Hamlet's Denmark

Ta DUM, ta DUM, ta DUM, ta DUM, ta DUM. The force will be strong in the hearts of your young Jedi as they use their lightsabers to strike the accentted syllables in lines from Ian Doescher's William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, A New...

Are American young people prepared to become tomorrow's leaders in technological innovation, or does an obsession with being cool sidetrack essential skills? That is the question freshmen and sophomores must address in a performance task...

"A drum, a drum! Macbeth doth come."  The withered and wild witches of Shakespeare’s Scottish play launch an examination of the fantastical elements in Act I, scene iii, paying particular attention to the action, imagery,...

A phenomenal lesson on Shakespeare! Middle and high school learners create WebQuests about the texts and authors that Shakespeare himself studied when he was in grammar school. They use a variety of media in order to create dramatic...

Check out this fantastic research project where learners work to see the modern world through the eyes of a historian and analyze a contemporary event of their choice. An in-depth reflection on the project is given by the project...

Comparing the more modern film Ten Things I Hate About You to The Taming of the Shrew leads to an understanding of how Shakespearean plots can be applied to modern-day situations and characters. As a culminating activity, groups select a...

Use the ideas here for a Valentine's Day activity (or anytime you study sonnets) with your 11th graders. Demonstrate how to analyze a love poem by conducting a think aloud about Shakespeare's Sonnet 29. Then small groups analyze Sonnet...

Students read and analyze Iago's rhetoric in specific monologues and dialogues with other characters, examine what Iago says and how he says it, define some basic rhetorical terms, and discover the sometimes dangerous power of language.

“Thou know’st ‘tis common; all that lives must die/Passing through nature to eternity.” Grief, and the response to grief and loss, is the focus of a series of activities that uses Hamlet as a launchpad. Groups examine Act I, scene ii to...

Shakespeare's Macbeth (Act II, Scenes I and II) lacks explicit details of the murder of King Duncan, yet the author creates an atmosphere that allows us to visualize the event. Readers interpret the "Dagger Speech" by writing stage...