ABSTRACT
Students generally arrive in middle and high school classrooms without a great deal of knowledge about how many daughters King Lear has or whom Rosalind loves. Many have never seen a play performed, or at best, have only watched modern musicals or a matinee showing of A Christmas Carol. Some may realize Shakespeare was born in the Renaissance, but most will be hard-pressed to explain when the English Renaissance occurred, if any time frame more specific than before World War Two and after the dinosaurs is demanded. Yet, a surprising number “know” that Shakespeare didn’t write the plays and that Juliet married Romeo when she was only thirteen, which was a perfectly “normal” age for matrimony “back then.” Teaching Shakespeare’s plays often means teaching about his world as well. Fortunately, a variety of recent publications, both picture books about Shakespeare’s world and adaptations of specific plays make a virtue of this necessity by showing readers the excitement of Renaissance drama and inviting them to explore it further.
