This week I’ll be celebrating Hanukkah with a series of posts and podcasts about Shakespeare’s only play to feature Jewish characters The Merchant Of Venice. I’ll have a new post about the play this week, and hopefully a podcast episode, but in the meantime, here are some of the post’s I’ve written in the past about the Merchant Of Venice.
1. Play of the Month: Merchant Of Venice
The goal of this class is to learn about both Shakespeare and the Elizabethan period through the lens of Christmas. I will begin by asking the class "What traditions do you think of when you think of Christmas? We will then contrast the traditions of Christmas from the 17th century and now, including a brief period when Christmas itself was illegal.
Once I have contextualized this period, we will then go through the plot, characters, and themes of Shakespeare’s most famous Christmas play- “Twelfth Night.”
The class will include videos, multimedia presentations, virtual tours, interactive quizzes, and online activities. The students will play games inspired by real Elizabethan Christmas traditions, get some festive recipes, and learn what it was like to be an actor in Shakespeare's company, when they performed "Twelfth Night" and other plays before Queen Elizabeth and King James.
I ‘m working on some podcasts discussing how Shakespeare discusses soldiers in his plays: https://anchor.fm/the-shakespearean-student/episodes/Episode-3-Shakespeare-On-Soldiers-Part-1-e1a4l3r
I have some extra time to teach tomorrow, so I’ve added some extra classes. If you’re interested, please sign up on Outschool.com
The Shakespearean Student 