as well, and in my junior year I had the opportunity to play Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. That was the experience that first sent me down the rabbit hole. No longer just a casual Shakespeare fan, I had become a full-blown addict. And of course the comedies proved to be merely a gateway drug to the harder stuff. My senior year, I discovered Hamlet, and what should have been a year of personal exploration and maturation was completely lost to that play. I would read it over and over, fascinated by the experience of making new discoveries every time, no matter how many times I had read it. Any thoughts I may have ever had of doing anything else were drowned in that play.

I needed more… Masters degree… Ph.D… My dissertation was on teaching Shakespeare to elementary school students. No longer content to be merely a user, I had become a dealer. A pusher. Could I decrease my own misery by dragging down others with me? I was determined to find out. I started teaching graduate-level Shakespeare courses at NYU – first a beginner, than an advanced class. I was completely out of control. I founded a Shakespeare reading group. I started a Shakespeare-themed blog. I taught for the Folger’s summer Teaching Shakespeare Institute for teachers. Conferences. Lectures. Seminars. Nothing was ever enough. When life threw me a curve ball, I went looking for answers at the bottom of a Riverside Complete Works anthology. I re-read Midsummer, and hit Bottom.

And what has it all gotten me? I am forty years old, and I have never held a full-time job. I support myself by working part-time, training teachers, administrators, school-based data teams, graduate students… anyone, as long as it will pay for that next Caedmon audio production of As You Like It. Had I never discovered Shakespeare, never developed that unquenchable thirst, who knows where I’d be today? But I know where I’ll be tonight. There’s an off-off-Broadway production of Measure for Measure in the West Village. Picture it. I walk the mean streets of Manhattan, desperate for a fix. I turn down a dark alley where I see a non-descript door propped open with a piece of plywood. I slip twenty dollars to a kid with purple hair who hands me a program and waves me in. And I know that, tonight, I will get what I need. And for a junkie, tonight is all that matters.

My name is Bill Heller. And I am a Shakespeare addict.

Thanks for the good feedback about last week’s invite rhymes for the Best of the Bard and Henry VIII invites. The Shakespeare invites don’t usually involve poetry, but I do like to include a tagline to catch the interest of group members. Since I haven’t actually organized a reading in some time, I could at least share with you some of the taglines I’ve used. And since there are a few Shakespeare lovers who read this blog, I thought we could make a game out of it.

Can you identify the fifteen plays represented by the taglines below?

1. Bundle up, head on over, and join us as we catch winter by its tale. Hot cocoa will be served.

2. You like it! You really like it!

3. Everybody dies.

4. Come join us at our favorite Bavarian beerhouse as we travel to an austere statehouse, a rowdy whorehouse, and a dank jailhouse.

And then we’re gonna read a play.

5. Revenge is a beach.

6. Witches! Ghosts! Swordplay! Intrigue! Betrayal! Treachery! And the cold-blooded murder of a benefactor! Come join in the fun, as we read the play that dares not speak its name.

7. An afternoon to read. A lifetime to master.

8. We all know what happens when the children of rival families fall in love. But what happens when the rulers of rival countries fall in love?

9. What better way to spend an afternoon than with Rumor, Blunt, Shallow, Silence, Fang, Snare, Mouldy, Shadow, Wart, Feeble, Pistol, Quickly, and Doll?

10. Four hundred years before Seinfeld, there was a show about nothing.

11. We’re gonna party like it’s 1199.

12. Cast of Characters: a nobleman in disguise, an adulterer, a tyrant, an outcast, a wimp, a lackey, a fugitive, a bastard, a fool, two wicked sisters, and an elderly king, slowly losing his grasp on his humanity. Yes, we’re all in there somewhere.

13. And now for something completely different.

14. Bon Appetit!

15. Come join our monthly meeting of conspirators as we sink our daggers into Shakespeare’s classic tale of political intrigue and betrayal in Ancient Rome.

BONUS QUESTION: If readings are typically held on the first Sunday of each month, what play would have been the appropriate choice for January 2008?

Please post whatever you come up with in the comments section.

UPDATE: Correct plays provided by Asher (10) and Jeremy (6).

The invitation rhyme I posted a couple of days ago got a good reaction, so I’d like to share with you another invitation rhyme. I wrote this one as an invitation to a reading of Henry VIII.

Enjoy!

The First hailed from Normandy, only to wreck it.
The Second one quarreled with Thomas of Beckett.
The Third one ascended to power at nine.
The Fourth was the first of the Lancaster line.
The Fifth one conducted a martial romance.
He married his queen after seizing her France.
The Sixth lost the War of the Roses, the fool.
The Seventh ignited a new Tudor rule.

But do you recall…
The most infamous Henry of all…