Above, you can see a copy of Macbeth (The Arden Shakespeare Second Series), flanked by the play’s central tragic figures, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, in the form of a pair of paper dolls cut and folded with tender loving care from Great Characters from Shakespeare, one of gifted and prolific illustrator Tom Tierney‘s numerous and varied volumes of paper dolls.
Late last year, we decided to start introducing the works of William Shakespeare into our classes. Every one of our students will read at least one of Shakespeare’s plays, either in the original text or in an adaptation selected with their age and level of reading ability in mind, each year. To make this possible, we’re taking a tiered approach: annotated original versions of the Bard’s most important plays for our more advanced students, side-by-side original and adapted texts for intermediate-level classes, and highly accessible and handsomely illustrated adaptations for our earlier-stage pupils.
We began ambitiously, with The Arden Shakespeare Third Series edition of Hamlet, and we’ll be wrapping up our tour of Macbeth, in the edition pictured at the top of this post, with another group this weekend. In other classes, we’ve read The Tempest, Twelfth Night, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream and we’ll be reading more of the Bard’s plays as the year progresses.
Have a great weekend! Wherever you’re going and whatever you’ll be doing, remember to take along a book!