Brush up your Shakespeare

Brush up your Shakespeare
Start quoting him now
Brush up your Shakespeare
And the women you will wow

If you can't be a ham and do Hamlet
They will not give a damn or a damlet
Just recite an occasional sonnet
And your lap'll have honey upon it

When your baby is pleading for pleasure
Let her sample your Measure for Measure
Brush up your Shakespeare
And they'll all kow-tow

We've embarked on another project! Indeed, we are brushing up our Shakespeare by deciding to read A Midsummer Night's Dream. I got the idea from the book Teach Like Your Hair's On Fire by Rafe Esquith. In the book, he outlines how his class of fifth graders spend a year preparing to perform one of Shakespeare's plays. Matt and I decided to adapt his method so we too could enjoy the Bard. We chose A Midsummer Night's Dream because Matt had just read the Neil Gaiman version and it is the only play of Shakespeare that I have seen more than once.

Here is the plan. We will plan to finish one scene each week. On Sunday we will assign the scene. During the week we will read the scene independently. Then, sometime during the weekend, we will get together and read the scene out loud. We've already divided up the parts. We also have a CD on order from the library to help supplement our reading. After we have read and listened to the scene, we will watch it. During all of that comes the discussion. Depending on what is going on, we may blog about it. Do you want to read along with us? This week we are reading Act I, Scene I. In the meantime, we leave you with more Cole Porter lyrics.

If your goil is a Washington Heights dream
Treat the kid to "A Midsummer Night's Dream"
If she then wants an all-by-herself night
Let her rest ev'ry 'leventh or "Twelfth Night"