I made a digital escape room for Macbeth, as part of my Outschool.com class, “Macbeth: An Immersive Educational Experience,” which you can register for at a discount this week only. I’m presenting this digital escape room as an activity for teachers to teach their student’s knowledge of the plot of the play and use their observation and research skills to escape from a “cursed castle.”
What Is a digital escape room?
In a normal escape room, you are locked in a room and have to follow clues and solve puzzles in order to find a series of keys, codes, and combinations to unlock the door and get out of the room. In a digital escape room, you solve online puzzles and use passwords and key codes to unlock some kind of digital content.
My escape room is designed to test your knowledge of the play, give you a chance to learn about the history behind it. Most escape rooms use the a variety of locks such as:
Standard combination locks
Direction locks (where the lock has arrows taht you have to push in the correct direction, in the right order).
Color locks (where we put different colors in a sequence.
A digital escape room uses these concepts and adapts them to work within the context of a website or other digital experience. For example, I made a direction lock based on the direction a dagger points and made a short animation of a dagger with the text of Macbeth’s famous dagger speech.
The student has to surf through five webpages to find the answers to the puzzles, then imputs the answer in a Google form. Once he or she unlocks all six puzzles, they are permitted to leave the witches’ castle. Here’s a preview of the puzzles:
Part I: The Gate
There’s a website called Flippity which allows you to make little online puzzles so I embedded it on one page of my website. In this case, it has six locks that you have to unlock by typing answers to trivia questions related to “Macbeth,” such as “What object appeared to Macbeth before he killed the king?” The final lock requires you to read a short article on the curse of Macbeth, so you can enter it on the website.
Part II: The Magic Mirror
There’s a website called a magic mirror, which if you click on the mirror, it hyperlinks to an image that spells out the next answer for the Google form.
Part III: Birnam Wood
I wanted to teach the students about verse scantion and what an iambic pentamer iine is. I wanted to get the class to learn the pattern of unaccented beats (which Shakespeare scholars mark with a U), and accented beats marked with a /, as in the couplet below:
To get the students to practice making an iambic pentameter line, I embedded a Google Slides presentation in the website which has pictures of unarmed and armed soldiers. A key indicates that you are to count the soldiers and input the U/U/ pattern into the Google Form:
Screenshot from my Birnam Wood Activity.
So, there’s a preview of the Digital Escape Room I hope this inspires you to try this type of activity in your class. If you want to use this activity, shoot me an email and I’ll give you a teacher’s guide. Please also consider signing up for my Outschool.com class!
This video is part of my Outschool course “Macbeth: An Immersive Horror Experience.” I use it to explain the plot of the play before playing a game and an escape room to test the student’s knowledge. Let me know in the comments what you think of it, and if you like it, please consider signing up for the course on Outschool.com
Today is March 15th, a day that history still bewares, because of the infamous day when armed, violent conspirators went to the Senate and attempted to overthrow elected rulers. For obvious reasons, this put me in mind of the heinous actions of another group of conspirators stormed another Senate and tried, unsuccessfully, to overthrow democracy.
January 6th, 2021 (which, coincidently, was Twelfth Night, one of my favorite Shakespeare-themed holidays), was a tragedy for multiple reasons. The protestors broke windows, destroyed furniture, defaced statues, broke into both chambers of Congress, and probably would have harmed lawmakers, in a violent protest of both the US presidential election and the Senate vote in Georgia that week.
Let me be clear, this was sedition and treason and everyone involved should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Anyone who says otherwise is blatantly attacking our cherished democracy, and spitting in the face of the rule of law. Unfortunately, Republicans in both chambers have been unwilling to condemn their actions for fear of alienating their base. If this is what the Republican party has come to, the party doesn’t deserve the name. A republic protects the right of the people to elect its representatives and dedicates itself to the peaceful transition of power. Left unchallenged, groups like this will bring anarchy and tyranny to our country.
How do I know this? Because it happened before. Shakespeare has long dramatized real historic events where people rise up against their governments (for better or worse). In all cases, whether protesting a famine, a war, or a cruel tyrannical usurper, the riots never accomplish anything except bringing chaos and bloodshed. Sometimes these ignorant rioters are goaded by charismatic powerful figures, but these upper-class characters are only exploiting the rioters, using their violence as a way to get power for themselves. So, let’s examine the language, tactics, and effects of rioters in three of Shakespeare’s plays: Julius Caesar, Henry VI Part III, and Sir Thomas More:
Example 1: Julius Caesar
(c) Hartlepool Museums and Heritage Service; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation
As I covered before in my “Friends, Romans, Countrymen,” post, during Antony’s famous funeral speech, he galvanizes the Roman crowd, first to mourn Caesar, then to revenge his death. How do they do this? By burning the houses of the conspirators and rioting in the street. They even kill a man just because he has the same name as one of the conspirators:
What does this violence accomplish? Nothing. Caesar is still dead. Brutus is still alive (though on the run). Antony merely wished to punish Brutus, and get the mob to hate him while he secretly cheats them out of their money. In Act Four, Antony becomes the de facto ruler of Rome because he leveraged his performance at the funeral, and uses his newfound powers to take money away from the citizens that Caesar promised to give them in his will. He manipulated them for his own purposes and duped them for political power.
Example 2: Jack Cade in Henry VI, Part ii.
Henry VI is the only king in English history to be crowned twice, deposed twice, and buried twice (Saccio 91). As the play begins, King Henry has already lost France, lost his mind, and lost the respect of his people. Around 1455, John Hardyng wrote a contrast between Henry’s father and himself. He laments that Henry the Fifth died so soon and then exhorts Henry to keep the quarrelsome lords in his government from warring among themselves.
Withstand, good lord, the outbreak of debates. And chastise well also the rioters Who in each shire are now confederates Against your peace, and all their maintainers For truly else will fall the fairest flowers Of your great crown and noble monarchy Which God defend and keep through his mercy.
(Excerpt from Harding’s Chronicle, English Historical Documents, 274).
Henry’s political ineptness was why Richard of York challenged his claim to the throne. Though Richard had little legal claim as king, he believed himself to be better than Henry.
In Shakespeare’s play Henry VI, Part ii, York tries to get the people’s support by engineering a crisis that he can easily solve. York dupes a man named Jack Cade to start a riot in London and demand that the magistrates crown Cade as the true king.
Biography of Richard, Duke of York, who challenged King Henry VI for his right to be king.
York and Cade start a conspiracy theory that Cade is the true heir to the throne and the royal family suppressed his claim and lied about his identity. Cade starts calling himself John Mortimer, a distant uncle of the king whom York himself admits is long dead:
The Royal National Theater’s production of Henry VI, Parts II, and 7. Jack Cade appears at about the 7-minute mark.
And this fell tempest shall not cease to rage Until the golden circuit on my head, Like to the glorious sun's transparent beams, Do calm the fury of this mad-bred flaw. And, for a minister of my intent, I have seduced a headstrong Kentishman, John Cade of Ashford, To make commotion, as full well he can, Under the title of John Mortimer.
Just like Cade and his rebels, the January 6th rioters were motivated by lies and conspiracies designed to crush their faith in their legitimate ruler. Even more disturbing, these rioters are pawns in the master plan of a corrupt political group. York doesn’t care that Cade isn’t the real king; he just wants to use Cade’s violence as an excuse to raise an army, one that he can eventually use against King Henry himself.
15th century woodcut from the War Of the Roses.
Similar to York’s lies and conspiracy-mongering, many Republicans have refused to accept the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s election, and some are actual proponents of Q Anon conspiracies!
A lot of Republicans deserve blame for fanning the flames of rebellion on January 6th, but arguably former President Trump deserves most of the blame. Even Rush Limbaugh admitted that Trump spread a huge amount of conspiracy theories without believing in any of them. He does this because he wants Americans to be afraid of imaginary threats that he claims he can solve. What’s easier to solve than a problem that doesn’t exist? Much like York, Trump tried to hold onto power by pressuring his supporters to pressure the Capital, feeding them lies about election fraud, and a secret democratic Satanic cult. Thus radicalized, they resolved to do what Cade’s mob did: “Kill all the lawyers.” Unfortunately, there are a lot of lawyers in the Senate.
As Dick the Butcher points out, most people don’t actually believe Cade is truly John Mortimer, they are just so angry at the king and the oppressive English government, that they are willing to follow him in a violent mob to take their vengeance upon the monarchy. This is why they try Lord Saye and execute him just for the crime of reading and writing! Similarly, the mob attacking the capital was made up of die-hard conspiracy adherents, and people just angry at the Democratic Party.
Like I said before, Cade and his mob is just a pawn in the machinations of York. Eventually the king’s enforcer, Lord Clifford convinces most of them to abandon Cade, and Cade himself dies a humiliating death- on the run from the law and starving, Cade is murdered by a farmer after trying to steal some food. After Joe Biden became the 46th President, many of the conspiracy group Q-Anon, who had many prominent members in the January 6th riot, began to disbelieve and abandon the conspiracies of the group. However, as this news story shows, some Q-Anon supporters are die-hard adherents and will never abandon their conspiracy theories, and some, like York’s supporters, are being recruited by other extreme groups. Sadly, as York shows, sometimes a riot is a rehearsal for another riot. In Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part III, York finally amasses an army and challenges the Lancastrians in all-out war. Hopefully, the US government will hunt down and arrest these violent insurrectionists before they have the chance to do the same.
Example 3: Sir Thomas More
In the unfinished play “Sir Thomas More, a racist mob again attempts to attack London. This time they have no political pretenses; they want to lynch immigrants who they believe are taking English jobs. As I said in my “Who Would Shakespeare Vote For?” post, More’s speech is a perfect explanation of why this behavior cheapens and denigrated a country’s image, and weakens its ability to command respect from the rest of the world. Last time I posted a video of Sir Ian McKellen speaking this speech, but this time.. well just watch:
As you probably know if you subscribe to this blog, I love to review adaptations of Shakespeare, so imagine my delight when I realized that the classic teen comedy Mean Girls from 2004, (and the current Broadway show of the same name), is based on Julius Caesar! This movie doesn’t have Shakespearean dialogue or the names or locations, but the essence of the play is the same, albeit with a more modern ending.
In Shakespeare’s play and Tina Fey’s script, the main antagonist is popular, and dangerous, and inspires fear and envy from everyone. Regina George and Caesar both rule their empires through their armies, intimidation, their wealth, and their supreme self-confidence. In addition, both names are associated with royalty- Regina in Latin means queen.
I didn’t realize that the movie has its roots in Julius Caesar until I saw this video from the YouTube channel The Take: https://youtu.be/FRfoEzZbK_Y. It was when I watched this video, that I realized Mean Girls character Janis was an analog for Shakespeare’s character Cassius, the man who sets the plot in motion to assassinate Caesar.
In the movie, Janis meets a well meaning girl and manipulates her into betraying Regina. Look at this clip where after Cady feels betrayed by Regina, Janis outlines her conspiracy, with a Roman sword in her hand! https://youtu.be/D0JMoa4QfA0
Like Cassius, Janis claims that once Regina is destroyed, the social order of the high school will change from a dictatorship to a democracy, but what she really wants is to supplant and replace Regina and make herself the new queen Bee. Even her name is a clue to her malevolent nature, she is named after the Roman god with two faces!
Sir Patrick Stewart as Cassius in the 1972 RSC production of Caesar
Similarly in Julius Caesar, Cassius convinces Brutus that once Caesar dies, Rome will be a republic again. In real life, Brutus was Caesar’s close friend, so Brutus agonizes over whether he is doing the right thing and whether he owes more loyalty to Rome, or his friend Caesar: https://youtu.be/IoDwXjKIenI
If Janis is Cassius, what about Brutus?
Cady Heron (played in the movie by Lindsay Lohan), is naive but intelligent. Like Brutus, she is manipulated and carefully chosen to betray the king. Janis chooses Cady because she’s pretty enough to get close to Regina, her looks are like social currency. Brutus’ social currency was his family: he was descended from the founder of the republic so he lent credibility to the conspiracy. He was also close in family to Caesar and Cassius.
In both stories once the monarch is destroyed, the power vacuum immediately starts to close; rather than change the social order, a new monarch arises. In Caesar, the second triumvirate takes over for the first, and Caesar’s nephew Augustus eventually becomes the supreme ruler of the Roman empire.
In Mean Girls, once Regina loses her social cache, Cady takes her place.
Then when Janis exposes Cady and Regina, she briefly basks in becoming a new Queen Bee- her revolution to overthrow a tyrant has paid off, bit now she is the tyrant herself. This actually mirrors the real Julius Caesar, who took power from the feared dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla.
Bust of Sulla
Like Regina and her Burn Book, Sulla kept a list of people he saw as threats called the Proscriptions, only Sulla used it to execute the people on the list and seize their property. Caesar started his career as a populist soldier working for the Senate against Sulla and for the people, but became a dictator himself, the very thing he was sworn to oppose!
The movie does end on an encouraging note when the adults finally step up and address the terrible things that their students are doing, which has important lessons about bullying that every young person should see.
Tina Fey actually admitted that she herself was a Mean Girl in high school, so there’s a great deal of honesty when her character confronts the kids about the consequences of bullying each other.
Though the movie ends happily, the Cesarian parallels are not over; even though this high school has been democratized, the problems that created this Mean Girls autocracy remains. As you can see in the final minutes of the movie, a new crop of Plastics arrive just as the old group disbanded.https://youtu.be/LshX2God-wkIn four years when the regime changes again, will there be a new Caesar?
After rewatching clips from the movie, I realized that Tina Fey actually made a Caesar reference right there in the movie!
In this clip, Gretchen is in English class, perfectly paraphrasing Cassius’ speech in Act I, Scene ii, even the part about Caesar being a colossus:
Cassius. Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
Brutus and Caesar: what should be in that ‘Caesar’?
Why should that name be sounded more than yours?
Write them together, yours is as fair a name;
Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;
Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with ’em,
Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Caesar.
Now, in the names of all the gods at once,
Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed,
That he is grown so great? Age, thou art shamed!
Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!
When went there by an age, since the great flood,
But it was famed with more than with one man?
When could they say till now, that talk’d of Rome,
That her wide walls encompass’d but one man?
Now is it Rome indeed and room enough,
When there is in it but one only man.
O, you and I have heard our fathers say,
There was a Brutus once that would have brook’d
The eternal devil to keep his state in Rome
As easily as a king. I.ii. 226-252.
Now I know Mean Girls is based more on a book and by Tina Fey’s own experiences than Shakespeare, but the point is that the next time you are bored and angry about having to read a play based on a guy who’s been dead for over 2,000 years, take a look at the lunch table next to you and you’ll see that things haven’t changed that much.
The class breaks down some of the most famous speeches in Julius Caesar and gives you some tips and tricks on how to write persuasive speeches like Antony’s “Friends, Romans, Countrymen,” speech. Use these powers for good though, not to turn your school into a Mean Girls dictatorship! https://outschool.com/classes/84ee847d-19f3-45f8-9f25-81e688b8497d
There’s also a fully asynchronous version that you can do on your own time whenever you want:
Finally, if you love Mean Girls and Shakespeare, check out Much Ado About Mean Girls by Ian Doescher, author of the William Shakespeare’s Star Wars trilogy.
What I like about this video is that it fills some of the gaps of Caesar’s life that Shakespeare could not put on stage, like his kidnapping by pirates or his victories against the Gauls and the English. You also get to see some of his battle tactics that made his 13th Legion, one of the most feared in Rome.
Again, this review of the HBO TV show Rome helps explain details of Caesar’s life that Shakespeare didn’t cover, namely, why the Senate wanted him dead, and why he was arguably a threat to the republic.
Let me begin by admitting that this post was harder to write than my Christmas post because pre Christian traditions are harder to pin down. In addition, to give you my standard disclaimer, I don’t believe it’s really possible to definitively know how or if Shakespeare celebrated Halloween, but since the history of Halloween is long and fascinating, and since Shakespeare’s plays influenced that history, I feel it’s worth exploring.
Part I: Origins of Halloween
Almost every culture on Earth has a middle fall celebration that calls to mind the bounty of the harvest, and the inevitable approach of winter. Most of our Halloween traditions are based on the ancient European festival of Samhuin.
What is Samhuin?
Over 2,000 years ago, the Celts inhabited much of the British Isles. They believed in many gods and spirits that controlled nature and the seasons. To thank the gods for the harvest the Celts gave them offerings like apples, and threw parties to celebrate the gods’ bounty.
When the Romans conquered the Celts, they co-opted some of their religious practices. For instance the tradition of giving apples as offerings to the Roman goddess Pomona. This tradition of course, evolved into our modern Halloween tradition of bobbing for apples. Honoring the harvest also went hand in hand with darker traditions; ones inspired by fear of death, decay, and evil spirits.
With the Sun dying and the Earth growing cold in late October, cultures like the Celts and the Romans feared that evil fairies and ghosts could cross over into our world. In particular the Celts believed that around the night of October 31st, the veil between the living and the dead was the thinnest.
Samhuinn was a liminal time between our world and the Otherworld. It’s a night when the souls of dead loved ones as well as spirits and fairies – the aos sí in Irish mythology and aes sídhe or sìth in Scottish mythology – could come through to visit. Deceased family members were honoured with seats at the evening feast, and offerings of milk and baked goods were left at the front door for the Fairies.
At some point people decided to dress up as the spirits to ward them off, and this evolved into our modern day trick or treating.
These traditions did not die once England became Christian, (after it was conquered by the Romans), they simply translated into a different form. Halloween actually translates as “All Hallows Eve,” a Catholic celebration of of dressing up as pagan spirits and giving offerings of the harvest to honor Catholic saints as well as departed love ones.
Part II: What might Shakespeare have Done on Halloween?
Although Shakespeare never directly mentions Halloween, he lived in a world that kept many of these folk traditions alive. Shakespeare was the grandson of a farmer and his father was a devout Catholic, so he probably was brought up in these ancient Halloween traditions. He probably would have attended some kind of harvest festival to celebrate the bounty of the summer, and might have put food out for his departed family members.
Samhain is still heralded by the baking of kornigou, cakes baked in the shape of antlers to commemorate the god of winter shedding his ‘cuckold’ horns as he returns to his kingdom in the otherworld. On the Isle of Man in the Irish sea, the Manx celebrate Hop-tu-Naa, which is a celebration of the original New Year’s Eve and children dress as scary beings, carry turnips and go from home to home asking for sweets or money.
Call me a softie but I really like the idea of Shakespeare baking treats like soul cakes for neighborhood kids or telling scary stories about a bonfire. The kornigou is more commonly known as the Soul Cake, and it’s still popular today. It’s even been immortalized in song:
Another tradition was dancing around ancient Celtic burial mounds. According to tradition, these mounds were home to spirits and Fairies, and could be portals to the land of the dead. In Irish folklore, poets and storytellers had the power to pass between these two realms. Maybe Shakespeare himself visited such a mound in his youth and was inspired to write about the fairy queen Titania and the hobgoblin Robin Goodfellow. Archeologists are still learning about these ancient ruins today (source: Smithson.com)
The most tantalizing ancient Halloween tradition is mumming, a kind of amateur theater practiced by the ancient Celts. Like modern Sunday school plays the plays were a religious ritual designed goal to honor the gods and the harvest.
Mumming, a type of folk play, was used to tell traditional Samhuinn stories about battles or the winter goddess Cailleach (meaning “old hag”), who began winter by washing her hair in the whirlpool of Corryvreck.
For a modern example of this of these traditions you can look at the Edinburgh fire festival which preserves the kind of mumming that the Celts might have done on Samhuin and Shakespeare might have seen. It’s highly ritualistic, immersive, and the characters have spooky similarities to some of Shakespeare’s plays.
To give you an idea of how mumming might have influenced Shakespeare, watch this trailer for the 2017 Edinburgh Fire Festival:
1. Keening- the wild women screaming as a way to lament, honor, and guide the dead. Characters like Constance in King John have many similar qualities.
2. The fight between the Summer King and the Winter Lord. Many Celtic stories dramatize the change of seasons from summer to winter as a battle. Even the duel between King Arthur and his young son Mordred could be seen in this context. In another interesting interpretation, Jennifer Lee Carroll in her book Haunt Me Still, interprets this mummers play as a pagan retelling of the story of Macbeth.
3. You can see brightly colored figures some designed to honor the changing of the seasons, and wild, animalistic people, presumably playing the roles of the Fairies, goblins, or other creatures that appear on Samhuin. It’s not much of a stretch to see these figures as the Fairies of Midsummer Night’s Dream, or the witches of Macbeth.
Part III: What did Shakespeare mention about Halloween?
Ghosts appear in five of Shakespeare’s plays. We see reference to all kinds of Fairies, goblins, and spirits and even a couple times people dressing up to ward off evil. In Titus Andronicus, the queen of the Goths disguises herself and her sons as spirits of revenge and go to Titus’ house to torment him, and then the old man Titus tricking them into coming to his house, where he takes his revenge.
One Shakespeare play that I think perfectly encapsulates the Halloween traditions of the English countryside is Merry Wives Of Windsor, specifically the scene in which Falstaff is tormented by a ghost story.
In the play, the fat, drunk knight Sir John Falstaff has been trying to seduce two married women, Mistress Page and Mistress Ford. Page devises a plan to scare and humiliate Falstaff, by dressing up her husband as the terrifying ghost of Herne the Hunter:
• 4.4 MISTRESS PAGE
• There is an old tale goes that Herne the hunter,
Sometime a keeper here in Windsor forest,
Doth all the winter-time, at still midnight,
Walk round about an oak, with great ragg’d horns;
And there he blasts the tree and takes the cattle
And makes milch-kine yield blood and shakes a chain
In a most hideous and dreadful manner:
You have heard of such a spirit, and well you know
The superstitious idle-headed eld
Received and did deliver to our age
This tale of Herne the hunter for a truth.
Herne the Hunter is a real medieval legend about a man who was hanged for poaching deer in Windsor park and now haunts the forest with horns on his head. Not only does Master Ford dress as Herne, The witty housewives dress the neighborhood children like Fairies and instruct them to pinch the fat knight and burn him with lit candles. Essentially this scene is a Shakespearean trick or treating moment with a ghost story to boot. Plus as Mistress Page mentioned, the ghost haunts Windsor towards the the oncoming of Winter, so it’s not entirely unlikely that it would be that this scene was originally played around the time of Halloween.
How did Shakespeare contribute?
Scholars describe Shakespeare’s mind like a magpie, taking myths, legends, history, and books to come up with his own plays. As you have seen, the ancient traditions of Halloween had a powerful effect on Shakespeare’s plays. But, did he contribute to those traditions himself? I would say yes in a big way. First of all the image of Hamlet holding a skull has inspired many other Halloween images:
David Tennant in Hamlet, RSC 2008
Jack Skellington in The Nightmare Before Christmas, 1993.
But I think Shakespeare’s greatest contribution to how we celebrate Halloween are centered within the witches of Macbeth.
Though Shakespeare by no means invented the concept of witchcraft, he did popularize the idea of the wicked witch, and helped form our modern view of what a witch is. The image he created in Macbeth
Illustration from William Blake’s “Europe a Prophecy,” 1794.
Macbeth and Ban
As you’ve seen, Shakespeare conjured the witches in Macbeth by infusing Celtic traditions like the wise woman with her chants and her cauldron, and infused her with the 17th century fear of witchcraft. Remember that Shakespeare’s patron King James was terrified of witchcraft and believed that he might be targeted by demonic forces. Shakespeare masterfully created some frightening witches that inspire Macbeth to do some terrible deeds, but adamantly deny that any harm will come to the English king, prophesying his bloodline will “Stretch out to the crack of doom.”
More than that, I would argue that the modern wicked witch would be all but silent without Shakespeare. When you think of what a witch might say, besides a series of high pitched cackling, what do you think of? Probably you think of this:
Or this:
Shakespeare’s bizarre and cryptic language helped inspire countless other interpretations of witches, and thus, a way for audiences to deal with the temptations that lurk in our hearts.
In conclusion, we don’t know how Shakespeare celebrated Halloween or even if he did to begin with; Halloween and Shakespeare’s life are both frought with mystery and legend, but one thing is dead certain; Halloween would not be the same without him. He absorbed the ancient rituals of the Celts and Romans and crafted some modern Halloween ideas and images that endure to this day.
Thanks very much for reading! If you liked this post, please consider signing up for my new “Macbeth” online class viaOutschool.com.One really fun part of the class will be an escape room where you use your knowledge of Macbeth to escape a cursed castle:
Titus Andronicus is one of the most bloody, disgusting plays in Shakespeare. As this infographic from the Royal Shakespeare Company shows, there are tons of deaths and some of them are even the result of cannibalism!
One way to capture the macabre nature of this play in the classroom, (which some scholars see as a horror comedy), is to characterize it through cooking, after all, revenge is a dish best served cold.
Me in costume as Titus Androgynous, a crazy cooking show host who butchers two people in the same manner as Titus
So here are some ghoulish gourmet dishes and revolting recipes that you can share with your students to help them get into this tragic tale of violence, revenge, and cooking:
Idea 1: recipe cards
Design a recipe card like the ones in cooking magazines based on Titus speech where he murders Chiron and Demetrius
Idea 2: Create a menu that summarizes the play:
Act I:
Starter: Caesar Salad, toad in the hole
As the play begins, Caesar has died and Saturnine wants to devour his father’s empire. Enjoy this light salad in anticipation of far more bloody feasts to come.https://youtu.be/UxZ5NOkRwj0
Act II Scene 3: Breakfast:
Lamb Benedict
Lamb Benedict recipe I found on Reddit
While on an early morning hunting trip, Bassianus is slaughtered like a lamb by his own nephews. Enjoy this sweet treachery with a golden egg in the hole.
Act II, Scene 4: Main course:
Roast venison with all the trimmings
“As the deer that hath some unrecuring wound.”
“She was washed and cut and trimmed.”
Titus compares his daughter to a deer or welkin, and in the play’s most barbaric scene, the emperor’s sons ravish her and cut out her tongue. They enjoy the cruel rape and mutilation just like two starving lions enjoying their prey.
Act V:
Just desserts: people pot pie.
“More stern and bloody than the centaur’s feast,” A truly unforgettable dessert for this feast of carnage. The cook, Titus, reinvents the term rich food by cooking two emperor’s sons into pies.
Served cold, like revenge!
“Set him breast deep in Earth and famish him.”
Idea 3: Real Titus foods inspired by my favorite Halloween diy recipes
Or this grisly appetizer: cheese hand in prosciutto
3.
People Pies:
There are many horrific pie recipes on the internet, but for a busy teacher on a budget, I’m adapting this one from the YouTube channel Threadbanger: https://youtu.be/E6U6xUl3A5M. Don’t show this video to your students because there’s far too much cursing. That said this recipe is very cheap and it’s easy. He used only store bought items and no fancy cooking techniques, which means if you choose to bake it as a classroom activity, even your students can help make it. Here are some tips from the video to get the most horrible ppeople pie you can make:
• Use red filling like cherry or strawberry for filling.
War and soldiers come up a lot in Shakespearean plays. After all, he wrote six plays about the Wars Of The Roses. Though most of his work is about the decisions about war made by powerful monarchs, occasionally he gives us some insight into the lives of common soldiers.
We don’t know if he ever fought, but warfare was very much on his mind at the beginning of his career, with good reason. In 1586 The Spanish armada attacked. Was Shakespeare enlisted? We don’t know.
His early plays are generally positive toward soldiers and it’s easy to see why. The growing nationalism in England resulting from the Tudor control over religion and language —was a direct and defensive reaction to the ex-communication of the Tudor monarchs (particularly Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth. Shakespeare probably saw himself —
. He no doubt saw his role as building the epic sagas of England to remind his countrymen of England’s past victories, especially during the Spanish Armada and the later Irish Rebellion of 1599.
Shakespeare cashed in with 9 plays on English history that mainly take place on the battlefield. His plays were met with praise by audiences and critics:
“How would it have joyed brave Talbot (the terror of the French),” he wrote, “to think that after he had lain two hundred years in his tomb, he should triumph again on the stage and have his bones new embalmed with the tears of ten thousand spectators at least (at several times).” -Thomas Nashe, c. 1590.
In the first tetralogy, common soldiers don’t have any voice. Probably they were played by apprentices, and fencing masters. They were mainly set dressing. Shakespeare mainly focuses on the pivotal importance of leadership and his portrayal f leadership; he understood the consequences of the choices kings make during the war and its effect on millions of common people: like Talbott and King Henry the Fifth.
I want to analyze a short selection from Henry the Fifth, Act IV, Scene I. In this scene, the king is disguised as a commoner the night before a battle to see what his soldiers really think about him, and the impending fight with the French. An outspoken soldier named Williams tells him that if the fighting is wrong, the king is responsible for his soldiers’ deaths, and has to answer for the atrocities that happen during the war:
KING HENRY V
methinks I could not die any where so contented as in the king’s company; his cause being just and his quarrel honourable.
WILLIAMS
That’s more than we know.
BATES
Ay, or more than we should seek after; for we know enough, if we know we are the kings subjects: if his cause be wrong, our obedience to the king wipes the crime of it out of us.
WILLIAMS
But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all ‘We died at such a place;’ some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of any thing, when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it. King Henry V, Act IV Scene I.
Many productions of Henry the Fifth interpret this speech as Shakespeare’s attitude towards war, (a tempting prospect, since the soldiers’ name is William), but in the very next speech King Henry completely changes Williams’ mind! Here’s the full scene from Kenneth Branaugh’s 1989 movie version of the play, which he directed and starred as King Henry:
For my upcoming play Of the Month page I am examining the influence of Shakespeare’s Macbeth in popular culture. Many people have compared the play to Breaking Bad, so I was delighted when I found this trailer on YouTube that perfectly illustrates the common threads in these two works.
For my upcoming play Of the Month page I am examining the influence of Shakespeare’s Macbeth in popular culture. Many people have compared the play to Breaking Bad, so I was delighted when I found this trailer on YouTube that perfectly illustrates the common threads in these two works.
The Shakespearean Student 