Homeschool Unit Study: Introduction to Shakespeare

Dive into one of literature’s great authors with a study of Shakespeare this spring.

“Shakespeare knows what the sphinx thinks, if anybody does,” wrote Thomas Quayle in 1900 — and though it’s been more than 400 years since William Shakespeare’s birth (in April 1564), the Bard of Avon remains as literarily essential and personally mysterious as he has been since his first show at the Globe Theatre. Dive into one of literature’s great authors with a study of Shakespeare this spring.

Start here:

We know surprisingly little about the historical Shakespeare’s life, but Shakespeare: His Work and his World is a cogent, kid-friendly introduction to his life.

Best Beginner’s Shakespeare

The play’s the thing — but if you’re not quite ready to tackle the plays proper, these texts make useful introductions.

• Stories from Shakespeare by Geraldine McCaughrean outlines Shakespeare’s best-known works intelligently and articulately.

• Lois Burdett’s Shakepeare Can be Fun series includes five popular plays, retelling their stories in rhyming couplets. The author, who runs a Shakespeare workshop series for kids, writes with staging in mind, so don’t be surprised if your living room becomes the stage for Romeo and Juliet.

• Mr. William Shakespeare’s Plays by Marcia Williams uses actual dialogue, comic strips, and imagined comments from the Globe theater audience to help younger readers make sense of Shakespeare’s best known plays.

Shakespeare in Fiction

Living books bring the historical Shakespeare and his time to life and can be a natural lead-in to the author’s plays.

• In King of Shadows by Susan Cooper, a modern-day American, in London to play Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, timeslips to the play’s original performance at the Globe Theatre. Shakespeare, who becomes a father figure to teenage Nat, is one of the main characters.

• The Shakespeare Stealer by Gary L. Blackwood introduces Widge, an Elizabethan orphan with a knack for shorthand and acting who gets corralled into trying to steal a draft of Shakespeare’s new play Hamlet for an unscrupulous theater manager.

• Add a little mystery to your Shakespeare studies with Simon Hawke’s Shakespeare and Smythe series, in which the Bard teams up with an intelligent ostler to solve mysteries that bear a suspicious resemblance to Shakespeare’s future plays.

Critical Readings

When you’re ready to dig deep into the Bard’s work, these dense but insightful texts will point you down delightful rabbit trails.

• Originally published in 1934, Caroline Spurgeon’s Shakespeare’s Imagery and What It Tells Us, takes a focused look at Shakespeare’s imagery and what it implies, both about the writer and his relationship with his fellow Elizabethan and Jacobean writers, is utterly fascinating.

• The Genius of Shakespeare considers the ways Shakespeare’s work has inspired others, being reinvented and re-envisioned by each new generation. Scholarly, and occasionally gossipy, it’s one of the most readable studies of the Bard.

• For a lighter, lively study that focuses on known facts over speculation, Bill Bryson’s Shakespeare: the World as a Stage is thorough and engaging.

• Charles Nicholl's The Lodger Shakespeare: His Life on Silver Street is an unexpected delight, focused on a single 1612 lawsuit in which Shakespeare gives testimony in a dispute involving a a daughter, a dowry, and a wig-maker.

Fun Activities

Think of these projects as hands-on ways to experience the pleasures of Shakespeare.

• Play Mad Libs with a list of words coined by Shakespeare.

• PBS’s Shakespeare Uncovered series follows well-known actors as they explore the history and significance of Shakespeare’s plays; e.g., Ethan Hawke investigates Macbeth, and David Tennant goes backstage with Hamlet.

• The Shakespeare Unlimited podcast looks at Shakespeare’s influence — not just in literature and theater (though there’s plenty of that) but also in science and history.

• Even if you can’t swing a field trip to the actual Globe Theatre this year, you can take a virtual backstage tour.

• Masterpuppet Theatre includes 60 finger puppet cards of memorable Shakespearean figures and 12 backdrops.

Bonus:

If you have the time and inclination, you may enjoy these sci-fi Shakespeare adaptations.

• Shakespeare’s Loves Labors Won accidentally summons a group of a group of Eldritch Abominations in Doctor Who’s “The Shakespeare Code.” (Oops.)

• Shakespeare in Space: William Shakespeare’s Star Wars retells the Skywalker saga, Shakespeare style.

• And here's a list of our favorite Shakespearean film adaptations from the home/school/life blog.

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