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Click to go straight to: Books | Hamlet | King Lear | Macbeth | Othello

 Shakespeare: online resources

  • Jonathan Bate. Classic Shakespeare: Gresham College presents six lectures, including PDF transcripts: wonderful.

  • British Library: Shakespeare (and other Renaissance writers) in context. A huge number of articles, such as for instance this one on Hamlet’s mother Gertrude.

  • folger.edu. The Folger Shakespeare Library: it’s in Washington DC, but you can get a lot of value out of the $40 teacher membership, and there is much free material.

  • Full texts: this venerable site still hits the button if you want to download/copy entire plays, or individual scenes, for classroom use.

  • Globe Theatre. Lots of educational material to explore here, including free material in the Teach Shakespeare section.

  • The Hamlet podcast: Conor Hanratty’s well-organised project produces ten-minute podcasts weekly through the entire play; and he has now (late 2022) started on Macbeth.

  • ‘In Our Time’: the Melvyn Bragg-hosted BBC Radio 4 has an amazing catalogue with over 1000 topics. I collated a list of the ones on Shakespeare, with links. Lots of expert contributors, including Emma Smith, Jonathan Bate and Frank Kermode.

  • quartos.org : a digital collection of pre-1642 editions of the plays.

  • Royal Shakespeare Company. They have lots of top-class educational resources, especially in their Learning Zone.

  • Search Engines: an essential tool for classroom use. opensourceshakespeare.org is free and you can easily refine results by play/character etc. Shakespeare’s Words by David and Ben Crystal presents results well (though there are limited free results). See also the Folger Library (above).

  • The Shakespeare Birthday Trust is a high-class site, with teaching resources, research seminars and more.

  • Shakespeare Insulter Machine. Handy for class, thou bawdy pox-marked apple-john.

  • Shakespeare’s Restless World. Anything Neil McGregor does is top-class, and this (now finished) series, which is also a book, is terrific on the culture that produced the great author.

  • Emma Smith. Approaching Shakespeare: podcasts which record her Oxford University lectures on the plays. These form the basis of her superb book This is Shakespeare.

Shakespeare: books

  • Bate, Jonathan and Rasmussen, Eric: The RSC Complete Works is a beast, and an excellent one at that. Review.

  • Dickson, Andrew: The Rough Guide to Shakespeare. Good overview of all the plays and poems, including stage history and adaptations.

  • Edmondson, Paul and Stanley Wells (editors): All the Sonnets of Shakespeare (2020). A ground-breaking fresh look at the sonnets (including those in the plays), with the orthodox order stripped out, and helpful literal paraphrases.

  • Enser, Zoe: Bringing Forth the Bard: a guide to teaching Shakespeare in the English classroom. As it says on the tin: a fine guide for both novice and experienced teachers, in which Enser traces the golden threads through the plays. With case studies by other teachers too.

  • Greenblatt, Stephen: Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. A great account of the cultural background.

  • Greenblatt, Stephen: Tyrant: Shakespeare on Power (2018) has become steadily more current since its publication. Greenblatt looks at King Henry VI, Richard III, Macbeth, King Lear, The Winter’s Tale, Julius Caesar and Coriolanus.

  • Josipovici, Gabriel: Hamlet - Fold by Fold (2016) is an intelligent and thought-provoking analysis of all the ‘folds’ of the play.

  • McGregor, Neil: Shakespeare’s Restless World: an unexpected history in 20 objects is the beautifully-illustrated acccompanying McGregor’s Radio 4 series.

  • Newstok, Scott: How to Think Like Shakespeare: lessons from a Renaissance education (2020). Lively, broad-ranging reflections on Shakespeare and contemporary culture.

  • Nuttall, A.D.: Shakespeare the Thinker. Excellent account of the way(s) Shakespeare thought and wrote. A.S.Byatt wrote that Nuttall was ‘ an attentive, intelligent, common-sense reader of the plays. He has a good ear and a subtle mind, and delights in words and the placement of words.’

  • O’Toole, Fintan: No More Heroes (Shakespeare is Hard, but So is Life: A Radical Guide to Shakespearean Tragedy). Now out of print, but it’s worth hunting down online this analysis by one of Ireland’s best journalists and thinkers (particularly his Brexit writing).

  • Pryke, Stuart and Amy Staniforth: Ready to Teach- Macbeth: a compendium of subject knowledge, resources and pedagogy (2020). An extraordinary 460+ pages on every corner of the play, with resources and exercises based on sound principles.

  • Smith, Emma: This is Shakespeare. 20 of Professor Smith’s Approaching Shakespeare podcasts have been reshaped into this brilliant book.

  • Shapiro, James: 1599: A Year in the Life of Shakespeare and its successor 1606 - William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear are top-notch cultural histories. Then move on to his terrific Shakespeare in a Divided America.

  • Tanner, Tony: Prefaces to Shakespeare. If you read one book … these essays originally were introductions to the Everyman Shakespeare series. On play after play Tanner is superbly insightful, provocative and constantly interesting.

  • Usborne Complete Shakespeare: stories from all the plays. A very well-produced large volume directed at children (handy for adults too), with clearly-told and illustrated versions.

  • Vendler, Helen: The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1997). A treat: analyses of every one of the sonnets by one of the great critics.

Hamlet

King Lear

  • LitDrive: notes and links from my recorded presentation in January 2023 on teaching the end of the play (LitDrive membership is essential for English teachers, and just £5 annually).

  • My essay comparing Caravaggio’s ‘The Taking of Christ’ and King Lear.

  • James Shapiro: 1606: Shakespeare and the Year of Lear. The outstanding book on the play’s historical background, by our age’s outstanding scholar. Here are my notes from the book concentrating on the development from the source King Leir to Shakespeare’s play.

  • James Shapiro and Fintan O’Toole talk about the book in this podcast from the Borris Festival. A rich, fascinating piece of listening.

  • Emma Smith on Lear in her superb book This is Shakespeare: my notes. Listen to her Oxford University lecture on Lear here. Why does tragedy give pleasure?

  • Tony Tanner: Prefaces to Shakespeare (2010). One of the very best critics on all the plays. Tanner examines key words/ideas, like ‘nothing’, seeing/blindness and more in a dense, brilliant analysis. For him, the key question is Regan’s: ‘Is there any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts?’

  • National Theatre production with Simon Russell Beale: several talks with the actors about their roles, including the Fool, Kent, Goneril etc.

  • Royal Shakespeare Company educational resources on the play. Go to their ‘learning zone’ here.

  • The Nahum Tate ‘happy’ version of the play provides excellent class conversation about Shakespeare’s true version, especially the ending.

  • Quizlet quotation self-tests as retrieval practice. This isn’t for ‘mere’ recall: it’s to make pupils think about key issues in the play.

  • A Thousand Acres. Jane Smiley’s 1991 novel convincingly transposes Lear to modern rural Iowa, as Larry Book decides to retire and hand over his farm to his three daughters. It’s convincing and powerful, and won Smiley the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

  • Thinking about King Lear: a series of exercises about quotations that you can do on your own, or even better in a pair. These are for when you know the play very well.

  • The sequence of events…. here is a chart for pupils to fill in, and to get a clear overview of the play, and here is a second one to use as retrieval practice - what happens in each scene, based on the question (a harder but more valuable task/test).

  • Essays on aspects of the play (modified versions of the podcasts below):

  • Some revision podcasts I did a few years ago:-

    • The first talk examines the explosive and crucial opening scene, during which the King sets in train the disastrous train of events which leads to personal and public catastrophe.

    • The second looks at the extreme bleakness of Shakespeare's vision in the play, especially through its treatment of religion and the gods. The gods are often invoked in King Lear, and on the surface in it ancient Britain seems to be a highly religious society. But in fact there is no stage at which heaven seems to be active or effective. The play disabuses its audience of the notion that there is any benevolent power above which will protect us from ourselves.

    • The third looks at the ‘good guys’, Kent and Albany, and how they affect the central story and its themes. Both are decent men; while Albany needs to travel on a path of moral development, Kent is the most clear-sighted and steadfast character in the play. In the end, however, their decency cannot prevent the tragedy.

    • The fourth features ten quotations from the play for pupils: pause after each, and self-test on who spoke the words, and their context, and then listen to the answers and a commentary on the quotation.

    • The fifth, using the notorious scene in which Gloucester is blinded as a starting point, looks at ideas of blindness and seeing throughout the play, particularly in the stories of the two old 'blind' men, Lear and Gloucester. Lear undergoes a humanising process of development, and starts to 'see' real truths about himself and society; however, in the end this matters little, as he is exposed to devastating grief on the death of Cordelia.

    • The sixth looks at the end of the play, considering how the famously bleak ending is constructed by Shakespeare. Lear so nearly becomes a play with a comic ending (like its sources and Nahum Tate's rewritten 1681 version). Instead, there is no mitigation: all is dark horror. To read Tate's version, click here (go to page 66 for the ending).

  • The Mill Theatre in Dundrum have put together five films looking at key scenes in the play in their ‘King Lear Project’ and focussing on analysis, rehearsal and performance.

    • Part 1 | Act 1, Sc 1: The division of a Kingdom and the banishment of both a favourite daughter and a trusted friend, send Lear on a descent into madness.

    • Part 2 | Act 1, Sc 2: Edmund, the illegitimate son of Gloucester draws us into his confidence in one of the very few soliloquies in the play.

    • Part 3 | Act 1, Sc 4: As Lear's plans start to unravel in front of him and his identity becomes stripped away, his vicious attack on his daughter Goneril is full of fury.

    • Part 4 | Act 3, Sc 2: Perhaps there is no scene more iconic than the storm coming at the climax of Lear's anger, it marks the beginning of a new sense of self awareness and ability to empathise with others.

    • Part 5 | Act 4, Sc 6: The company reflect on the journey Lear has undertaken. The man he was and the man he has become. They discuss the sadness and humour of the scene and reflect on how two fathers learn to see by having everything stripped away - to nothing. 

Macbeth

Othello

  • Quizlets for using as revision/retrieval practice. Think of the missing word or phrase, and then think about the quotation’s significance in the play, before flipping the flashcard.

  • 10 key quotations revision exercises: to generate thinking and debate about the play. Can be used in class in pair-work, or for individual study.

  • Essays/reflections for revision purposes: 1) On the first scene (‘Knowing and Satisfaction’). 2) On the Duke and the Turks in Act I scene iii (‘Judgment’).

  • BOOKS: Laurie Maguire’s book Othello: language and writing is an excellent refresher for teachers (originally directed at students). Graham Bradshaw’s short Connell Guide poses interesting and provocative questions about the play. Othello’s Secret: the Cyprus Problem by R.M. Christofides is a fascinating personal as well as academic account, rebalancing the play towards the island most of it is actually set in. Kiernan Ryan’s essay on the play in his Shakespearean Tragedy: notes here.

  • The Othello 2020 project from Red Bull Theater in New York was ‘a multi-part initiative of Red Bull Theater to provide an engaging and educational experience for all who are interested in Shakespeare’s Othello and and its relationship to the world in which we live today … [and] is seeking to deepen our exploration and understanding of the intersection of race and classical theater.’ Particularly recommended is a detailed exploration of Iago’s psychopathy by the actor Patrick Page.

  • Patrick Huff has a fine Twitter thread here, drawing together some resources, and a YouTube playlist.

  • INOTE has started English podcasts, including ones on Othello here (membership log-in required).

  • An excellent talk by Arielle Battice-Wedderburn at the 2020 Team English conference: ‘Othello & historical ideas of blackness’ (her slides are here).

  • The first podcast in Emma Smith’s Oxford University lecture series is on Othello, and of course the chapter on her book This is Shakespeare is essential reading (my notes on the Othello chapter).

  • As usual, the British Library resources are worth looking at: articles, items from the collection (including the Cinthio source).

  • The BBC’s Shakespeare Sessions has a full-length audio version, and discussions by Islam Issa (‘What it means to be a Moor’) and Hugh Quarshie (‘Looking for the Moor’: is the play racist? An excellent compendium of intelligent opinions).

  • A Folger Shakespeare discussion on ‘Othello and blackface’: there’s also a transcript.

  • Ayanna Thompson in a Bloomsbury podcast on the play: she wrote the introduction for the revised Arden edition. This discussion has a particularly strong focus on race.

  • The Othello Teacher Conference in July 2021 had several interesting and helpful presentations, which can be seen on Amy Smith’s site here.

  • My comments on Toni Morrison’s play Desdemona.