Encouraging a love of Shakespeare

Teach your children to enjoy The Bard

Many times I’ve heard parents say that they don’t know how to tackle Shakespeare at home. Whether they are homeschooling and trying to teach their children about this fantastic piece of English literature, or are parents supporting high school students trying to complete homework, not everyone was fortunate enough to have a fabulous English teacher that could show us how to understand Shakespeare. It can be daunting to help our children with something we feel less than confident in.

So, how can you teach Shakespeare well?

The best place to start is learning to like Shakespeare yourself. This doesn’t mean you have to pick up his complete works and try to read them. Instead, start with others who love The Bard. Learn what they love about his works and why. After all, there is a lot to love about Shakespeate.

Here are four books to get you started.

First, is Dame Judi Dench’s Shakespeare offering. In an entertaining and accessible way, she shares her life acting in Shakespearean plays. This is about the stage and acting, his words and their meaning, plot lines, characters, and her amazing skill at memorising all those lines. It is hard not to catch her infectious love for his plays when you read this book:

Next, Ken Ludwig’s fantastic offering: How to Teach your Children Shakespeare. This focuses on the language, details of the stories, and how to encourage your children to memorise some great speeches.

He makes it easy and enjoyable, even physically setting out the text in a way that aids memorisation:

Free downloads of the quotes to memorisation are available too.

While those two books are great for parents to read, what about the children? Well, here are two that you can read aloud to your children to teach them about Shakespeare even before getting into the plays themselves. Both are written by Marchette Chute and are great additions to the home library, though you will need to look for them second-hand.

This one, as its title suggests, is a great introduction to Shakespeare. It gives details about the plays, performances, how the theatres worked in London and how William Shakespeare and his friends performed the plays. It puts The Bard into historical context.

The Wonderful Winter is a little different. It is a story. Great for a range of ages, the novel centres around a boy (and his puppy) who are warmly welcomed into the life of the theatre in London in the wonderful winter of 1596 - 97. It is about the daily life of Shakespeare and other great actors of the day. Highly recommended as a family read aloud to sprinkle in a little Shakespeare and a lot of joy.

If you aren’t confident with Shakespeare then it isn’t easy to just crack open a play and start reading. Finding a good stage production or film suitable for children can be tricky too. However, if parents start to know and like his works then it makes it easy to pave the way for children to enjoy them too.

Of course, there are loads more books that you can read (I know - I have quite a few on my bookshelves!), but these four make for a enjoyable and solid start.

I hope you give them a go!