Now that we completed our Shakespearean studies, my kids chose which play they wanted us to perform.
Anticipating this from day one, their vote kept changing day by day, as we learned more about Shakespeare and his great works.
Each day was a new favorite, as we studied Shakespeare’s background, sonnets, Julius Caesar, Henry V, madnesses of Richard III and Hamlet, the similarities of As You Like It and Twelfth Night, The Taming of the Shrew, Much ado about Nothing, Othello, Macbeth, and King Lear, and The Tempest.
After a Shakespearean interlude at the dentist, Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter had so infused my thoughts, that my latest Homeschool Mother’s Weekly Journal featured The Bard.
Amazingly located in our backyard is the Folger Shakespeare Library, the world’s largest Shakespeare museum in the world.
While learning about their stellar collection of folios, quartos, and octavos, we reviewed all we had learned from the Colonial Williamsburg printer and binder. (see above link)
Yesterday, as the dust settled, I asked my kids which play they wanted us to read aloud.
With a twinkle in their eyes, their decision was made: Romeo and Juliet, for Valentines Day!
SHAKESPEARE MEANT TO BE HEARD, NOT READ
With a promise that we’d “perform” a play of their choice, I assured them we wouldn’t worry about costumes and rehearsals, like we did for our Ancient Greek Becoming History presentation.
This time we would do Reader’s Theater, a more laid-back approach which saves lots of time, yet yields the same quality of experiencing reading Shakespeare aloud.
Shakespeare was not meant to read silently…hence not finding many of his plays in publication in his lifetime.
Instead, his iambic pentameter immersed plays rely on the auditory for the beauty of his wit.
Although some plays were printed in quartos aka small paper pamphlets, they were not collected into a rich folio leatherbound volume until after his death.
While the collection of his plays into print is a fascinating study, the point is that Shakespeare was meant to be performed, to hear the beautiful language with rhythmic iambic pentameter.
In other words, reading his plays are sort of two-dimensional, reading them aloud is three-dimensional.
ENTER READER’S THEATER
With Readers’ Theater only two things are required…copies of the play and people who read straight from the script with the best voice inflection as they can.
Since my kids have seen Shakespearean actors in action, and more importantly heard them, they had a sense for iambic pentameter.
They also did some cool activities at the beginning of our unit study.
They are also familiar with many of the stories, which is why I let them choose the play.
Since all of the plays are great, it mattered not which they chose.
With them choosing their favorite, they will be more engaged. Win, win!
TO BE OR NOT TO BE
Taking the pressure off, Reader’s Theater gives us opportunity to experience and enjoy…To be or not to be.
To just be…whomever is needed…as best we can.
We roll with our successes and mistakes.
We enjoy. We laugh. We get tongue tied at times. We experience. We stand. We move. We sit. We have fun.
Reader’s Theater is not about perfection, it’s about experiencing…about being.
ANNOTATING
As usual, we opened our copy of Romeo and Juliet to annotate the key literary elements and famous quotes.
After we finished the annotations, and because they were quite familiar with the plot, having first seen it performed by Wishbone when they were toddlers, we assigned parts.
With twenty key individual parts, and several group parts, among the three of us we needed to divide and conquer.
Going through the character list at the front of the play, I let the kids decide which key par they wanted to do, while we left the rest of the decisions loosely at the last minute, based on which made sense at the time and energy level. 😉
And we actually did this once before when we performed Euripides’ Ancient Greek play, Trojan Women.
And sometimes we made last minute adjustments in the middle of the play. And that was okay. No pressure. 😉
Homeschoolers are known for flexibility…a highly regarded skill. 😉
OUR THREE HOUR ROMEO AND JULIET
It took about 3 hours to read through Romeo and Juliet.
The range was fun and we’d either move or change our voices if we were playing multiple parts at once.
Since my daughter played Juliet and my son portrayed Romeo, they high-fived instead of kissing.
All the other parts were quickly volunteered/assigned as we turned pages.
If two had a part, the other took whatever was new.
Or If someone had long parts on that page, new shorter parts went to others.
When Romeo or Juliet was featured, I tried to take the parts opposite them.
Meanwhile my key characters were the two mothers and the nurse.
After we read through Romeo and Juliet, I found myself speaking in Shakespearean verse throughout the day, causing my son to laugh.
I couldn’t get iambic pentameter out of my head!
17TH CENTURY TIPS FOR WOOING
For a fun activity is the perusal of The Mysteries of Love & Eloquence, Or the Arts of Wooing and Complementing, which is full of 17th century pick-up lines, such as: Your words like musick please me.
RECITATIONS REHEARSAL
From mental notes of the day, I cued my kids during rehearsal for their recitations for our Renaissance Becoming History presentation, forthcoming.
Although I assigned my kids to recite a Shakespearean passage for our presentation, they chose which one they wanted to do.
Gleefully, they had so many choices from our survey of Shakespearean works, that the problem wasn’t that they had to memorize a passage, but they didn’t know which one.
While my daughter settled on a passage from Hamlet, my son decided on three selections from Henry V.
My goal is to memorize Portia’s famous speech from Merchant of Venice…in all my free time.
Since the goal for the recitations is the best performance possible, we are rehearsing.
While we memorize passages of great works, we build language patterns in our mind to draw from later in writing and speech, which is a hallmark of classical education.
Since my kids don’t see what I see when they are rehearsing, I am going to have them video tape themselves on their cameras so they can self-analyze.
A picture is worth a thousand words, but a video is worth a million. 😉
FAVORITE SHAKESPEARE MOVIE RANKING
Asked by many which of the Shakespeare movies was our favorite, stay tuned for that.
Receiving movies to borrow from many friends, we’ve had a great time assessing and choosing favorites.
In short, our ranking kept changing as we watched another adaptation.
Stay tuned for that post, next.
EPILOGUE 2024
An added benefit to casually enjoying the beauty of Shakespearean language through Reader’s Theater, is that it eases the struggles some readers have.
A few months later, my daughter was diagnosed during a routine eye exam that she had vision issues, something I always suspected, but eye doctors merely prescribed her glasses to sharpen her vision.
Regrettably, vision assessments are often missed in basic eye exams, because not all eye doctors are aware of vision issues.
Since vision therapy is a new field of study, not much is known, some things are known, but not known by all…which means it is clouded and debated as to its merits, even within the medical community.
The short story is that my daughter’s eyes did not properly track. After a year of therapy, she saw huge improvements.
Stay tuned for more of that story, because it’s long and actually ongoing, but Reader’s Theater is great for anyone who struggles with reading, whether it’s due to eye tracking, “lazy eye”, dyslexia, etc…including undiagnosed cases.
Whether learning to read, struggling to read, or having excellent reading skills, Reader’s Theater takes the pressure off to perform, and simply enjoy in a group experience.
Our use of Reader’s Theater is one of many benefits my daughter enjoyed, which shocked her vision doctor who couldn’t understand how she read classical literature, if her eyes were so poorly tracking.
My daughter explained: my mom helped me in lots of helpful ways, so I love to read.
Speechless, the doctor paused, because her clients don’t read books ever, due to the difficulty.
She had never had a client before, especially with vision issues as bad as my daughter had, who loved books and was considering a literature major in college.
