CURRICULUM SUBJECTS: Shakespeare

Podcasts and Recordings

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"Our aim is to inspire a love of Shakespeare's works by delivering open-access, peer-reviewed Shakespeare resources with the highest standards of scholarship, design, and usability. Since 1996, the ISE website has been an innovator in providing academic resources for the online digital medium."

As the name suggests, this site has everything you need to know about Shakespeare: his plays. the Globe Theatre, his life.

Shakespeare Online, a teaching aid used in classrooms all over the world.

Get an in-depth look at the meaning behind some of the flowers and herbs mentioned in Hamlet, as well as other Shakespeare plays.

Webcomics depicting interviews with Shakespearean characters, retellings of the plays, character spotlights, and songs mix modern and Shakespearean language and sensibilities. Drawn by a librarian, this is possibly the most modern and relatable format for high school students to feel more comfortable with the plays.

Though no longer producing new entries, this catalog of YouTube videos based on Shakespeare’s works contains detailed descriptions of over 150 videos from “Romeo & Juliet 2553 A.D.” to “Impressionist Jim Meskimen Does Shakespeare in Celebrity Voices.” Whether helping students translate Shakespearean themes to a different medium or as preparation for students embarking on a similar project, there are dozens of different perspectives on the plays.

Two Shakespeare scholars and self-described “suburban moms” incorporate Shakespeare into their daily lives. With sections such as “Shakespeare at Large,” they collect Bard sightings and influences from around the web and pop culture. They also create original content like “Letters To Santa Written By Shakespeare Characters” and “Willslist,” a reimagining of the Craigslist website with Lady Macbeth trying to sell a bloody mattress and King Richard III seeking to barter a kingdom for a horse. Their lighthearted approach to his works and relating his themes to everything from teen bullies to parental guilt could be helpful in bringing the plays into a modern context.

"Metaphors and puns provided opportunities for Shakespeare to play with words. Words that sound alike sometimes have different meanings, but the pun may be lost if pronunciations change due to vowel shift. Explore how one quote makes more sense if you know that reason was once pronounced like raisin. Shakespeare wove some foreign words into his writing, and often used words as a different part of speech than their typical use. At times, it can be difficult to discern whether the playwright intended passages to be prose or poetry."

This link will allow you to search specific words used in all of Shakespeare's works. Go ahead, try it out!

This dictionary not only provides definitions for words that are no longer used or have changed in meaning, but it also offers insight into the symbolism of words that modern readers might not recognize.

This document from the Royal Shakespeare Company explores the themes of the play, and lists the relevant quotes.

Entertainment and ritual

IMAGE : "Freytag's pyramid", symbolising his theory of dramatic structure

Site being continually updated, so there may be more than three available.: Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing.

TEACHERS AND STUDENTS : Free online glossaries, plot synopses and short biography of Shakespeare

Resource Packs
•Richard III
•Macbeth
•Hamlet
•Romeo & Juliet
•Julius Caesar
•The Tempest
•A Midsummer Night's Dream
•Henry VIII
•King Lear
•Much Ado About Nothing
•The Merchant of Venice

Flipcharts
•Romeo & Juliet Scenarios
•Romeo & Juliet
•For or Against Caesar?
•Loyal or Conspirator?
•The Mountain of Power
•The Island Map
•The Characters

Based on a Shakespeare Insult Kit of unknown origin. Expanded and adapted for the Web by Chris Seidel.

Until the late Victorian era, the Bard’s plays were often heavily edited for the stage. What changed?

38 resources, and digibook, with videos to help students understand six of Shakespeare’s best known plays, plus insight from the actors and directors who bring his characters to life.

Uncover a stimulating range of cultural resources for lifting Shakespeare’s work off the page