English with Mrs. Lamp

Hell No! Let’s Bridge the Gap Between Classic Texts and Modern Students Rather than Ditching Shakespeare! Find Materials, Ideas, and Inspiration for Teaching Shakespeare Below:

How do you feel about teaching Shakespeare? Are you afraid the students won’t be able to understand the text? Are you worried they won’t like it? Do you wonder if Shakespeare is too old & outdated? I know so many high school English teachers who have been thinking about skipping Shakespeare and doing something else. But I’m not sure that’s what we should be doing.

I’ve been teaching AP Lit & Comp for 10 years, and English 11 for 13 years. At our school, English 11 is supposed to be American Lit, but we also had a rule for a long time that said we had to teach one Shakespeare play each year in 9-12 English class. This means I’ve been teaching Shakespeare twice a year for a long time.

I’ve seen & heard how reluctant other English teachers can sometimes be when it comes to teaching Shakespeare, and I get it. In an age of TikTok, streaming, instant communication, and a huge focus on FUN and ENGAGEMENT in the classroom over the past few years, asking students to decode 400-year-old language feels like an uphill battle. The temptation to swap Shakespeare for more contemporary texts is real.

But here’s my opinion: removing Shakespeare from your curriculum is, more often than not, going to mean you are doing a disservice to your students. And no, it’s not about tradition or some outdated notion of “the canon.” For me, it’s about equipping our students with tools, confidence, and cultural literacy that will serve them far beyond our classrooms!

Why Shakespeare Still Matters

First, many of Shakespeare’s works remain cornerstones of literary study for good reason. When students master Shakespeare, they’re not just learning about one “dead guy’s” plays. They’re developing…

• Critical reading skills that transfer to complex texts across disciplines
• Cultural literacy that will enhance their understanding of countless references in modern works
• Confidence in their ability to tackle challenging material
• Insight into human nature that remains startlingly relevant

For AP Lit teachers specifically, there’s an additional pragmatic benefit: Hamlet alone has worked beautifully for almost every open-response essay question since the 1970s. Talk about versatility! To me, there’s no better work than Hamlet to teach right before the AP Lit exam in May; my kids use it more often than any other text, and they’re glad they had it in their arsenal after they’re finished!

Here’s the thing though. Teachers do have real reasons for being leery about teaching Shakespeare. Many of us remember being bored and confused ourselves during high school units on Shakespeare’s plays, and we ended up becoming English teachers! My thought is that the real tragedy isn’t Shakespeare’s plays—it’s how we’ve traditionally taught them. When we present Shakespeare as a mysterious genius & approach his work as though it’s an impossible puzzle that ONLY doctoral candidates studying Renaissance lit can figure out, we create the very barriers we complain about.

Breaking Down the Barriers

The secret to teaching Shakespeare effectively isn’t dumbing it down or apologizing for its difficulty. I do not reccommend abandoning the actual text altogether or exclusively using “modern adaptations” or graphic novels. Instead, I do think we need to get into the text itself (though that doesn’t mean reading the entire thing, and it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use audio or video; I’ll cover when and how to use the text, use “modern” side-by-side translations, and use audio/video later in this post!).

When we read the actual text (for close reading activities or reader’s theatre or whatever it is we want to do with it) the key is building the right scaffolding and demystifying the language.

Demystify the Language

Start by explicitly teaching the mechanics of Shakespeare’s English:

• Break down Elizabethan pronouns (thee, thou, thy) and contractions (o’er, e’er); explain common archaic language the kids will see again and again, and how and why the contractions are used (often, to fit the iambic pentameter of the blank verse).
• Introduce iambic pentameter as a tool that helped actors memorize their lines more easily! Show the kids how it works by having them memorize 4-8 lines from a famous Soliloquy from your chosen play. They really like having a bit of Shakespeare memorized, and it’s a fun activity to add early in your unit.
• Another fun activity is creating mini-translations of modern expressions or songs to Shakespearean language; my students enjoy choosing a chorus from a favorite song & translating it into Shakespearean language. We share these with the class when we’re finished.

You can make the song translation activity more fun by having the kids translate their song lyrics (make sure they know they need to pick popular songs), and then they read them to the class without telling the class what song it is. Their peers then guess what modern song the lyrics go to!

Image credit: u/Woodylego, Reddit

Create Context Before Digging into Content

Before really starting your chosen play, you should spend at least a little time building context:

• If it’s the first time they’ve studied Shakespeare, a good intro activity can be exploring the Globe Theatre’s structure and audience dynamics; there is an excellent website you can use for a virtual tour!
• Discuss how performances worked in Shakespeare’s time (no sets, daylight performances, all-male casts). Here’s a great Harvard video on this topic.
• Connect Renaissance values to the themes in the plays. I use this poetry unit BEFORE we do Hamlet so the kids are familiar with common Renaissance themes and values, and it’s also an opportunity to familiarize them with the language of the time before getting into a longer piece (like a full play)!
• If you don’t have time for a long introduction, you can still do a brief reading or view a brief video on Renaissance times, values, and themes. Here are three good (and short) videos on the topic: Captivating History, Crash Course, History of Ideas.

When students understand the why behind Shakespeare’s choices & can imagine the setting and context in which the plays were performed, the text suddenly becomes less weird and more purposeful.

Performance-Based Approaches

Remember: Shakespeare wrote scripts, not novels. His works were meant to be performed & viewed, not silently read at desks!

If you want the kids to enjoy Shakespeare, you might want to try one or more of these approaches:

• Use high-quality recordings as your primary “text.” My students typically listen along with the play on Audible (I like the SmartPass versions of Shakespeare’s plays best, as they include study guide material and helpful explanations at the end of the scenes. Spell it as one word, SmartPass, when searching. Here’s the Hamlet one.)
• While we listen to the audio, I will have spots to stop & check in. I might ask them what they think just happened, ask a specific question about a character’s motivations, or explain something that I think will have gone over their heads. I try to limit this to once every 10-15 minutes though, as we really do need to “keep it moving” to finish the unit on time! (Don’t listen for more than 10-15 minutes at a time without a break though, as most kids will begin to zone out!)
• You could also use film or stage interpretations & do the same “stop & check in” method every 10-15 minutes.
• You can also try “reader’s theatre” for one or more important scenes, asking students to choose parts & read aloud, or you could even create a few student “acting troupes” with mixed ability levels and give them key scenes to perform (or make a short video) for the class. This usually works best if you already listened to or watched the scene and analyzed it together as a class. THEN give the kids the “act it out” activity, whether that be reader’s theatre, acting in front of the class, or making a video where they act out the scene. I like to choose the play’s climax most of the time, but there are always tons of good scenes to choose from. Do what feels fun & significant to you!

One technique that transformed everything for my classroom is this one: after doing your intro stuff for the unit, watch the “Spark Video” (find these on SparkNotes or via Youtube; here’s the Hamlet one) that goes with your chosen play. This gives students the basic plot and character relationships before you start trying to read (or listen to/view) the actual text. This way, your students can focus more on language and nuance rather than just trying to follow the plot or figure out who’s who.

Make Modern Connections

Students engage more when something feels relevant to them. It’s important that the connections we make feel legit to the students though. One way to do this is to find modern stories, novels, TV shows, and movies that the kids know that are based on Shakespeare’s plays. For example, a good one is The Lion King for Hamlet. A quick Google search for “modern allusions to ___” or “modern versions of ___” can pull up many examples for your chosen play.

Another thing you can do is to come up with ways to connect the big questions and themes of the play you’ve chosen to real life. I like to use anticipation questions before we read the play, and I also like to try to connect these types of questions to each scene, weaving them into our study guides, class discussion questions, and other activities. For example:

• Compare the political maneuvering in Macbeth to modern political scandals
• Discuss how Romeo and Juliet’s families mirror modern tribalism
• Analyze how Hamlet’s indecision relates to decision paralysis in today’s world

Another example: “You meet someone at a party, and you really like him or her. However, your friend comes over and tells you that the person you met has parents who are in the same business as your family. Their parents tried to ruin your family’s business by leaving bad reviews online. What do you do? Should you stop talking to him or her? Why or why not?”

Strategies You Can Use Tomorrow

Here are a few more concrete approaches that have worked in my classroom:

1. Close Reading: Break it Down

For difficult passages:

• Early in your unit, you’ll want to show the kids how to read for understanding; show them how to get through dense text by going sentence by sentence.
• Take a brief passage you want to close read with the kids.
• Circle all the periods with a red marker before scanning it & putting it up on the board.
• Read the passage together, stopping at the end of each sentence. If your kids are really struggling, go phrase by phrase, or split up the complete subject from the complete predicate. Help them find the subject and verb of the sentence.
• Identify unfamiliar words and substitute modern equivalents as you go.
• When you finish going through it this way as a class, ask the students to get into groups of 3-4 & write a “modern translation” of the same passage you just looked over together.

2. Accessibility Tools: Using Modern Translations

• If you assign reading as homework or to be done silently in class, that’s okay (especially for AP Lit or Honors 11th or 12th graders), but you should still consider allowing students to use No Fear Shakespeare so they comprehend the story better; you can have them practice reading his actual language when you do close readings together in class.
• When you do read together, don’t stop too much to explain the language. Instead, focus on key passages that you’ll pick out & do close readings over after the scene is done rather than having kids try to translate every line.
• With stronger readers, you can try using the side-by-side translation (No Fear) at first, and as you get deeper into the play & have quite a few close readings under your belt as a class, then ask the kids to read the next Act in the original language.
• Keep passage/excerpt based parts of your assessments in the original text to maintain rigor. I only use ones we’ve close read in class, so they’ve dealt with them before.

3. Creative Activities

Pick 1-2 of these fun activities to splice in once in a while during the unit:

• Have students design newspaper front pages covering the events of the play
• Create “text message” conversations between characters
• Have the kids create a “modern version” of a key scene, perhaps as an episode of a TV show or a chapter in a YA novel
• Adapt a key Act into a series of comic strips.
• Craft gossip columns about shocking moments in the play

4. Time Management That Works

Two common pitfalls when we’re teaching Shakespeare include getting bogged down in background and reading straight through without extra activities spliced into the unit. Here are a few ideas regarding keeping your unit managable time-wise:

• Limit context-building to 1-2 weeks
• Alternate among reading, analysis, and interactive/creative/act-it-out activities. Maybe you read a few scenes (I aim for 45-60 minutes of reading, including the time it takes to stop and “check in” every 10-15 minutes) and then you do an analysis activity that might take 15-20 minutes, read a few more, then do something creative that may take 30-40 minutes, then read a few more scenes before doing a reader’s theatre activity or having the kids act out a key moment. Keep rolling through this cycle until you reach the end of the play.
• Create space to be able to watch at least a few scenes (as Shakespeare WAS meant to be viewed as a performance, not read like a novel). I’ll throw in viewings about once a week, which is usually once for every couple of Acts, but we might not watch the whole Act. Often, just a key scene is enough.
• Use dramatic audiobooks to maintain pace; it’s fun to have the kids do reader’s theatre, present scenes themselves as small group “acting troupes,” or watch different versions of the same scene, but for most of the text, it’ll go fastest if you all read along with an audiobook (I like SmartPass–search it as one word on Audible + the name of the play) & only stop for absolutely crucial explanations: you’ll have the chance at the end of the scene or Act to do your close reading activities, so don’t feel like you have to explain those bits too much when you know you’ll be doing a close read of them later on. Plus, SmartPass has explanations at the end of each scene to review what you just read!
• Consider using a PowerPoint presentation to go over key plot points & dig into conflict, character, motivations, themes, and symbolism at the end of each Act. This helps you stay focused & move through the key points relatively quickly. Plus, you can share the slides with the students for studying purposes.
• Save time for performance and creative projects! You may want to consider skipping a big final test or paper & doing an alternative final assessment like presenting a scene (to the class or as a video).

The Real Goal: Intellectual Confidence

Teaching Shakespeare effectively isn’t just about literary analysis or test preparation. It’s about showing students that they are capable of understanding complex, sophisticated texts. When a student who claimed to “hate reading” suddenly lights up after decoding Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy, you’ve done something really important for him or her: the student begins to see him or herself as intellectually capable.

This confidence transfers across subjects and beyond school. A student who can tackle Shakespeare can tackle college textbooks, professional documents, and complex social issues with the same analytical skills!

So no, I won’t be removing Shakespeare from my curriculum. But I will continue refining how I teach Shakespeare—making his works accessible without sacrificing rigor, engaging the students with meaningful relevance ties, and challenging them without discouraging them.

Shakespeare isn’t just a test topic or a curriculum checkbox. Teaching his most beloved works is an opportunity to show students their own intellectual potential. And that’s a lesson worth teaching!

Coming Soon: My full Hamlet unit! I’ll link it when it’s up on TPT 🙂