Homeschooling Mom: Why Shakespeare is Great

                   What's So Great About Shakespeare?

"His grasp of the human condition is perhaps unmatched in literature."

Terry W. Glaspey

As a young mother, I wasn't convinced that Shakespeare was worth studying-at least, not by children. After all, his plays had bawdy jokes, frequent love-making and his personal life had some serious flaws. However, over time, as I studied Shakespeare's plays and researched his influence upon the English-speaking world, I began to feel that my children would have quite a gap in their understanding of our world if I neglected Shakespeare. I would have to be careful how I approached it, guarding their little hearts while introducing them to yet another medium that revealed the nature of mankind. Here are...

Some reasons why we study Shakespeare

He is responsible for adding some 2000 words and phrases to the English language-examples include: gloomy, lonely, majestic, reliance, hurry, leapfrog, excellent. Tongue-tied, budge an inch, seen better days, fair play, lord and master, foul play, dead as a doornail, my own flesh and blood, set your teeth on edge, without rhyme or reason, laughing stock, didn't sleep a wink and if the truth were known. (more here)

His plays provide a comprehensive and thoughtful look at the human condition, dealing with the virtues of men as well as their vices- love, faithfulness, greed, honesty, selfishness, mercy, lust, power and justice are just a few. As we study his plays we understand ourselves better.

His inspiration comes from historical events, mythological tales, and Biblical passages. He often refers to Christ, his teachings and other Biblical characters and morals. All of these sources are a vital part of our history.

His plays deal with the consequences of sin and yet Shakespeare is very liberal in showing mercy. I believe this is a VERY important theme in his works. Macbeth, although one of his darkest plays, reveals the power of unconfessed sin and it's ability to destroy not just one, but many lives. It also exposes the dangers of witchcraft.

His plays provide rich fodder for meaningful discussions.

His poetry is profound. Shakespeare and the sonnet go hand in hand.

His plays have intricate plots with many twists and turns, providing an excellent exercise in logic.

They are thoroughly entertaining and stimulate the imagination.

Merchant of Venice The Tempest King Lear

(Click to enlarge)

Caveats

Shakespeare does misbehave at times, but fortunately, the Elizabethan English veils such innuendos quite well and they go by unnoticed by the children. For this reason, it is better if you do not use modern versions of the plays.

I have been told that not all of his plays are suitable for young people so you will have to be careful and do a little research. If you look at AO's suggestions, you should be safe.

The words 'lovers' and 'love-making' are frequently used but this did not have the same meaning back then as it does today. It referred to the attraction and not the act between two people. I do not let my children read books about boys and girls 'in love' with each other. Shakespeare, however, does not fall in this category because the characters are adults and the stories are often unrealistic and very silly. They cause my children to scoff at the nonsense rather than produce an attraction for the opposite sex.

Shakespeare's plays were obviously not written for young children. However, we all know that most high school-aged students today do not enjoy studying Shakespeare. I believe this is partly due to the difficult language. Teachers immediately expect understanding, enjoyment and analysis to occur in a single lesson. The student did not have enough time to develop an appreciation for the stories. I feel it is a good idea to introduce children to the general stories using expurgated versions adapted especially for the child mind. In this way, the children will have developed an understanding of the stories and an appreciation for them by the time they are old enough to explore the important themes within them in greater detail. If you read early classic children's literature, you will notice that children were introduced to Shakespeare while young using Nesbit's and Lamb's stories. It was common to name a pet after Greek or Shakespearean heroes. Elizabeth Enright's books are a good example of this. Educators and parents evidently recognized the value of introducing the Bard to children. They followed these preparatory steps not only with Shakespeare, but other classic authors as well.

Taming of the Shrew

In our Home
When my children reach 7 or 8 yrs of age, I read aloud  Nesbit's  Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare once a week, taking two weeks per tale. I divide a dry erase board into about 9 large grid squares and draw stick figures of each main character as they are introduced. I write the name of the play in the first box. My children do the same on their clipboards by dividing a piece of paper into squares and copying me. I write the name of each character above each stick figure. My young writers only write the first letter of each person's name in each of their boxes.

Often, for a creative narration, the children retell the story (just part of it) using paper dolls or popsicle sticks with the figures puttied onto them. Here is another idea.

We also read Shakespeare, Bard of Avon together. This is a wonderful, simple, yet thorough introduction to his life and works.

As we continue the book in third grade, they make a drawn narration of the tale and label it. We watch Shakespeare's Animated Tales too, but only AFTER we have finished the story.

We usually act out a Shakespeare play once a year as well and invite our close friends and family to watch the production. Our family has made some beautiful memories this way.

Approximately ten or eleven years of age, my children watch the play online. With their own personal copies of the play in book form open in front them, they follow along. I try to make sure that at least two children are doing this together to make it more fun. My daughters love to watch these plays (if link doesn't work try here) and laugh over the numerous jokes housed in archaic language. This takes twelve weeks to finish as I only allow about 15 minutes per week for this. We don't analyze, just enjoy and of course, spontaneous natural discussions occur too. They usually narrate to me afterwards.

By high school, my children are thoroughly acquainted with several Shakespearean plays and enjoy reading and talking about them. They are now ready for the next step, which involves analysis. Each student on her own reads and studies the plays in Brightest Heaven of Invention and then watches some of the movies that the author recommends. This is done slowly over several years.

Notice that I am not the main teacher for most of this. After careful research and listening to the advice of people I respect, I find sources I feel that I can trust and am allowing them to do the bulk of the teaching. I simply provide the resources and gently guide occasional discussions. My children are mostly self taught.

Hamlet.................. Cymbeline .................. As You Like It ............... Richard III

Recommended Resources
http://www.berith.org/hsres/shak/shak01.html Why study Shakespeare?
http://cla.calpoly.edu/~smarx/courses/510F99/510Cal.html A Biblical online Shakespeare Course
http://absoluteshakespeare.com/index.htm Absolute Shakespeare- Summaries, quotes, biography, plays and more.
http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/ Spark notes- good summaries
http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/shake.htm Complete plays, free
http://karenswhimsy.com/shakespearesplays.shtm Colorful Illustrations

"Shakespeare was as great a philosopher as he was a poet. That's what he set out to teach us in every line. His characters 'Leontes,' 'Othello,' 'Lear,' 'Prospero,' 'Brutus,' demonstrate the same thing: that a man's reason will try to bring infallible proofs to any notion that a person decides to take up. There's no shortcut and no way around it, the art of life takes a long time to learn."

Charlotte Mason

*article edited Feb 2010

Why is Shakspeare So Enduringly Popular?

Why Study Shakespeare?

The Reasons Behind Shakespeare's Influence and Popularity

Ben Jonson anticipated Shakespeare’s dazzling future when he declared, "He was not of an age, but for all time!" in the preface to the First Folio. While most people know that Shakespeare is, in fact, the most popular dramatist and poet the Western world has ever produced, students new to his work often wonder why this is so. The following are the top four reasons why Shakespeare has stood the test of time.

1) Illumination of the Human Experience

Shakespeare’s ability to summarize the range of human emotions in simple yet profoundly eloquent verse is perhaps the greatest reason for his enduring popularity. If you cannot find words to express how you feel about love or music or growing older, Shakespeare can speak for you. No author in the Western world has penned more beloved passages. Shakespeare's work is the reason John Bartlett compiled the first major book of familiar quotations. Here are some examples of Shakespeare's most popular passages:

• The seven ages of man
• Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
• We band of brothers
• The green-eyed monster
• What's in a name?
• Now is the winter of our discontent
• If music be the food of love
• Beware the ides of March
• We are such stuff as dreams are made on
• Something is rotten in the state of Denmark
• To be, or not to be: that is the question


2) Great Stories

Marchette Chute, in the Introduction to her famous retelling of Shakespeare’s stories, summarizes one of the reasons for Shakespeare’s immeasurable fame:

William Shakespeare was the most remarkable storyteller that the world has ever known. Homer told of adventure and men at war, Sophocles and Tolstoy told of tragedies and of people in trouble. Terence and Mark Twain told comedic stories, Dickens told melodramatic ones, Plutarch told histories and Hand Christian Andersen told fairy tales. But Shakespeare told every kind of story – comedy, tragedy, history, melodrama, adventure, love stories and fairy tales – and each of them so well that they have become immortal. In all the world of storytelling he has become the greatest name. (Stories from Shakespeare, 11)

Shakespeare's stories transcend time and culture. Modern storytellers continue to adapt Shakespeare’s tales to suit our modern world, whether it be the tale of Lear on a farm in Iowa, Romeo and Juliet on the mean streets of New York City, or Macbeth in feudal Japan.


3) Compelling Characters

Shakespeare invented his share of stock characters, but his truly great characters – particularly his tragic heroes – are unequalled in literature, dwarfing even the sublime creations of the Greek tragedians. Shakespeare’s great characters have remained popular because of their complexity; for example, we can see ourselves as gentle Hamlet, forced against his better nature to seek murderous revenge. For this reason Shakespeare is deeply admired by actors, and many consider playing a Shakespearean character to be the most difficult and most rewarding role possible.

4) Ability to Turn a Phrase

Many of the common expressions now thought to be clichés were Shakespeare's creations. Chances are you use Shakespeare's expressions all the time even though you may not know it is the Bard you are quoting. You may think that fact is "neither here nor there", but that's "the short and the long of it." Bernard Levin said it best in the following quote about Shakespeare's impact on our language:

If you cannot understand my argument, and declare "It's Greek to me", you are quoting Shakespeare; if you claim to be more sinned against than sinning, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you recall your salad days, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you act more in sorrow than in anger, if your wish is father to the thought, if your lost property has vanished into thin air, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you have ever refused to budge an inch or suffered from green-eyed jealousy, if you have played fast and loose, if you have been tongue-tied, a tower of strength, hoodwinked or in a pickle, if you have knitted your brows, made a virtue of necessity, insisted on fair play, slept not one wink, stood on ceremony, danced attendance (on your lord and master), laughed yourself into stitches, had short shrift, cold comfort or too much of a good thing, if you have seen better days or lived in a fool's paradise - why, be that as it may, the more fool you, for it is a foregone conclusion that you are (as good luck would have it) quoting Shakespeare; if you think it is early days and clear out bag and baggage, if you think it is high time and that that is the long and short of it, if you believe that the game is up and that truth will out even if it involves your own flesh and blood, if you lie low till the crack of doom because you suspect foul play, if you have your teeth set on edge (at one fell swoop) without rhyme or reason, then - to give the devil his due - if the truth were known (for surely you have a tongue in your head) you are quoting Shakespeare; even if you bid me good riddance and send me packing, if you wish I were dead as a door-nail, if you think I am an eyesore, a laughing stock, the devil incarnate, a stony-hearted villain, bloody-minded or a blinking idiot, then - by Jove! O Lord! Tut, tut! for goodness' sake! what the dickens! but me no buts - it is all one to me, for you are quoting Shakespeare. (The Story of English, 145)

For a list of authors who have named their books after lines from Shakespeare, see Shakespeare's Impact on Other Writers.

References

Chute, Marchette. Stories from Shakespeare. New York: World Publishing Company, 1956.
Levin, Bernard. Quoted in The Story of English. Robert McCrum, William Cran and Robert MacNeil. Viking: 1986).

How to cite this article:
Mabillard, Amanda. Why Study Shakespeare? Shakespeare Online. 20 Aug. 2000. < http://www.shakespeare-online.com/biography/whystudyshakespeare.html >.

Few College Require Shakespeare for English Majors

Report finds few colleges have a Shakespeare requirement

Photo by: 

The Associated Press

This image released by Boneau/Bryan Brown shows Brian D'Arcy James, left, and Christian Borle during a performance of "Something Rotten," in New York. (Joan Marcus/Boneau/Bryan Brown via AP)

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Associated Press

NEW YORK — As Shakespeare would say, "We have seen better days."

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni has found that less than 8 percent of the nation's top universities require English majors to take a course focused on Shakespeare.

The study, "The Unkindest Cut: Shakespeare in Exile 2015," found that only four of the nation's 52 highest-ranked universities and colleges by U.S. News & World Report have a Shakespeare requirement.

Michael Poliakoff, vice president of policy for the Washington, D.C.-based council and lead author of the study, called the findings "a terrible tragedy."

"It is with sadness that we view this phenomenon," he said by phone. "It really does make us grieve for the loss to a whole generation of young people who would look to a college or university for guidance about what is great and what is of the highest priority."

The report was released Thursday on what is believed to be Shakespeare's birthday in 1564. It comes a day after the new musical "Something Rotten!" opened on Broadway that mocks The Bard as a rump-shaking word thief.

The schools that still ask English majors to study the Bard are Harvard University, the University of California-Berkeley, Wellesley College and the U.S. Naval Academy.

The report notes that English majors are often future English teachers and many will graduate without studying in depth the language's greatest writer.

"The Bard, who is the birthright of the English speaking world, has no seat of honor," the report says. "A degree in English without serious study of Shakespeare is like a major in Greek literature without the serious study of Homer."

But William Gleason, the chair of the Department of English at Princeton University, said it's impossible for students in his department to ignore The Bard. Learning about Shakespeare is a requirement in an introductory course that all English majors take and all theater majors must take a Shakespeare class to graduate. Plus, any examination of social issues inevitably leads back to Shakespeare. "He was usually there first," he said.

"He is such a vital presence in everything we teach, even if he's not the sole focus of a course," said Gleason, who specializes in American literature and culture. "Shakespeare exerts such an influence that it would be a mistake to think we could ever dismiss him."

The report argues that many colleges are downplaying the classics in favor of survey courses that introduce various styles of thought, such as Duke University's "Creatures, Aliens and Cyborgs."
"Rather than studying major literary works in depth, students are taught the rationale for and applications of critical approaches that are heavily influenced by theories of race, class, gender, and sexuality," it said.

The report urges trustees, alumni, donors and administrators to stop "a vicious circle of cultural illiteracy" by reviewing curriculums and re-evaluating what students need to learn.

"There is more common sense outside the academy and it's important for these voices to pull us back to the things that are right in front of us for us to cherish and to grow from," Poliakoff said.
The council calls itself is "an independent nonprofit committed to academic freedom, excellence and accountability at America's colleges and universities."
___
Online: http://www.goacta.org

College Students Love Shakespeare without Frills and Updates

Teaching Shakespeare Straight Up

No ‘Shakespeare and Imperialism’ or ‘Shakespeare and Gender.’ Students like the real thing just fine.

 

32 COMMENTS

Of all the courses I have taught over my 30 years as an English professor, the one that I enjoy teaching most and that students seem to enjoy taking most is “Shakespeare.”
That’s the title. Not “Shakespeare and the Elizabethan World” or “Shakespeare and Stagecraft”; not “Shakespeare and Imperialism,” “Shakespeare and Gender,” or “Shakespeare and Postmodern Theory.” 

I don’t even title the course, as I once did, “Introduction to Shakespeare,” though it is open to all students and has no prerequisites. Appending “introduction to” would admittedly emphasize the fact that Shakespeare is a vast and deep terrain, but it would also suggest that the course leads to “Advanced Shakespeare.” 

This is not the case. The Shakespeare course is not the first step in a graded ascent but an immersion in a world. I want it to be Shakespeare without addendum or dilution. My belief is that anyone at any level can derive benefit from this course, not because I teach it so well but because reading a certain number of Shakespeare’s plays with close attention is an end as well as a beginning. It can yield rudimentary insights but it can also yield highly advanced and sophisticated ones.

Since all English courses at my university are capped at 25 or fewer students, discussion is central to the class. In the old days, I would assign secondary readings and show film clips of key scenes to help spark this discussion. I’ve largely stopped doing this. It is Shakespeare’s writing that I want students to focus on. 

The classroom seems to me the only place where rigorous, communal attention to the words on the page is possible. Reading this way prepares students to better appreciate a live production when the opportunity to see one arises, and it helps them appreciate Shakespeare’s inimitable use of language—his poetry and his prose—in a rigorous, intimate way. It also prepares them to better understand the politics of family and society and to deal more intelligently with friendship, love and career. Only by studying the plays closely in a classroom setting, where many voices contribute to understanding, can these ideas be fully probed.

A good example occurred in a class awhile ago in which we discussed Rosalind’s disguise in “As You Like It.” One of my students observed that Ganymede, the swaggery male persona assumed by the heroine during her exile in the Forest of Arden, reminded him of Superman, alter-ego to the mild-mannered Clark Kent. The student then quickly qualified the comparison: Superman is the real self, and Clark Kent is the disguise, he said, while Rosalind is the real self, and Ganymede the disguise. 

But many in the class objected to this distinction: Rosalind is a character created by Shakespeare and originally played by a boy actor, they noted; the play’s epilogue brings this to the fore. Where does the real self in such a case lie? As for the comic-book hero, which persona is more “real,” the superhero or the regular guy he pretends to be? The class veered off into definition and self-interrogation. What was a “real” self anyway? What was theirs?

These questions led to the question of costume and identity. Is the petticoat of Rosalind less or more of a disguise than the doublet and hose of Ganymede? The discussion had grown complex but the class was fully engaged, despite having read nothing in ontological philosophy or gender theory.
Would they have arrived at the same place had I assigned essays on these subjects? Possibly. But I doubt that there would have been the same excitement as students explored these ideas on their own. The class’s insights seemed more original, more accessible, and less doctrinaire by virtue of being theirs rather than imposed by others. 

One of the great lessons I’ve learned as a teacher is how satisfying it is to leave good material alone—not to vamp it up with theory or aggressively coordinate it with other readings. I like discussing Shakespeare in the context of the present. I like discussing how his work dovetails with ideas about the self and society. But I like these discussions to emerge organically in the course of looking closely at the plays.

Keats referred to “negative capability” as a facet of the poetic process. He meant that not directing or imposing meaning, not trying too hard to make sense of things, can free the imagination to do its work. This applies to teaching as well as poetry. 

Teachers tend not to trust our students as much as we should. Trusting doesn’t mean capitulating to them or allowing them to dictate the curriculum. It means arming them with what Matthew Arnold called “the best that has been thought and said” and trusting them to be able to discern what is profound and insightful, funny and moving, in that material. Shakespeare is a teacher’s unfailing resource in this effort.

Paula Marantz  Cohen is an English professor and dean of Pennoni Honors College at Drexel University. Her novel “Beatrice Bunson’s Guide to Romeo and Juliet” will be published by Paul Dry Books next January.

Robert J. Sacino 3 hours ago

Dear Dr. Cohen: Good having you back writing your wonderful, highly literate and intelligent Op-Eds for the WSJ. And, thanks for the trip down “memory lane.” The fondest memory of my undergraduate studies was taking two courses in Shakespeare with the same professor who was a passionate Shakespeare scholar. Till this day, 40 years later (and after having spent a career on Wall Street and academia teaching Business), nothing has given me more pleasure than re-reading the Bard. By the way, the pages of my old college text (“Shakespeare:The Complete Works," Harcourt Brace & World, 1968) have never yellowed and are as fresh today as the timeless wisdom and beauty of Shakespeare’s art. RJ

George Kuck 4 hours ago

I lived in Stratford Conn when they had the American Shakespeare Theater and Academy there.  A high point of high school was watching Katherine Hepburn as the shrew in Taming of the Shrew.  Shakespeare helped mold my high school years.  Right on, Ms. Cohen from a Ph.D. physicist and former adjunct in physics.

Was the Bard also a Jesuit??

Will Shakespeare, Secret Jesuit?

 By Hank Campbell

 Literature scholars love to debate Shakespeare. Like 'the greatest baseball player of all time' everyone can have an opinion and they are all just as valid, if even a modicum of thought went into it.(1) He was real, he was not real, he was a fraud, he was the greatest writer of all time, he was a woman, you name it and someone in the humanities has argued for it.
 He was Catholic? Catholics say so, at least after the fact, but that evidence is circumstantial, like everything else except his writing. It takes some suspension of disbelief and no small amount of cultural meandering to conclude he was Catholic though he was a member of a Protestant church and hung around with Catholic apostates, and to make him a Jesuit takes even more.

The Jesuits are the short form name of the Society of Jesus, founded by the Spanish soldier (and later Saint) Ignatius of Loyola and officially approved by Pope Paul III in 1540. During the Counter-Reformation, the Catholic re-modernizing that took place in light of Martin Luther declaring that Catholicism was not conservative enough before everyone else decided it was not liberal enough, the Jesuits were important to getting with the times.
But it seems a little Forrest Gump-ish to have Shakespeare be not only secretly Catholic, when that was uncool in England, but also a Jesuit.

 The genesis of the speculation is that after Shakespeare died in 1616, a Jesuit printer in modern-day Belgium changed the preface of a book of poems by the Jesuit (and later Saint, due to martyrdom) Robert Southwell, who had been tortured by Queen Elizabeth's top "priest hunter" before being hung and disemboweled in 1595. The change to the preface was substantial: From "The Author to his loving Cousin" became "To my worthy good cousin Maister W.S.’ from ‘Your loving cousin, R.S."

There is lots of other circumstantial stuff, some of it downright leaps of faith, in a new paper by Andrea Campana, but it is interesting reading.(3) Why be skeptical? This was just after the time of Queen Elizabeth. Not only did she create the Anglican Church and declare herself the Supreme Governor,(4) she had succeeded the Catholic Queen Mary, who had a bunch of Protestants burned at the stake, and happily returned the favor in various ways. Another Catholic Mary, her first cousin once removed and Queen of Scotland, was imprisoned for 18 years by Elizabeth before being executed.

 Elizabeth's England was not a good time to be a prominent Catholic and certainly not healthy to be Jesuit, an order that had become quite popular at a time when the conflict between Catholics and Protestants still raged in England.(5) Good Queen Bess had spies everywhere. That Shakespeare could have secretly been not only Catholic but Jesuit without being tripped up borders on historical fiction. Was that revised preface instead some political gamesmanship? Perhaps, and historians are prone to taking the bait.

  Some experts on Shakespeare contend that he was influenced by Southwell's work - everyone influenced Shakespeare, according to some expert on Shakespeare somewhere - and almost anything can be an allegory for something else in culture if you try hard enough, so if you want to believe Shakespeare's works had secret Catholic messages, okay.

 Yet any time it requires that much connecting of odd threads, it is better to stick to facts. For example, I have a picture of Bloggy with science journalist Carl Zimmer.(6) If the apocalypse happens tomorrow and all that remains for humans 400 years from now are scraps of information like pictures of a stuffed bear, humanities scholars may claim we are the same person because we have both been seen with Bloggy. Or that I influenced him because we have both written about plant stamen.
 “The article, which proposes the Jesuit theologian and controversialist John Floyd (1574-1649) as the editor of the press at St. Omer most likely to have written the dedication, was published amid a flurry of excitement over the recent discovery of a First Folio at the site of the former Jesuit library in St. Omer,” said Campana in a statement. “In combination with the extensive quotation of Shakespearean plays by Floyd in his political writings, even before publication of the plays in some cases, and before the death of Shakespeare, the discovery strengthens arguments not only for the use of Shakespeare’s work for Jesuit instructional purposes but for a real and tangible biographical relationship between the playwright and the Jesuits.”
 It's certainly possible that they knew each other - Shakespeare was quite prominent - and he was friends with everyone. Like all great writers, he was voracious in learning new things and incorporating them into his work, but jumping from the idea that other writers quoted Shakespeare, so they were secretly connected, and that his work could be interpreted as being pro-Catholic so he must be a Catholic and perhaps a Jesuit takes a real effort.
 He could also be considered pro-Jewish, but that did not make him a Jew. Campana, A. (2014), If a Jesuit Pope, Why Not a Jesuit Shakespeare? There's Something in Air …. The Heythrop Journal. doi: 10.1111/heyj.12241 NOTES:

Shakespeare is for everybody --even kids !

The great Shakespeare conspiracy

Marcia Williams was brought up to believe that Shakespeare was too difficult and belonged only to people who could afford expensive theatre tickets. Now she knows that to be a big fat lie and here’s why – in Shakespeare Week – you should claim your right to to the Bard!

Do not let those posers who think Shakespeare is too difficult, too special, too bawdy, violent, funny or anything else, deny you your heritage.

 

 Photograph: Stock Montage/Getty Images

Marcia Williams

Monday 16 March 2015 07.50 EDT Last modified on Monday 16 March 2015 08.20 EDT

If you think Shakespeare isn’t for you, you’re wrong! When I was young, I was brought up to believe that Shakespeare was difficult and belonged to academics and those who could afford expensive theatre tickets. The first time I went to see a Shakespeare play, my teacher made it into such a big deal that I was literally sick with nerves on the theatre floor!

After that it was years before I wanted to let Shakespeare into my life again – what a waste. For the generation before me, it was even worse – many girls were not permitted to read Shakespeare at all. Only well-educated boys were allowed peeks into Shakespeare’s world; he was considered far too rich a feast for girls. This was outrageous and entirely wrong, yet some people still think that Shakespeare is too difficult for young people. Please don’t listen to them. Claim your right to Shakespeare!

When Shakespeare was young, there were no theatres at all. The plays that he saw in his hometown, Stratford-upon-Avon, would have been street performances. Travelling actors would set up a stage and perform wherever they could – village inns, on the street or in the homes of the wealthy. People left their work and gathered round to watch the players, cheering, gossiping, drinking, throwing the odd rotten apple and generally having a good time. At the end of each performance the players passed a hat around, so just like buskers today, they had to grab the crowd’s attention or they wouldn’t get paid. How did they do that? By appealing to the likes of you and me – the bog standard man, woman, teenager or kid on the street.

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Marcia Williams’ vision of London in Shakespeare’s time – when his plays were performed to everyone and anyone. Photograph: Marcia Williams

Around the time that Shakespeare left Stratford and went to London to look for work, the first theatres were being built. Actors and playwrights hoped they would gain more respect by having their own performance space, but they didn’t suddenly start refusing to perform for anyone except academics and royalty – their plays were still for everyone. When you heard the trumpet announcing a performance you quickly left your work and legged it to the theatre! The audiences were the same as for the street performances and they behaved in much the same unruly way. In fact, the city council and the Lord Mayor tried to close these new theatres, because they distracted young apprentices from their work and encouraged crime and drunkenness!

If the playgoers were going to watch one of Shakespeare’s plays, they knew they were in for an extra treat. His plays were popular with everyone – young, old, literate and illiterate. He wrote about love. He wrote about annoying, controlling parents. He wrote about war, magic, heartbreak, witches and history, and he also wrote knock-about comedy. The things he wrote about are timeless, and are just as relevant to us today than a television sitcom might be.

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Just like Jay-Z, when Shakespeare couldn’t find the right word he made one up, and we’re still using those words today! Photograph: Greetsia Tent/WireImage

Some of you might think Shakespeare’s use of language is a problem, but it just has a rhythm you need to swing with. Just like rappers today, if Shakespeare couldn’t find the right word, he made one up. We are still using hundreds of words and expressions that Shakespeare invented: puke, puppy-dog, silliness and leap-frog, to name just a few.

Top 10 Shakespeare books for children

Read more

Watch out though – Shakespeare will play on your heart strings. He’ll have you rolling with laughter one minute and crying your eyes out the next, and like all good friends, he can also be extremely annoying! I often wish he was about now, so I could ask him why he created certain characters, or why some of his plays are so unrelentingly sad.


You need to lay claim to Shakespeare – grab him now. Do not let those posers who think he is too difficult, too special, too bawdy, violent, funny or anything else, deny you your heritage. It’s a rotten conspiracy and it has gone on too long. If you can’t get to a theatre right now, you have a treat in store for you. In the meantime there are loads of other ways to enjoy Shakespeare. You can read his plays, act in his plays, watch them in the cinema or on TV, read comic strip versions of them, illustrate your own versions, create modern versions, gnome versions or animal versions, or even visit the brilliant Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust and find out all about Will Shaksespeare himself. Will is tough, he is indestructible and he is super cool. Best of all – Mr William Shakespeare is YOURS!

As his friend Ben Johnson said: “He was not of an age, but for all time”!

Photograph: PR

Marcia Williams is the author of Tales from Shakespeare, a retelling of 14 of Shakespeare’s best-loved plays in an ultra accessible style. This week is Shakespeare week - a celebration of Shakespeare for primary school aged children organised by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. Look out for more Shakespeare stuff on the site on Shakespeare’s birthday – which is 23 April (his 450th!).

What do you think about Shakespeare? Ever read any? Ever acted in a Shakespeare play? Let us know childrens.books@theguardian.com or on Twitter @GdnchildrensBks.

"Double Falsehood" Latest Play to be Credited to Shakespeare

Play discovered nearly 300 years ago said to be a Shakespeare forgery 'was written by the Bard himself,' new research claims 

• Double Falsehood was presented by Lewis Theobald in the 18th century 
• Theatre impresario made it out to be an adaptation of a play by the Bard 
• Claims met with scepticism, including from great poet Alexander Pope 
• But new study of its language identifies playwright as the true author
• Psychological theory and text analysing software lead to conclusion of University of Texas study which claims to model Bard's 'mental world'

+3

 William Shakespeare may indeed have been the 

original author of the play Double Falsehood after all

A play discovered nearly 300 years ago and said to be a Shakespeare forgery was really written by the Bard himself, new research has revealed.

The work titled Double Falsehood was presented by theatre impresario Lewis Theobald in the 18th century as an adaptation of a Shakespeare play about a Spanish nobleman's ignoble pursuit of two women.

Theobald, a known scholar of Shakespeare, mounted his play at Drury Lane Theatre in London on December 13, 1727, claiming that it was a re-working of an original by the Bard and that he had three original texts. 

His claims were greeted with widespread scepticism in the eighteenth century, including from the great poet Alexander Pope, who had considerable clout. 

But a new study of its language to build up a psychological profile of the writer 'strongly identifies' the legendary playwright as the true author.

Dr Ryan Boyd of the University of Texas said: 'Research in psychology has shown some of the core features of who a person is at their deepest level can be revealed based on how they use language.

'With our new study, we show you can actually take a lot of this information and put it all together at once to understand an author like Shakespeare rather deeply.'

The study applied psychological theory and text analysing software and goes beyond confirming authorship by word counts and linguistic regularities.

Mr Boyd explained: 'This research shows it is indeed possible to start modelling peoples' mental worlds in much more complete ways.

Play also known as "Cardenio"

'We do not need a time machine and a survey form to figure out what type of person Shakespeare was - we can determine that very accurately just based on how he wrote using methods that are objective and easy to do.'

Results showed the author of Double Falsehood was likely to be sociable and fairly well educated, findings that do not fit with accounts of Theobald as rigid and abrasive.

Theobald published Double Falsehood in 1728 and claimed it was based on three original Shakespeare manuscripts which have since been lost, presumably destroyed by a library fire.

Yet the authorship of the play has been hotly contested ever since.

To get to the bottom of the mystery 33 plays by the Bard, twelve by Theobald and nine by Shakespeare's collaborator John Fletcher, were examined in the study published in Psychological Science.

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Jacobean dramatist John Fletcher (topmost) most likely collaborated with Shakespeare on Double Falsehood (new cover above), which was long thought not to have had anything to do with the Bard 

Software evaluated 'function words' including pronouns, articles and prepositions and words belonging to various content categories such as emotions, family, sensory perception and religion.

They also looked at 'categorical writing' which tends to be heavy on nouns, articles and prepositions and indicates an analytic or formal way of thinking.

People who rate high on this are likely to be emotionally distant, applying problem solving approaches to everyday situations while those who rate low tend to live in the moment and are more focused on social matters.

Research in psychology has shown some of the core features of who a person is at their deepest level can be revealed based on how they use language. 

                                                                                                                          Dr Ryan Boyd

 

By aggregating dozens of psychological features of each playwright, the researchers were able to create a psychological signature for each individual and compare them with that of the writer of Double Falsehood.

Every measure but one identified Shakespeare as the likely author with Theobald identified as the best match only when it came to his use of content words.

But when the texts were analysed across individual acts, they found a more nuanced picture.

The first three continued to point the finger at Shakespeare, but for the fourth and fifth the measures varied between him and Fletcher.

Again, Theobald's influence appeared to be very minor.

Boyd said: 'Honestly, I was surprised to see such a strong signal for Shakespeare showing through in the results.

'Going into the research without any real background knowledge, I had just kind of assumed it was going to be a pretty cut and dry case of a fake Shakespeare play, which would have been really interesting in and of itself.'

FALSE IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE? 

Plot Summary  of DOUBLE FALSEHOOD

Tangled relationships, women disguised as men, intrigue laced with tragedy and comedy - some might say Double Falsehood has all the hallmarks of Shakespeare. 

Set in the province of Andalusia in Spain, a love rat called Henriquez Angelo courts a beautiful peasant girl, Violante, and forces himself upon her when she rejects his advances. 

Stricken by a guilty conscience he nevertheless seduces Leonora, the future wife of his absent best friend Julio. 

She accepts Henriquez's marriage proposal against her will, because her father Don Bernardo wants a family connection with nobility. 

Leonora writes a letter to Julio who returns to interrupt the wedding, causing her to faint. 

Her father discovers a dagger and suicide note on her person, revealing her determination not to be forced into marriage.

But for the best part of three centuries the play was dismissed as a falsehood in more than just title.

That was until 2010 when Professor Brean Hammond, of the University of Nottingham, put forward his thesis that the play originates from a collaboration between Shakespeare and Jacobean dramatist John Fletcher.

He claimed the versification was very similar to other works by Shakespeare and that Double Falsehood contained words never seen before and not previously used by Theobald.

Dr Boyd's new study is the latest to support this revisionist view. 

poppy67, London, United Kingdom, about an hour ago

@Catherine Textual analysis has supported the theory that this is another Shakespeare/Fletcher play. This follows another type of analysis (of the Woody Allen psychologist variety) further supporting the original claim and textual work. Any theory that is supported by not just one study, but another investigative tool altogether is that little bit closer to becoming academic fact. The work done at CERN, particularly on the LHC, needs to be repeated by other experiment designs before the discovery of the Higgs-Boson moves from possible to probable.

Fred, Colony of EUSSR, United Kingdom, about 5 hours ago

Time we checked Shakespeare's hard drive!

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Trudi, Worcester, United Kingdom, about 5 hours ago

Many plays attributed to Shakespeare clearly seem to be from a very different hand. Three hundred years ago the Laws of copyright, trade descriptions and data protection did not exist, you could say or claim whatever you wished. This one may or may not be from his hand, but it does affect it's value substantially.

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Andy Pandy, Margate, about 5 hours ago

That bloke wrote a lotta plays didn't he?

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m. smith, Kingston, Canada, about 5 hours ago

So many people have been trying to prove that Shakespeare did not write the plays accredited to him, so it is amazing to read that he actually wrote a play which has been accredited to someone else

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JeffL, London, about 2 hours ago

If you are talking about the authorship debate they are trying to prove that "Shakespeare" was not the man from Stratford but someone else using the name as a pseudonym.

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longarmlaw, leicester, United Kingdom, about 6 hours ago

It could be or it might not to be

Elac, Sutton, United Kingdom, about 6 hours ago

Someone is out to make money!