Shakespeare was a Dreamboat

On Friday we had a guest speaker from the Globe come to the school and talk to Grades 10-12 about Shakespeare and his time. It was highly inspiring. He spoke to us about how much Shakespeare was a man of the people. How he wrote using the "dirty" English language, during a time when people preferred to speak more intelligent languages like Latin or French. He wrote his plays to be heard and so invented many words in order to spice his plays up. Did you know that his plays used 17,000 different words?? To put that in perspective.. the King James Bible only uses 7,000 different words. I wonder who counted? Oh to have a vocabulary like that! I find that in teaching so many kids, who speak English as a second or third language, I have had to really dumb down my language. But I digress...

Anyway this speaker was phenomenal and had the kids eating out of his hand.. a difficult thing to do on a Friday afternoon. I really appreciated him because he explained how to really understand Shakespeare and how valuable he is. He also talked about how Shakespeare would be horrified to learn that his plays were being forced down student's throats in classroom situations. I have always struggled with that... studying Shakespeare as a book, rather than a play. However, Shakespeare creates timeless characters who face timeless situations and so much can be learned from studying the plays themselves. 

My class has been watching Kenneth Branaugh's Hamlet and I must say.. every time I watch that version I come away with something different. Fortunately I didn't cry at the end this time. I am also impressed by how his version is able to captivate student's attention and get them hooked. Very impressive indeed. 

My unit on Hamlet begins on Monday and so I'm hoping that I can continue to breathe life into this very old but very valuable play.