To celebrate the day traditionally marked as Shakespeare’s birthday, our Friday Five this week has grown! Below are some of the most informative, fun, and unusual websites on the Bard.
The Talk Like Shakespeare page offers much more than elocution lessons. Download a printable poster with the 10 top tips for speaking like the bard, watch videos, browse Renaissance recipes, even follow Will on Twitter.
From PBS, In Search of Shakespeare offers detailed information about their series by the same name, lesson plans (such as comparing film adaptations of Hamlet), using primary sources in the classroom, and a choose-your-own-adventure style Playwright Game. Also from PBS is the Which Words Are Will’s Words? Game.
If you are a glutton for punishment, take a look at the Shakespeare Insulter. The same site offers a Shakespeare Insult Kit for when you care enough to send the very best insults.
This Shakespeare biography quiz and a link to a site about Shakespeare in American Sign Language are just two of many resources available on Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet.
Whether you teach in a classroom, homeschool, or just want to learn more about Shakespeare, take a look at Surfing with the Bard, “Your Shakespeare Classroom on the Internet.” Serious Shakespeare Geeks will appreciate the Folger Shakespeare Library (as well designed as it is informative). If this doesn’t satisfy your scholarly urges, check out the Horace Howard Furness Shakespeare Library, which houses scanned images of 38 rare Shakespeare texts.
Mel Ryane’s blog, Teaching Will: The Shakespeare Club is subtitled “What school kids give me that Hollywood can’t.” What a treat! As someone who once was co-leader of a Shakespeare group for middle-school children and teens, I was excited to read about Mel’s experience with teaching Shakespeare to even younger children. She writes, “As a volunteer, I created The Shakespeare Club, an after-school program for 3rd, 4th and 5th graders. Together we grapple with the Bard, life and each other. These are the tales.”
Be sure to visit Shakespeare Illustrated at Shakespeare’s World, which “explores nineteenth-century paintings, criticism and productions of Shakespeare’s plays and their influences on one another.”
Finally, have you heard of Shakespeare’s lost play, The Tragedie of Frodo Baggins? Read an excerpt here.
Fare thee well!
Comics courtesy of http://comics.com/.
