Folger Guides to Teaching Shakespeare
Now available for Hamlet, Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet
Engaging classroom activities to make Shakespeare accessible and exciting for learners of all backgrounds
The new Folger Guides to Teaching Shakespeare series offers educators fresh insights, innovative tools, and detailed lesson plans for teaching some of Shakespeare’s most frequently taught plays, based on the proven Folger Method of teaching and informed by the experiences of classroom teachers across the United States.
The first three guides in the series are now available for purchase at the Folger Shop, on the Simon & Schuster website, and wherever books and teaching resources are sold.
Edited by Peggy O’Brien
Published by Simon & Schuster (November 12, 2024)
Inside each guide
- A day-by-day, five-week teaching plan
- Insightful essays by scholars
- Suggested text pairings
- Strategies for reading Shakespeare with English Language Learners (ELL) and students with learning differences
- Plot maps drawn by a comic artist
The Folger Guide to Teaching Hamlet
The Folger Guide to Teaching Macbeth
The Folger Guide to Teaching Romeo and Juliet
The Folger Method for the 21st century classroom
Like their predecessors in the Shakespeare Set Free series, these books explain the Folger Method of teaching Shakespeare, outlining an approach to language-based, student-centered, interactive, and rigorous classroom lessons.
Each guide takes into account the 21st century classroom, provides teachers with strategies for teaching the issue of race within Shakespeare’s works, and suggests text pairings for each play, broadening the scope of literary connections while placing Shakespeare within a diverse world of literary contexts and companions rather than on a pedestal.
About the editor
Peggy O’Brien is a classroom teacher who founded the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Education Department in 1981. She set the Library’s mission for K–12 students and teachers then and began to put it in motion; among a range of other programs, she founded and directed the Library’s intensive Teaching Shakespeare Institute, was instigator and general editor of the popular Shakespeare Set Free series, and expanded the Library’s education work across the country. After leaving the Folger, she later returned to serve as the Director of Education from May 2013–July 2024.
About the contributors
Secondary English teachers and education specialists with diverse classroom and teaching experiences have contributed essays and materials for classroom application and practice:
- Jocelyn A. Chadwick provides an introductory essay in all editions considering the relevance of Shakespeare for new audiences.
- Corinne Viglietta co-contributes an overview of the Folger Method.
- Donna Denizé suggests pairings with other texts in each guide.
- Roni DiGenno focuses on teaching students with learning differences.
- Christina Porter provides a section on reading Shakespeare with English Language Learners.
- Secondary English teachers Ashley Bessicks, Liz Dixon, Debbie Gascon, Stefanie Jochman, Mark Miazga, and Amber Phelps created and tested lesson plans.
- Comic artist Mya Lixian Gosling (Good Tickle Brain) provides a visual provocative plot map for each play.
- Catherine Loomis and Michael LoMonico devised “Ten Amazing Things You May Not Know” lists.
This series also provides new essays written by the following scholars:
- Ruben Espinosa (Director of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and Professor of English at Arizona State University) for Hamlet
- Ellen MacKay (Associate Professor of English at the University of Chicago, Head Scholar at the Teaching Shakespeare Institute) for Romeo and Juliet
- Ayanna Thompson (Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University and Director of the Arizona Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies) for Macbeth
For full bios, please see our press release
Preview
Read an excerpt from “What Happens to Verona when the Torches Burn Bright” by Ellen MacKay from The Folger Guide to Teaching Romeo and Juliet.
Shakespeare's Most Adolescent Play
It may not surprise you to hear that Romeo and Juliet is Shakespeare’s teenaged play but that might have surprised earlier readers who considered the play adolescent for other reasons.
Forthcoming titles
The Folger Guide to Teaching Othello and The Folger Guide to Teaching A Midsummer Night’s Dream will be released in March 2025.