Shakespeare After All
I just had to laugh this week. When I first planned out this school year, I decided to add in one term of learning ABOUT Shakespeare and Plutarach, then read Term 2's Shakespeare play (The Merchant of Venice), then read a Plutarch's Life for Term 3. I had this secret fear that the boys would hate both, and I needed to ease them in. When I was young, I loved reading Shakespeare--I first fell in love with the Lambs' Tales from Shakespeare, then some funny books (Twisted Tales from Shakespeare), then actual plays--until I hit high school and we read them as assignments. We would take a play at a time, and take turns reading, slowly, stopping to define every word. Ugh! The high school version of Chinese water torture. Drip, drip.
So I was a bit nervous. Silly me. The boys immediately took to it, had favorite "characters" that they always wanted to read (Cheery LOVED Gratiano).
When typing up this term's assignments, I put Plutarch's Life of Poplicola in place of the Shakespeare reading, though. I had instant protest. I tried to satisfy them by saying we'd read the Lamb's Tale for the 3rd term play, The Winter's Tale. No go. They want to read the whole thing! I told them we'd need to spend evening time on it. They said good, they'd like that better, Daddy could read too. (They had made me save the big courtroom scene in Merchant of Venice for when Daddy was home). I protested that I hadn't bought copies of the play for all of us. (I overdid it with Merchant of Venice, and bought three copies of the No Fear Shakespeare books, which it turns out we did not really need). They went hunting online and found copies of the play that we could download to our Palms for free.
So I quit protesting. Dh will help us get the downloads on our Palms, from which we'll read the play. I might print off a public domain copy, just so I can "see" more than a few lines at a time (helps me decide who ought to read what part); and I'll download the online Sparks notes to have on hand.
My friend Stacey encouraged me to just read the plays; she said she thought the boys would enjoy it. She was right. :-) Again. :-)
So, let the play begin!