The Folger Shakespeare Library education department publishes a web-log titled Making a Scene: Shakespeare in the Classroom that gives teachers advice on how to help students learn about the Bard. On Thursday, the topic of the post was "Teaching Shakespeare FAQs" that is a list of basic questions and answers about how to handle Shakespeare in the classroom. One of the questions considered basic by the Folger had to do with Shakespeare's biography: Do I need to teach about the Globe Theatre or Shakespeare’s Life? The simple answer is “No.” While telling students that Shakespeare had three children and that he and Anne Hathaway had to get married might be interesting, it really doesn’t help them understand the plays. It’s much better to integrate some facts about Elizabethan life when they come up in the plays. So when Francis Flute protests, “Let me not play a woman. I have a beard coming” in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, that’s the perfect opportunity to explain the...
a Michigan group dedicated to the study of the works of William Shakespeare with particular interest in the authorship question