Shakespeare with Children: Six Scripts For Young Players

Without eliminating any of the humor, nuance, or plots, the author captures the essence of Sharespeare in an appropriate and exciting way for younger performers! I LOVE IT!Jan

My class of fifth and sixth graders performed Twelfth Night last night and won rave reviews! The adaptation was "excellently well-penned is poetical"! To prepare for the play we watched the DVD of the play done by an all-male cast and performed at the Globe Theater. We added some dialogue and actions to our script based upon the original. Including narrators to carry the story along helped both my students and the audience follow the plot of the play. The music teacher at our school taught the class medieval songs and taught a small group a recorder song. At the end of the play, we marched out in Shakespearean fashion while Feste sang "When That I Was and a Very Tiny Boy." We are all feeling quite proud of ourselves this morning after working so hard for six weeks! Thank you so much for helping me to be able to introduce my class to Shakespeare. Brava!

So excited to use this for our elementary kids to perform a Shakespeare play in our homeschool group. The only thing is- I wish it included an option to print copies since this is a play script- and others will need copies to memorize the script. Came in perfect condition.

I was hoping for elementary age content, the language is still too complex for elementary grade readers. I know Shakespeare is complex, but I still would up having to simplify dialogue for the kids to be able to read it.

This is a delightful and useful volume for any person who wishes to introduce the genius of Shakespeare to young people in a way that will give them enjoyment, while retaining the beauties and complexities of his language. In addition to classroom use, this could easily be a meaningful entertainment on Family Nights, leading to important discussions on serious human issues. Rainy day play, or simply sitting down with your child and reading the parts out loud are some of the many ways to profit from this adaptation. The appendices are also very helpful in humanizing Shakespeare and explaining to children something about his life and times. How fortunate to find such an accessible portal to the great work of the Bard! Perfect for any family!

So much better than all the paraphrased versions out there, this book will give kids actual Shakepearean language to work with. I watched a group of elementary and middle-school kids direct and act in "Twelfth Night" with only this book to guide them. Upon finishing, they were all perfectly ready to put on another. The narrated bits are okay... not sure how we could do without them for exposition... but it's the lines of Shakespeare everyone liked saying best.

I am the head of an English department at our school and we have a "Reading and Drama Club" for year 6-7-8 students. This book is a good resource for such a club! Our students enjoy using it. At the end of the year, they're going to perform a play from this book! I suggest you having one!

I plan to use at least one of the scripts in this book with my seventh grade students this year. The scripts are easy to read, and the authors include helpful costuming and set suggestions. I think this is a worthwhile resource for teachers who wish to include Shakespeare in their curriculum but who feel that the original Shakespearean English may be too difficult for their students.

Ok