Resources
Teachers, this page is for you!
Welcome to the collection of resources we’ve curated for you and your students as you dive into Shakespeare – whether for the first time or the thousandth time.
Created by the long-time faculty of our NEH Institute for K-12 Teachers, Teaching Shakespeare’s Plays through Scholarship and Performance, these resources offer you:
Scholarly approaches to enhance close reading, primary source engagement, & text analysis
Performance approaches to illuminate meaning, understanding, & interdisciplinary investigation
You are welcome to use and distribute these resources in your classroom with attribution; all we ask is that you ensure the credit lines at the bottom of each page are included on any copies you share. Scroll down to read more about the fantastic faculty who created these resources.
This page shares some of the knowledge and approaches from our 2022 NEH Institute, which focused on “Body Politics: Authority, Sex, and Resistance in Shakespeare’s Plays.” We will continue to add to it in future years: our next Institute, focused on “Nature, Culture, and the Grounds of Good Government in Shakespeare’s Plays,” will be held July 15-26, 2024 (watch this space if you’re interested in applying!).
Thank you for all that you do to shape the future of our society. We hope this page can be a small part of supporting you in your crucial work.
Looking for resources related to a specific play?
Reading & Teaching a Shakespeare Play: Getting Started
Download the full packet OR click any link below to download one lesson only.
Shakespeare’s Playhouse: Performance Then & Now
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Resources for Exploring a Shakespeare Play: Early Texts & Secondary Sources
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Shakespeare Performance Exercises for Theater and Classroom: Understanding through Staging
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- The Basics: Shakespeare’s Words
- Exploring Shakespeare’s Language: “Reading” with Punctuation
- Exploring Shakespeare’s Language: “Shakespeare Charades”
- Introduction to Scene Analysis
- Staging Characters & Relationships: Tableau and “Reading” Stage Pictures
- Status and Tableaux in Shakespeare
- Exploring Shakespeare’s Language: Paraphrase & Translation as learning tools
- Exploring Shakespeare’s Language: Paraphrase & Translation (Handout)
- Interpreting Character: Wants & Actions
- The Great Debate: Using debate and discussion tools to analyze soliloquy
- Exploring Tactics in Shakespeare
- Appendix: Basic Action Verbs
- Exploring Shakespeare’s Language: Imagery and the Art of Mental Pictures
- World Building: Concept and Design Exercises
- Concept Design with Shakespeare’s Macbeth
- List of Great/Accessible Productions
Power Dynamics in Shakespeare Plays: Authority, Sex, & Resistance
Download the full packet OR click any link below to download one lesson only.
Teacher Reflections
Download the full packet.
Our Teacher Reflections section is growing. We welcome your reflections as you try the activities and approaches on this page.
We would love to hear what you’re doing in your classroom: please write to us at education@tfana.org.
Index
Looking for resources related to a specific play? Listed below is the location of every play title currently mentioned in our resources.
Macbeth
- List of Great/Accessible Productions, Krista Apple
- Status and Tableaux in Shakespeare, Claudia Zelevansky
- How to Read a Shakespeare Play, Julie Crawford
- Introduction to Scene Analysis, Claudia Zelevansky
- On Early Modern Editions of Shakespeare’s Plays, Maria Fahey
- The Oxford English Dictionary: the “OED”, Maria Fahey
- Interpreting Character: Wants & Actions, Claudia Zelevansky
- The Great Debate: Using debate and discussion tools to analyze soliloquy, Krista Apple
- Exploring Tactics in Shakespeare, Claudia Zelevansky
- Exploring Shakespeare’s Language: Imagery and the Art of Mental Pictures, Krista Apple
- Concept Design with Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Claudia Zelevansky
Othello
- Secondary Sources – Othello, Mario DiGangi
- On Early Modern Editions of Shakespeare’s Plays, Maria Fahey
- How to Read a Shakespeare Play, Julie Crawford
- Websites for the Study of Shakespeare, Mario DiGangi
- The Oxford English Dictionary: the “OED”, Maria Fahey
Hamlet
- List of Great/Accessible Productions, Krista Apple
- How to Read a Shakespeare Play, Julie Crawford
- Exploring Shakespeare’s Language: “Reading” with Punctuation, Krista Apple
- On Early Modern Editions of Shakespeare’s Plays, Maria Fahey
R&J
- List of Great/Accessible Productions, Krista Apple
- How to Read a Shakespeare Play, Julie Crawford
- On Early Modern Editions of Shakespeare’s Plays, Maria Fahey
- Exploring Shakespeare’s Language: “Shakespeare Charades”, Krista Apple
- Interpreting Character: Wants & Actions, Claudia Zelevansky
- Exploring Tactics in Shakespeare, Claudia Zelevansky
- Exploring Shakespeare’s Language: Imagery and the Art of Mental Pictures, Krista Apple
Midsummer
- Secondary Sources – A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Mario DiGangi
- Interpreting Character: Wants & Actions, Claudia Zelevansky
- Exploring Tactics in Shakespeare, Claudia Zelevansky
- Exploring Shakespeare’s Language: Imagery and the Art of Mental Pictures, Krista Apple
Julius Caesar
Much Ado About Nothing
- List of Great/Accessible Productions, Krista Apple
- Websites for the Study of Shakespeare, Mario DiGangi
Measure for Measure
- Websites for the Study of Shakespeare, Mario DiGangi
- The Great Debate: Using debate and discussion tools to analyze soliloquy, Krista Apple
King Lear
- How to Read a Shakespeare Play, Julie Crawford
As You Like It
- How to Read a Shakespeare Play, Julie Crawford
TFANA NEH Institute Faculty
Julie Crawford
Julie Crawford is Mark van Doren Professor of Humanities in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. She has published widely on authors ranging from Shakespeare and Sidney to Clifford and Wroth, and on topics ranging from the history of reading to the history of sexuality. She is the author of a book about cheap print and the English reformation entitled Marvelous Protestantism (Johns Hopkins UP, 2005), and Mediatrix: Women, Politics and Literary Production in Early Modern England (Oxford UP, 2014). She is currently serving as an editor for The Oxford Handbook on Margaret Cavendish, The Norton Anthology of English Literature (The Seventeenth Century), and a special issue of ELR on Margaret Cavendish and Lucy Hutchinson. Her current book project is entitled “Margaret Cavendish’s Political Career.”
Mario DiGangi
Mario DiGangi, Professor of English at Lehman College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, is the author of The Homoerotics of Early Modern Drama (Cambridge, 1997), Sexual Types: Embodiment, Agency, and Dramatic Character from Shakespeare to Shirley (Pennsylvania, 2011), and The Winter’s Tale: Language and Writing (Arden, 2022). He has edited Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer’s Night Dream (Barnes & Noble) and The Winter’s Tale (Bedford Shakespeare: Text and Contexts). In 2016 he served as President of the Shakespeare Association of America. He is currently working on a project exploring sexuality and race in Shakespeare.
Maria Fahey
Maria Fahey is a member of the faculty at Friends Seminary, where she has taught English to middle and high-school students for more than thirty years. She is the author of Metaphor and Shakespearean Drama: Unchaste Signification, which was shortlisted for the 2012 Shakespeare’s Globe Book Award. Dr. Fahey has written a series of student guides to reading Shakespeare’s plays. It has been her privilege to work with other teachers, most recently at the Taktse School in Sikkim, India.
Krista Apple
Krista Apple is an Assistant Professor of Acting at University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA, where she teaches Acting, Voice and Speech, and Shakespeare/Verse Drama. She is also a professional actor and acting coach, and a member of the Actors’ Equity Association and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA). She is a member of the resident acting company at the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia, where she has performed in numerous contemporary and classical productions, including some of her favorite Shakespeare plays – HAMLET (Gertrude), ROMEO & JULIET (Nurse), and MACBETH (Witch/Lady MacDuff). She is also a certified Reiki practitioner, a running enthusiast, and a proud mom. You can learn more at www.kristaapple.com.
Claudia Zelevansky
Claudia Zelevansky has over 20 years of experience as a director, producer, educator, and consultant and holds a Bachelor of Science from Northwestern University in Performance Studies and a Master of Fine Arts in Directing from the Yale School of Drama.
Claudia was the Associate Artistic Director of the Dallas Theater Center until 2004. She has taught acting and directing at Yale University, Sarah Lawrence College, Northwestern University, CUNY’s Queens College, Bard College, CalArts, and at Oberlin College, mentoring hundreds of students. Directing work includes more than 35 productions in NYC and across the country, including post at Manhattan Theatre Club, The Flea, The Public Theater, the Alliance Theatre (Atlanta), and Dallas Theater Center. Claudia made her directorial film debut with The Cold Snap, which had its premiere at the Los Angeles International Film Festival in 2010.
After attending Columbia University’s Arts Administration program, Claudia became Senior Associate at Martin Vinik Planning for the Arts, a planning firm that specializes in capital projects, curriculum design, and strategic planning for the arts. At MVPA, Claudia worked with a wide range of domestic and international museums, theatres, schools, and arts districts to improve planning, programming, and overall solvency.
Since 2020, she has been the Executive Director of the Mercury Store in Brooklyn, NY, an organization devoted to developing the work of theatre directors, devisers, and choreographers.