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How to Get Your Kids to Love Shakespeare, from as young as age seven
You can teach your kids Shakespeare from as young as seven. Brooks was 5.5 years old when he had these lines memorized, just because he’s heard River repeat it so often:
Here is what River (then 8 y.o.) wrote about A Midsummer Night's Dream:
I use three books to teach River Shakespeare:
Below is a timeline of River’s Shakespeare journey, from age seven to twelve:
0) (Age 5 onward) Attend informal & relaxed afterschool drama classes and the occasional drama summer camp. Whenever I read aloud to River, I let them read out some of the dialogue (usually the protagonist’s dialogue and/or the funny and dramatic bits).
0) (Age 6+) Read, memorize and recite poems.
i.e. Christina Rosetti’s “The Caterpillar,” Dennis Lee’s “Skyscraper,” Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Whole Duty of Children,” Rowena Bastin Bennet’s “A Modern Dragon,” and “Monday’s Child” poem.
River knew that they were perfectly capable of memorizing entire poems, including long ones.
1) (Age 7+) We started going through How To Teach Your Children Shakespeare. We both memorized “I know a bank where the wild thyme blows” monologue from A Midsummer Night's Dream line by line. There are ten lines total.
2) I read Mary Lamb’s summary/rewriting of A Midsummer Night's Dream to them, explaining/rephrasing it as necessary. I drew a relationship chart of the lovers, Egeus, Theseus & Hippolyta.
3) We memorized the next three MND passages. We took turns playing different characters (e.g. River’s Oberon and I’m Titania, then we swapped lines.)
4) (Age 8+) We started memorizing Twelfth Night passages, taking turns playing different characters. I read them Mary Lamb’s summary/rewriting. We also read additional Twelfth Night passages from The Complete Works of Shakespeare (The footnotes help a lot). I taught them the melody of Reeve Carney’s “O Mistress Mine” (Once the melody is stuck, it’s hard to recite the lines without singing them!)
5) (Age 9, Summer 2017) We watched A Midsummer Night’s Dream (45-minute production by Backyard Bard). Brooks (then 4.5 y.o.) watched the play happily for 30 minutes.
6) (Age 10, Summer 2018) River played Lysander and Titania's fairy in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at a one-week summer camp (~one-hour performance). I helped them practice their lines. Brooks (then 5.5 y.o.) had “Captain of Our Fairy Band” memorized.
7) (Age 10, Summer 2018) We watched Twelfth Night in the park. Read the beginning of Three Musketeers and watched the performance in the park.
8) (Age 11, Summer 2019) River played Sebastian in Twelfth Night at a one-week summer camp (~one-hour performance). We read additional passages from The Complete Works of Shakespeare. I helped them practice their lines. Brooks (then 6.5 y.o) spontaneously read Shakespeare passages out loud to River.
9) River memorized one Romeo and Juliet passage (“But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?”). I read them Charles Lamb’s summary/rewriting.
10) (Age 12, Summer 2020) We read Gareth Hinds’ Romeo and Juliet graphic novel together, taking turns playing different characters. I highly recommend this book.
11) We read one The Tempest passage. I read them Mary Lamb’s summary/rewriting. I asked them to decide whether we will read & memorize Romeo and Juliet or The Tempest, planning ahead for Summer 2021 drama camp (2020 drama camp was canceled because of the pandemic). River chose The Tempest, and we’re now reading through the entire play together from The Complete Works of Shakespeare.
12) (Summer 2021) Hopefully, The Tempest drama camp! And A Midsummer Night’s Dream drama camp for Brooks!
More information about the contents of the books below:
1) How To Teach Your Children Shakespeare by Ken Ludwig
The book website has free audio recordings of the 26 Shakespeare passages in the book.
Get a hardcover because you'll be using this book for years. The edges of the hardcover is intentionally ragged, FYI.
2) Tales from Shakespeare by Mary and Charles Lamb
The comedies are rewritten by Mary, and the tragedies are rewritten by Charles.
Your library probably has a copy you can borrow. If you're buying a physical book, be careful to get a good quality one, because some versions are just poorly photocopied pages bound in a book.
3) The Complete Works of Shakespeare
You need a college textbook. Don't just get a random compilation because you need lots of good and reliable footnotes. Earlier or later edition doesn't matter; mine is 4th edition (there are now 7 Longman editions). Renting a textbook isn't that cheap so you might as well buy a used, older edition textbook.
The pages of my Shakespeare book is as thin as Bible pages.
+) Gareth Hinds’ Shakespeare graphic novels. We've only read his Romeo and Juliet graphic novel so I don't know what his other Shakespeare graphic novels are like. Merchant of Venice looks promising though.
The paperback is very high quality and have nice thick covers so you don't need to get a hardcover version (unless you want to).
Hinds has also written & illustrated Macbeth, King Lear, The Odyssey, The Iliad, Beowulf and Poe: Stories and Poems.
Captain of our fairy band,
Helena is here at hand,
And the youth, mistook by me,
Pleading for a lover’s fee.
Shall we their fond pageant see?
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
Here is what River (then 8 y.o.) wrote about A Midsummer Night's Dream:
Oberon, who is furious at Titania, wants the Indian boy to work for him as a squire. Titania replies, "No, this is the son of a beloved friend." Oberon angrily takes revenge by making Titania fall in love with the first thing she sees, a man with a donkey's head. Puck mistakenly puts the flower's juice on the wrong person's eyes. Instead of making Demetrius fall in love with Helena, he ends up making Lysander fall in love with Helena. Since Titania is in love with Nick Bottom and isn't thinking right, Oberon successfully takes away the Indian boy. After he has the boy, Oberon reverses the enchantment on Titania.
I use three books to teach River Shakespeare:
1) Ken Ludwig’s How To Teach Your Children Shakespeare
2) Mary & Charles Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare (This book preserves Shakespeare's language. Don’t get any other Shakespeare “summaries” because it’s useless)
3) my college textbook The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Longman, ed. David Bevington).
Bonus: Gareth Hinds’ Romeo and Juliet graphic novel, which uses actual Shakespeare lines. (The wedding night scene is tame and truncated, FYI.) I personally love his recasting of Romeo and Juliet as other races to show that Shakespeare is universal.
Below is a timeline of River’s Shakespeare journey, from age seven to twelve:
0) (Age 5 onward) Attend informal & relaxed afterschool drama classes and the occasional drama summer camp. Whenever I read aloud to River, I let them read out some of the dialogue (usually the protagonist’s dialogue and/or the funny and dramatic bits).
0) (Age 6+) Read, memorize and recite poems.
i.e. Christina Rosetti’s “The Caterpillar,” Dennis Lee’s “Skyscraper,” Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Whole Duty of Children,” Rowena Bastin Bennet’s “A Modern Dragon,” and “Monday’s Child” poem.
River knew that they were perfectly capable of memorizing entire poems, including long ones.
1) (Age 7+) We started going through How To Teach Your Children Shakespeare. We both memorized “I know a bank where the wild thyme blows” monologue from A Midsummer Night's Dream line by line. There are ten lines total.
2) I read Mary Lamb’s summary/rewriting of A Midsummer Night's Dream to them, explaining/rephrasing it as necessary. I drew a relationship chart of the lovers, Egeus, Theseus & Hippolyta.
3) We memorized the next three MND passages. We took turns playing different characters (e.g. River’s Oberon and I’m Titania, then we swapped lines.)
4) (Age 8+) We started memorizing Twelfth Night passages, taking turns playing different characters. I read them Mary Lamb’s summary/rewriting. We also read additional Twelfth Night passages from The Complete Works of Shakespeare (The footnotes help a lot). I taught them the melody of Reeve Carney’s “O Mistress Mine” (Once the melody is stuck, it’s hard to recite the lines without singing them!)
5) (Age 9, Summer 2017) We watched A Midsummer Night’s Dream (45-minute production by Backyard Bard). Brooks (then 4.5 y.o.) watched the play happily for 30 minutes.
6) (Age 10, Summer 2018) River played Lysander and Titania's fairy in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at a one-week summer camp (~one-hour performance). I helped them practice their lines. Brooks (then 5.5 y.o.) had “Captain of Our Fairy Band” memorized.
7) (Age 10, Summer 2018) We watched Twelfth Night in the park. Read the beginning of Three Musketeers and watched the performance in the park.
8) (Age 11, Summer 2019) River played Sebastian in Twelfth Night at a one-week summer camp (~one-hour performance). We read additional passages from The Complete Works of Shakespeare. I helped them practice their lines. Brooks (then 6.5 y.o) spontaneously read Shakespeare passages out loud to River.
9) River memorized one Romeo and Juliet passage (“But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?”). I read them Charles Lamb’s summary/rewriting.
10) (Age 12, Summer 2020) We read Gareth Hinds’ Romeo and Juliet graphic novel together, taking turns playing different characters. I highly recommend this book.
11) We read one The Tempest passage. I read them Mary Lamb’s summary/rewriting. I asked them to decide whether we will read & memorize Romeo and Juliet or The Tempest, planning ahead for Summer 2021 drama camp (2020 drama camp was canceled because of the pandemic). River chose The Tempest, and we’re now reading through the entire play together from The Complete Works of Shakespeare.
12) (Summer 2021) Hopefully, The Tempest drama camp! And A Midsummer Night’s Dream drama camp for Brooks!
More information about the contents of the books below:
1) How To Teach Your Children Shakespeare by Ken Ludwig
The book website has free audio recordings of the 26 Shakespeare passages in the book.
Get a hardcover because you'll be using this book for years. The edges of the hardcover is intentionally ragged, FYI.
A Midsummer Night's Dream: 4 passages, 10 chapters
Twelfth Night: 7 passages + 1 bonus passage, 9 chapters
Romeo and Juliet: 1 passage, 1 chapter
Macbeth: 2 passages, 2 chapters
Henry IV, Part I: 2 passages, 2 chapters
As You Like It: 2 passages, 3 chapters
Henry V: 1 passage, 2 chapters
Hamlet: 5 passages, 8 chapters
The Tempest: 1 passage, 1 chapter
+ 5 Additional Longer Passages
+ 55 Additional Passages to Teach Your Children If They Want to Continue
+ A List of Favorite Epigrams
2) Tales from Shakespeare by Mary and Charles Lamb
The comedies are rewritten by Mary, and the tragedies are rewritten by Charles.
Your library probably has a copy you can borrow. If you're buying a physical book, be careful to get a good quality one, because some versions are just poorly photocopied pages bound in a book.
The Tempest (Mary Lamb)
A Midsummer Night's Dream (Mary Lamb)
The Winter's Tale (Mary Lamb)
Much Ado About Nothing (Mary Lamb)
As You Like It (Mary Lamb)
Two Gentlemen of Verona (Mary Lamb)
The Merchant of Venice (Mary Lamb)
Cymbeline (Mary Lamb)
King Lear (Charles Lamb)
Macbeth (Charles Lamb)
All's Well That Ends Well (Mary Lamb)
The Taming of the Shrew (Mary Lamb)
The Comedy of Errors (Mary Lamb)
Measure for Measure (Mary Lamb)
Twelfth Night (Mary Lamb)
Timon of Athens (Charles Lamb)
Romeo and Juliet (Charles Lamb)
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (Charles Lamb)
Othello (Charles Lamb)
Pericles, Prince of Tyre (Mary Lamb)
3) The Complete Works of Shakespeare
You need a college textbook. Don't just get a random compilation because you need lots of good and reliable footnotes. Earlier or later edition doesn't matter; mine is 4th edition (there are now 7 Longman editions). Renting a textbook isn't that cheap so you might as well buy a used, older edition textbook.
The pages of my Shakespeare book is as thin as Bible pages.
+) Gareth Hinds’ Shakespeare graphic novels. We've only read his Romeo and Juliet graphic novel so I don't know what his other Shakespeare graphic novels are like. Merchant of Venice looks promising though.
The paperback is very high quality and have nice thick covers so you don't need to get a hardcover version (unless you want to).
Hinds has also written & illustrated Macbeth, King Lear, The Odyssey, The Iliad, Beowulf and Poe: Stories and Poems.