Current Events Lesson Plan: April 22-28, 2016
Current Event: Not of an Age, But for All Time
April 23, 2016, marked the 400th anniversary of the death of English playwright William Shakespeare. Many people regard him as the world’s greatest dramatist and the finest poet England has ever produced. Shakespeare was born in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, England, in 1564. His generally accepted birthdate is also April 23. By 1592, Shakespeare was living in London, where he quickly became one of the city’s best actors and playwrights. In 1599, he helped build the Globe Theatre, where most of his plays were first presented. Shakespeare’s canon (accepted complete works) consists of 38 plays, two major narrative poems, a sequence of sonnets, and several short poems. Some of his most well-known plays include Hamlet, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Macbeth, Othello, and Romeo and Juliet.
Objective:
Shakespeare has so saturated modern culture that many people who have never read a line of his work or seen one of his plays performed can identify lines and passages as his. Examples include:
“All the world’s a stage” from As You Like It
“To be, or not to be” from Hamlet
“Beware the ides of March” from Julius Caesar
“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears” from Julius Caesar
“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown” from King Henry IV, Part II
“A Horse! A Horse! My kingdom for a horse” from King Richard III
“Out, damned spot! Out, I Say!” from Macbeth
“Why, then the world’s mine oyster” from The Merry Wives of Windsor
“O, Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?” from Romeo and Juliet
“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” from Romeo and Juliet
The Behind the Headlines news story and related World Book articles explore William Shakespeare and his works.
Words to know:
- Globe Theatre
- Hamlet
- Julius Caesar
- King Lear
- Macbeth
- Othello
- Romeo and Juliet
- William Shakespeare
- Stratford-upon-Avon
Discussion Topics:
1. Ask your students to name other famous authors. (They might say Maya Angelou, Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway, Homer, Langston Hughes, Stephen King, Edgar Allan Poe, Rick Riordan, J.K. Rowling, Dr. Seuss, John Steinbeck, Mark Twain, Laura Ingalls Wilder.)
2. Ask your students to name some other famous people who came from England. (Students might say Sir Winston Churchill, Oliver Cromwell, Charles Darwin, Sir Francis Drake, Elizabeth II, Stephen Hawking, Henry VIII, Sir Isaac Newton, Sir Walter Raleigh, Queen Victoria, William Wilberforce.)
3. Have your students debate, “Students should be required to read some of William Shakespeare’s works in school.”
4. Ask your students to use World Book’s Timelines feature to view or add to the William Shakespeare timeline.