How and Why We Teach Shakespeare

College Teachers and Directors Share How They Explore the Playwright’s Works with Their Students

Sidney Homan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367190798
• eBook ISBN: 9781000011654
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Acting & Auditioning

In How and Why We Teach Shakespeare, 19 distinguished college teachers and directors draw from their personal experiences and share their methods and the reasons why they teach Shakespeare. The collection is divided into four sections: studying the text as a script for performance; exploring Shakespeare by performing; implementing specific techniques for getting into the plays; and working in different classrooms and settings.

The contributors offer a rich variety of topics, including:

• working with cues in Shakespeare, such as line and mid-line endings that lead to questions of interpretation
• seeing Shakespeare's stage directions and the Elizabethan playhouse itself as contributing to a play's meaning
• using the "gamified" learning model or cue-cards to get into the text
• thinking of the classroom as a rehearsal
• playing the Friar to a student's Juliet in a production of Romeo and Juliet
• teaching Shakespeare to inner-city students or in a country torn by political and social upheavals.

For fellow instructors of Shakespeare, the contributors address their own philosophies of teaching, the relation between scholarship and performance, and—perhaps most of all—why in this age the study of Shakespeare is so important.

Chapter 10 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Index

2 Henry IV: location of scene 54

acting exercises 65–74

Acting Shakespeare course 159, 164–166

actions of a play 160

Actors From The London Stage (AFTLS) company 21–22, 23, 24

adaptation exercise 187–189

Allende, Isabel 167

ally 94–104

Andrews, Walter 186

As You Like It 32–33

a-theatrical perspective 87

audience, suggestions by 72–73

aural diversions 46, 47, 48

ball-tossing exercise 68

Banks, Fiona 130, 131, 133

Barker, Harley Granville 79

Barton, John 79, 160

Bates, Lauren 124

BBC TV series 196, 197–199

Better Strangers project 119–120, 121, 127n1

Blackfriars 46–47

body language 67–68, 112, 132

Boece, Hector 42

Bowers, Fredson 149

Branagh, Kenneth 75, 76, 196, 198, 199–200

breathless rehearsal 101

caesuras 67

Carpinelli, Dylan 121

Carroll, Steven 115n4

Carroll, Tim 200

casting 24, 109–110, 112–113

Chappell, Maria 107

characters: decisions 31, 34–35; objectives of 66–67, 68–69, 70, 72, 73; perception and presentation 24–28

Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Ireland, The (Holinshed) 42

classroom performances 65–74

close reading exercises 40

collaborators 138–145

comedy, comic scenes 90–92, 199

Comedy Acting for Theatre (Homan) 90

Com...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction: How and Why
• Section One Encountering Shakespeare’s Verbal and Visual Text with Students
• Section Two Learning through Performance
• Section Three Approaching Shakespeare from Some Specific Angles
• Section Four Shakespeare in Various Classrooms
• Afterword: “Cur Non?”
• About the Contributors
• Index