Lesson Plan English Qx Layout 1 14/06/2013 11:48 Page 1

Lesson plan English Qx_Layout 1 14/06/2013 11:48 Page 1

LESSON PLAN

TODAY YOU WILL... GOOD WILL > THINK ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT SHAKESPEARE AND HIS POSSIBLE APPEARANCE > CONSIDER WHY IT MATTERS AT ALL THAT WE KNOW WHAT SHAKESPEARE LOOKED HUNTING LIKE AND WHAT PEOPLE MIGHT HAVE LIKED ENGLAND’S MOST FAMOUS POET’S APPEARANCE TO BE IN SUCCESSIVE GENERATIONS Before you introduce learners to the works of > BECOME A BETTER ‘READER’ OF IMAGES Shakespeare, it’s worth helping them get to know AND ALERT TO SOME OF THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SHAKESPEARE’S AGE AND OURS the man himself, suggests Jerome Monahan… YOU WILL NEED > ACCESS VIA THE WEB TO THE FOLLOWING SUPPOSED IMAGES OF SHAKESPEARE: You are about to start a Shakespeare set text with to be spoken and performed!” Then the day would 1. EXAMPLES OF SHAKESPEARE’S your students. It may be the ﬁrst time they have begin, during which participants continually spoke SIGNATURE: TINYURL.COM/TSGWH2 tackled one of ‘The Works’ or they could be on and played with the text, emerging hours later 2. THE 1600S CHANDOS PORTRAIT FROM familiar ground; his plays having been part of the with lines ﬁxed in their heads and events, themes THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY: weft and weave of their primary school days – and concepts embedded as only they can be TINYURL.COM/TSGWH3 3. THE SHAKESPEARE FUNERARY let’s hope! Still, this is a momentous occasion, and when they have been enacted. MONUMENT BY GERARD JOHNSON IN HOLY so before you crash into the world of Scotland as Some of Rex’s techniques became part of my TRINITY CHURCH, STRATFORD failed state under Macbeth; the ambiguous Illyria repertoire and have spurred me on to develop my TINYURL.COM/TSGWH4 of Twelfth Night; or Verona, the death-trap for own programme of ‘active approaches’ workshops 4. THE DROESHOUT ENGRAVING FROM THE star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet… why not – one of the most popular of which is a day-long TITLE PAGE OF THE FIRST FOLIO (1623) allow everyone a short pause – a lesson, at least – course introducing Shakespeare. Conscious that TINYURL.COM/TSGWH5 to consider the man himself, his world and what you are unlikely to have the luxury of multiple makes him special? lessons at your disposal, what follows is a brief Dr Rex Gibson (1932-2005) was a pioneer of outline of some of my favourite ways of tackling ‘active approaches’ to Shakespeare and the this potentially formidable subject. I suspect that person behind the Cambridge School combined with the resources I’ve suggested to Shakespeare editions of the plays. He was truly accompany this subject, you may have to pick and inspiring and used to begin his workshops with choose, but introducing Shakespeare is not everyone in a circle, right hands on heart and something that can be done effectively in a single copies of the ‘play-for-that-day’ held aloft, echoing lesson and so there’s plenty here to enable you to the proclamation: “This is a play – not a book! It is return to this topic from time to time.

STARTER ACTIVITY Shake-scene in a countrey” aloud with as much energy and And here is Ben Jonson writing expression as they can muster. As As this is about Shakespeare about him in the preface to the 1623 with all such activities, do not let himself, rather than beginning your First Folio (notice the far from students get away with saying things lesson with Rex Gibson’s oath standard spellings despite Jonson they don’t understand – keep relating to a speciﬁc play why not being one of the most educated of checking, and because they are get students speaking and sharing Jacobean writers) : taking some ownership of the lines comments made about Soule of the Age !/The applause ! they’ll probably ask you what things Shakespeare at the start of his delight ! the wonder of our Stage !/ mean anyway. career and after it? Here’s the My Shakespeare, rise; ... Thou art a The quotations mark polar pamphleteer Robert Greene Moniment, without a tombe,/ extremes of attitudes to complaining about our William in And art alive still, while thy Booke Shakespeare, and much else 1592 (and forgetting his doth live,/ besides. Greene’s complaint that apostrophes in the process): And we have wits to read, and Shakespeare has been grabbing the “there is an upstart Crow,/ praise to give. ideas (‘feathers’) of other poets and beautiﬁed with our feathers,/that Initially recite the whole speeches ‘beautifying’ them is something I with his Tygers hart wrapt in a aloud with the class (call and often repeat to young people to Players hyde [a puzzling reference response). That may be enough encourage them to share and use to a line in Henry VI part )/, before discussing them and each other’s ideas when tackling supposes he is as well able to considering the attitude of the writer creative work. The great thing about bombast out a blanke verse as the to Shakespeare, but the lines have Jonson’s lines is the insistence that best of you/: and being an absolute been broken into segments so that we search for Shakespeare in his Johannes fac totum [‘Jack of all you can share out the bits to pairs of plays rather than getting hooked up trades and master of none’]/, is in his students who then can work on their too much on his biography, or owne conceit/ the onely ‘bit’ with the goal being to say it relative lack of it.

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ENGLISH | KS3 INFO BAR + ABOUT THE EXPERT

Jerome Monahan has taught for over 20 years. In 1999, after a decade working in London secondary schools – both state and independent, he became a freelance teacher, educational writer and journalist. His background is English, drama, humanities and ﬁlm/media studies. Borrowing from all these disciplines, he has, since 2000 devised and delivered a broad programme of primary and secondary inset and student workshops across the UK and internationally.

presumably had his authority his lifetime or immediately after it. he was buried or on his MAIN ACTIVITIES behind them to be taken as the How authoritative are these Collected Works, certainly official version. Ask students why portrayals? Which of them do your gives them some authority, 1 Invite students to draw a they think Shakespeare spelt his students prefer and why? but in a world without picture of Shakespeare – however name in so many different ways, photographs, who’s to say Ben crude. Underneath, ask them to often abbreviating it on legal 4 The earliest of them, the Jonson’s recollection of attempt his signature, making it documents? (One excuse is that Chandos portrait, is the only image Shakespeare’s precise looks as ﬂowery and ‘Elizabethan’ as paper was expensive and so we have that is possibly a portrait had not faded somewhat in the they can. signatures often had to be Shakespeare may have sat for – seven years between the crammed into tight spaces after all but that is highly debatable and playwright’s death in 1616 and 2 The idea of the ‘name’ exercise the official terms and conditions unproved. It has been touched up the First Folio of 1623? is to point out that you and they on mortgages or contracts or over the years, and the earring, have spelt the name in a way that sworn statements.) which does date from the picture’s the man himself never did in his earliest days, was a source of great SUMMARY lifetime on any of the documents 3 Get students to share their controversy of the ‘Shakespeare carrying his signature. Our spelling ideas of what Shakespeare looked would never have worn such Shakespeare has also been is the one that appeared on early like. Then show them the three effeminate bodily adornment’ depicted in art over the last printed ‘quarto’ versions of his portrayals – see links, ‘You Will calibre. In fact Elizabethan and three centuries again and again. poetry and plays, and so Need’ – that were created during Jacobean men did wear such Many of these images are things – especially if they had variations on the three HOME LEARNING been to sea. Who knows – was considered in this lesson, but Set your students the task of investigating some of the other Shakespeare at sea for a time others are clearly created to images of Shakespeare that have for a while been thought to be during his lost years in the 1580s? reﬂect contemporary tastes genuine 16th or 17th Century portraits. Which do they prefer and such as the sculpture owned by why? There is quite a detective story behind each of them – e.g. 5 As for the other images, both David Garrick, which shows a the ‘Flower’ picture (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower_portrait) was date from after Shakespeare’s Shakespeare in a state of unmasked thanks to some clever analysis of the paint. The death, and were created by artists creative undress backing in 2009 of the Cobbe portrait – neither terribly accomplished – (tinyurl.com/tsshakespeare). (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobbe_portrait) by Shakespeare academic who did not know the man. The For those students that want to, Stanley Wells put another image of the playwright into circulation, fact that they passed muster with investigating Shakespeare in art but his conclusions have been challenged since. family and friends to appear where is also a hugely fruitful exercise.

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