A Step Away From Them: 'Shakespeare is Hard, but so is Life'

Shakespeare is hard. It can be hard to read, hard to teach, just hard. It is true that life is also hard, (note the title of the book I have read recently, 'Shakespeare is Hard, but so is Life') but I think my 'but' for Shakespeare would be that when students get it, when they stop panicking and worrying about 'getting it' it can be the most incredibly fun thing to discuss and explore. Where else is 'tupping' a thing? In what other text does a skull play an integral part in the story? Witches? Spells? Death? Betrayal? Murder!? It is just AWESOME!

I have been lucky enough to learn from some amazingly inspiring English teachers and I have a few books that I dig out each year to ensure I am going to teach Shakespeare in a way that excites students. I do worry sometimes that I am going to ruin Shakespeare for them and then they will grow up and they will tell their children Shakespeare is rubbish and then I will have destroyed something amazing for generations of people! Yes, a bit extreme, but it keeps me on my toes and keeps me thinking of interesting ways to do things!

Here are a few activities my students have really enjoyed and the texts that reinvigorate my teaching of Shakespeare are listed below.

Live Action Summary

INGREDIENTS

1 x box of costumes including any number of the following: ghost hands (rubber gloves with 'streamers' of newspaper stapled to the end of each finger (because students can then be ghostly when they wave their fingers and say 'Woooooo!'), hats - caps, straw hats, visors, sunglasses, old shirts, beaded necklaces, a plastic crown, a plastic tiara, a grass skirt, a flowered lei, name badges for minor characters, etc.).

1 x box of relevant props, eg. An envelope for the letter that Hamlet intercepts, Dessie's handkerchief, a vial of 'poison' (for any number of Shakespeare's works), a plastic sword, plastic dagger, etc.

1 x summary of the plot points in the play (this is the one I used with Hamlet).

METHOD

1. Organise your classroom into a 'stage' area and 'audience' area with chairs or with space to sit on the floor. I found my students to be a little nervous so I arranged everything inside the classroom, rather in the much bigger breakout area outside the classroom. It did contain things and make the process a little more hilarious anyway.

2. Spontaneously choose students to be 'actors' or ask students to volunteer for different roles. I had to reiterate several times that students were more like puppets than actors and they became more willing to get involved. If you have drama students in your midst they may also be called upon to explore the use of blocking and tableaux.

3. Organise props for each of the characters in the play - both minor and major characters. I had Hamlet wear an old purple business shirt and a pink sparkly hat (he was a rather fabulous Hamlet), Claudius and Gertrude wore straw hats, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern looked hip and a little stooge-like in shiny reflective sunglasses. Choose items that will assist students to identify characters and try to get the same student to play the role all the way through.

4. Set the stage! Sit everyone down and explain that you will be calling on the actors to come to the stage and demonstrate the actions in the play. After their action, they will return to their seat and then hop up when next required. Request that the actors needed for the first scene are to come to the stage.

5. Just before you begin the play, identify the setting, and establish the initial connection between the characters. I drew a picture of a castle on the whiteboard behind the students and then introduced the cast on stage.

6. Be dramatic! When reading our each plot point begin to establish some of the drama and have characters 'act' key actions like fear or shock as you read out the plot points. I found that describing some characters as 'best mates' and introducing Desdemona with a 'whoot woo' helped the students locate the connections and engage in the story.

7. Move through the story and be sure to elaborate when necessary. Students will ask questions and I found this a good opportunity to 'hot seat' a little and ask those on stage what they thought of a certain scenario or plot point. I also did some prediction activities during the rendition and this allowed me to see how well students knew the play or could draw conclusions from the information presented.

If you wish to push students a bit more, include short lines of dialogue to draw them into the language of the play. The activity also works well for a single scene, though try to get as many students involved as possible. You could have a few students narrate whilst you direct the characters on your makeshift stage. My practicum student also utilised this technique with a scene from Macbeth and the students really got into role.

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The most prominent thing I have discovered about students writing about Shakespeare is that they feel a strange compulsion to decipher the text for their reader. They forget all of the tools of analysis and revert back to their younger selves where recounting was the text type of the hour.

Scene Analysis

INGREDIENTS

30 x A3 copies of an extract from a key scene, soliloquy, interchange between two characters.

1 x Oxford Illustrated Shakespeare Dictionary (Review)/Dictionary/Device with Internet access to research words/Cambridge School Shakespeare

Students will require:

2-3 x highlighters
1 x pack of small post-it notes
1 x pen

METHOD

1. Hand each student a copy of the extract you wish to analyse on an A3 sheet. Decoding needs to come first so students feel comfortable with the language and confident enough to move to analysis (and hopefully avoid recounting later).
2. Start with a short overview of what is occurring in the extract. If you are using one of the Cambridge School Shakespeares there is a short overview at the top of the left page so this might be all you will need.
3. Instruct students to read through the extract and identify confusing aspects. Have them underline tricky words/phrases and encourage students to use a dictionary (a traditional dictionary or something like the Oxford Illustrated Shakespeare Dictionary) or research tool to decipher what they are finding confusing. This should, hopefully, be the time for decoding and students can then move to analysis.
4. Provide students with a starting point. I started with the Ghost scene with students to model exactly what I expected them to do. I went through the first part of the extract and located Shakespeare's use of literary techniques such as imagery, symbolism, emotive language, metaphor, and the impact of each.

Another way to do this is to provide students of several readings of a key extract and get them to utilise these to assist with their analysis, or even to provide a summary of what is happening before moving on to analysis.

Shakespeare Super Six
INGREDIENTS
Photographs from performances of Shakespeare's plays or film stills.
Explanation of 'Predicting' (see website for more information - Super Six).

METHOD
1. Provide students with the Shakespeare Super Six Worksheet.
2. Explore what is happening in each image. A good starting point is to look at the characters, what actions they are involved in, discuss the choice in costuming and what this suggests about the story or characters, consider any symbols or colour use (if you can display the images through an overhead projector or provide coloured plates).
3. Based on the discussion and student ideas have students make predictions about what each text could explore or be about.
4. Utilise images from Marcia Williams' comic strips, extracts from Leon Garfield's stories (these stories utilise dialogue directly from Shakespeare's plays), or even Terry Deary's 10 Best Shakespeare Stories Ever to explore what the plays are about.

Need some inspiration? Here are some helpful resources:

Shakespeare Is Hard, But So Is Life - Fintan O'Toole