Sharing Shakespeare With Students

By Catherine McGrew Jaime

The e-book has been updated to include a link to a pdf containing almost 100 pages of additional Shakespeare resources created by the author, that can be printed as desired.

This book contains what you need to get started:
An Introduction to Sharing Shakespeare
A List of Recommended Books & Videos
A Brief History/Timeline of Shakespeare
Notes on each play: A Synopsis of the plays, videos we enjoyed or didn't enjoy, historical notes, etc.
And More Shakespeare Fun!

Add the plays themselves and the readers and you're all set!

Note from the author: We read all 38 Shakespeare plays in 3 1/2 years in my Shakespeare classes (and most of them several times since then). Join me in having fun sharing Shakespeare with your students!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Catherine McGrew Jaime
• Release date: Oct 23, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452320403

Catherine McGrew Jaime

Historian, and Author, Homeschool Mom of 12

Book preview

Sharing Shakespeare with Students

A Brief Look at ALL 38 Plays Attributed to Shakespeare

Catherine McGrew Jaime

Copyright 2009 by Catherine McGrew Jaime

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please return to www.Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

~~~

Table of Contents

Introduction

Introduction to E-Book Version

First Questions First

Why Study Shakespeare

Why Another Book on Shakespeare?

Who Should Study Shakespeare

Where Does Someone Begin?

Very Brief History of William Shakespeare and His Plays

Shakespeare – A Brief Timeline

Note on Notes & Character-Line Charts

All’s Well That Ends Well

Antony & Cleopatra

As You Like It

The Comedy of Errors 

Coriolanus

Cymbeline

Hamlet

Henry IV, Parts 1 & 2

Henry V

Henry VI, Parts 1 & 2 & 3

Henry VIII

Julius Caesar

King John

King Lear

Love’s Labour’s Lost

Macbeth

Measure for Measure

Merchant of Venice

Merry Wives of Windsor

Midsummer Night’s Dream

Much Ado About Nothing

Othello

Pericles

Richard II

Richard III

Romeo and Juliet

The Taming of the Shrew

The Tempest

Timon of Athens

Titus Andronicus

Troilus and Cressida

Twelfth Night

Two Gentlemen of Verona

Two Noble Kinsmen

The Winter’s Tale

Conclusion

Appendix 1: Fun with Shakespeare / Food from Shakespeare’s Time

Appendix 2: Recommended Books & Videos

Endnotes

Charts & Graphs

About The Author

~~

Introduction

Well, we did it! It took us three years, but we did it – we read every one of Shakespeare’s 38 plays! Quite an accomplishment, considering the teacher (me!) had not even heard of some of these plays before we got ready to read them.

And yes, these 38 include the ones for which Shakespeare is only given only given partial or occasional credit. When we did Two Noble Kinsmen, for example, we were surprised to find that it wasn’t even in most of our Complete Works of Shakespeare books!

As we made our way through these plays, we laughed, we cried, and we puzzled over the magnificent (and sometimes the not so magnificent) plays that Shakespeare wrote for us over 400 years ago. We read them aloud together, watched the ones that we could find on video, and overall, we enjoyed ourselves.

Some of the lesser-known plays surprised us; they were so good. For others, we had no trouble understanding why they were obscure!

The language of Shakespeare is often so beautiful – and the plays so often have such telling tales – evil doings that show the depravity of man; and evil that leads to bad consequences, not good ones!

So join with us on this adventure I’ve called Sharing Shakespeare. See what you and your students can gain together from this master of the English language.

And remember, to be best enjoyed, Shakespeare should be seen – it was not written as literature to be read silently, but as entertainment to be seen and heard. This book is primarily about another good option: reading it out loud together as a group – so that the different characters can more easily be distinguished, and the beauty of the language can be heard.

~~

Introduction to E-Book Version

The difficulty I faced when I converted this particular book to a format for ebook readers was – what do I do about all of its wonderful charts and graphs? They need to be seen in their full size and many of them were made to be printed for personal or classroom use.

After almost two years of facing that dilemma it finally occurred to me that I could put the charts on-line – on my website – and give purchasers of the ebook a link to that special page where they could get those documents in their own pdf. To protect the link from being seen in previews of the book, it is being included in a section at the end, Charts & Graphs

.~~

First Questions First

1. Why study Shakespeare?

2. Why another book on Shakespeare?

3. Who should study Shakespeare?

4. Where does someone begin?

The first is a question others (including some of my own students) have asked me often.

The second is a question I’ve asked myself a few times as I’ve worked on this project.

And the last two questions occurred to me as I have worked my way through sharing Shakespeare with my students.

1. Why Study Shakespeare?

He’s entertaining! His plays are fun, and usually funny. Of the many classes I have taught over the years, Shakespeare has been the easiest to prepare for, and yet the most enjoyable for me and my students!

Shakespeare wrote many excellent plays that have withstood the passing of over 400 years. While most other plays written during his time, and since, have passed into obscurity, much of Shakespeare has remained classic.

Shakespeare is also a part of our language now. He used over 30,000 different words in his plays – including almost 2,000 that he made up (many of which are currently part of our vocabulary)! References to his plays abound in our conversations, in our literature, even in the daily news. It’s hard to be fully literate without understanding these references. And what literary empowerment it is to understand the references made to these plays, and the context from which they actually