Sarah Mackenzie (00:00:05):
Hello. Hello. This is episode 241 of the Read-Aloud Revival, the show that helps your kids fall in love with books and helps you fall in love with homeschooling. I’m your host, Sarah Mackenzie. I recorded this episode with a live audience. It was very fun. We had a live audience online at both Facebook and YouTube in livestreams, and that was really fun, especially because we got to take questions from the audience and watch your chat and respond to it. It was really fun.
(00:00:36):
My guest today is the person who gets me more excited about Shakespeare than literally anyone else on the planet. I’m talking, of course, about none other than Ken Ludwig. He’s the author of How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare, one of the most accomplished playwrights alive today. And in this episode, we talk all about why it’s worth teaching our kids Shakespeare, how to do it, even if you have a wide range of ages. And I share a few of my favorite resources as well, including a podcast I love and the book I always, always, always read an adaptation from when I’m introducing a kid to a Shakespeare play. Okay, here is the interview.
(00:01:24):
Hello. Hello, everybody. Oh my goodness, I am so glad to be here with you today. I have a special treat for you, which is, as you can see, Ken Ludwig from How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare. You can see my copy. Oh, I always get mixed up on what side it’s on the screen behind me there and I’m seeing you all in the chat. We are just delighted you’re here with us. Ken is easily my very favorite person on the planet to talk all things Shakespeare. My kids have become Shakespeare nuts of sorts, especially some of them. My ten-year-old Emerson, really into all things Shakespeare, and I think it’s in most part due to this book right here, How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare. We’re going to talk about it.
(00:02:10):
There’s a new edition, so even if you have the old one, there’s a new chapter. We’re going to ask Ken all about what’s new in it. But you should know about Ken before we start talking. So let me tell you a little bit about him. He may well be the most performed playwright of his generation. He’s got 34 plays and musicals on stage around the world. Every single night of the year his plays are being performed somewhere. They’ve been translated into 25 languages. He’s had six productions on Broadway, eight in London’s West End. Stars performing in his plays have been like Carol Burnett, Alec Baldwin, Lynn Redgrave. His first show Lend Me Another Tenor won two Tony Awards on Broadway. He’s got an Edgar award for the best mystery of the year, a bazillion awards, I won’t even name them all. There’s too many.
(00:03:00):
His latest book and this new edition of the book is so wonderful and I cannot wait to talk about it more with you is How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare. It was named the best Shakespeare book of the year, and you’re going to find out why, because I think I told you this in the email. If you got my email about this event today. He’s one of these people who you want, even if you didn’t think you were interested in his topic before he started talking, by the time you’re done, you’re going to be like, “I’m ready to do this.” I can’t wait for you to meet him again. Ken, welcome back to the Read-Aloud Revival. We’re so happy to have you here.
Ken Ludwig (00:03:31):
Thank you, Sarah. Thank you so much. Very kind of you. I hope they don’t think the other way when you’re finished this, stop talking. I don’t know. We’ll see. But thank you for that very kind introduction.
Sarah Mackenzie (00:03:40):
No pressure. No pressure, right?
Ken Ludwig (00:03:45):
Okay. No.
Sarah Mackenzie (00:03:45):
Well, let’s start where probably most of us are with the question of why should we introduce our kids to Shakespeare? Because in your book, you really delve into the idea of how to make Shakespeare accessible to children. And in fact, to anybody who is unfamiliar with Shakespeare, that might feel very daunting. We collected some questions ahead of time. And by the way, everybody, you can feel free to put questions in the comments as well. We’ll get to as many as we can over the course of the next hour. But that question, for a lot of us, either we were exposed to Shakespeare when we were younger and didn’t love it because it was introduced to us in a way that killed the joy of it. Didn’t let us actually see the delight for what it was, or we just feel really inadequate or not up to the task. So help us know. Let’s start with why. Why should we teach our kids Shakespeare?
Ken Ludwig (00:04:42):
Why is different than how? So let me start with the why, which is the more stirring question and matters so deeply. Most people are afraid of Shakespeare. It really should be called How to Teach Yourself Shakespeare because most we start as in educating our children and 90% of the world doesn’t know how to teach Shakespeare or can read Shakespeare or get it. And that’s what the book’s about. If you’re intimidated by Shakespeare, you should read the book just because it tells you how not to be intimidated by Shakespeare. That’ll be a how. Let me tell you the why. The why is because without a doubt, not exaggeration, he was certainly the greatest writer in the world. He’s certainly the greatest writer in the English language. I can’t speak for other languages specifically, and I know Voltaire and Moliere because they don’t hold a candle to him.
(00:05:34):
He was the greatest writer because he dug into our souls. He was able to write poetry and prose and stories that engage us in a way that makes us look into ourselves in new ways. It’s not highfalutin, it’s not scary. When you look at it, he was our greatest poet, certainly our greatest playwright. He invented genres of plays that we didn’t dream about. He invented the romantic comedy. He invented the history plays, plays go back to the 5th Century B.C. and the Greeks with Aeschylus and Euripides, and Shakespeare is not hard to understand. You have to take him a line at a time.
(00:06:19):
Harold Bloom, a great professor from Yale, wrote a book called Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. Shakespeare invented us as he wrote plays like say Much Ado About Nothing with a sparkling couple Beatrice and Benedict, the first really romantic couple in our history. He said, “We can be that. You can be like Falstaff, you can be like Romeo.” And when you read his remarkable stories, you get engaged and go, “I can live up to that.” He helps us understand ourselves in a way that we don’t if we don’t know him.
(00:07:01):
You read Hamlet, it deals with depression. This is a man who just lost his beloved father and he’s trying to deal with it. And I say he’s a kid, he’s in a university in Wittenberg. He’s a university age, usually played by an older actor, but he’s a university kid and he’s depressed by his father’s death and then finds out that his father’s brother, his uncle killed his father and his mother married the uncle. So he’s beset by all of the most terrible things you can imagine going through adolescence with, and you see how he deals with it and what happens to him.
(00:07:38):
In Macbeth, you learn about what is it to deal with ambition, what is it to deal with marriage. Interestingly, the two Macbeths who you think of as horrible people, they had the happiest marriage in all of Shakespeare because they just thought the same way and they were in love with each other. They end up being horrible creatures who died terrible deaths, but by far the happiest marriage.
(00:08:04):
Through Juliet and Romeo, you learn about romantic love. So imagine being a kid and having all these questions in your mind. Another play deals with sibling love. Twelfth Night, when Viola loses her twin brother Sebastian in a shipwreck at the beginning. Romeo and Juliet, intimate love, the love you have where you want to marry or whatever you want to do in your life. If false staff, what it is to look at the human condition with a sense of humor and that’s how you get through life because that matters with irony and humor. Othello, jealousy. The Merchant of Venice, prejudice.
(00:08:46):
There’s so many things Shakespeare just dug in and dug in. Let me say back off a second and say, Shakespeare was this man who was born in a town of Stratford. Some people say, “Oh, I want to get to know Shakespeare.” And the question starts out, what do you mean by get to know Shakespeare? And that’s shorthand for saying get to know his plays. You don’t have to know much about the man, but just so you know, he’s a man who’s born in 1564 at the height of the English Renaissance. The Italian Renaissance was a little earlier and moved up north then through England. The year he was born in 1564 was the day that the year that Michelangelo died. The Renaissance is the period artistic change of finding yourself of a Neoplatonism where they started looking into Greeks and saying, “Oh my gosh, those Greeks.” Plato really had something to say. Also, Galileo was born the same year Shakespeare was born. So again, that was that period of discovery of the world around us.
(00:09:51):
So Shakespeare fits firmly into the English Renaissance when he is born in 1564, and he dies in 1616 at the age of 52. He’s born and died in the little town of Stratford-upon-Avon where I’ve just been spending over the past six months, about a month and a half, two months because being involved with a wonderful place that cares for the Shakespeare’s birthplace and cares for the house that was there where he retired to and cares for the house he built for his daughter. So you live through Shakespeare in that town. I’ve become involved with them. So that’s the why you study Shakespeare because he teaches us how to be human. If we figure out ourselves and all those things that make us anxious about ourselves, we have a chance of learning more about ourselves.
(00:10:39):
Hamlet. In Hamlet, Hamlet’s depressed, he’s lost his father. He’s talking to two people who he knows are trying to trick him who have been sent by his stepfather, his uncle, to figure out is he a spy? Is he going to hurt them? Is he going to kill them? And he says this. Now listen to this. Why study Shakespeare? Because he writes like this, “What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! And yet to me what is this quintessence of dust?” So you study Shakespeare to learn the plays to start learning about yourselves. Let me give you another quote that just takes you out of your seat.
(00:11:47):
Why do we study Shakespeare? This is Henry V when he’s massing his troops to battle before the Battle of Agincourt to defeat the French, and he cries out to his troops. Now what could be a greater cry of, come on guys, let’s go out there and defend what we believe in is Christianity and what we believe in is the right to govern people and he cries once more. “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more or close the wall up with our English dead. In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man. As modest stillness and humility but when the blast of war blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger.” It’s beyond description. He wrote better than any human that ever lived in any language. He just is.
Sarah Mackenzie (00:12:47):
Well, one of the things, if I can just interrupt for a quick second, Ken, that I’m noticing. And this is something I think you said in your book too, which is that you have all these heightened emotional, it made us as people because you have these plays and these stories and these characters where there’s peak human experiences, but the emotions are clothed in such beautiful language that that’s another piece of why I think it just… Well, this is one of the gifts, I think, of your book, which is helping us introduce Shakespeare’s actual language to our kids. I, oftentimes, will start by reading an adaptation or something to let the kids in on the story to get them familiar with the story. But if we stay there in the retellings, we miss so much because it’s actually the beautiful language that clothes all of the emotions that are captured in it that I think is something that nobody else has been able to touch. Not to the same degree.
Ken Ludwig (00:13:45):
Not the same way. And you’re right, many of the characters are highfalutin, they’re Henry V, they’re he’s the king of England, and how the heir apparent and they’re the greatest lovers, but a lot of them are down-home people, false staff in Henry IV part one and two. And that’s where you meet how who’s going to be the Henry V is a drunken, good-time fellow who lives in the tavern and drinks deeply, but he loves how with all his soul and you’ve come to love him. So he talks about common people all the time too. And we hear from them as well. Now, I can launch you to the other question about how to teach the kids, but you steer it. What do you want to do next?
Sarah Mackenzie (00:14:31):
The joy of the language is something that I think is worth sitting with for a second too. And you just gave us some examples by reading. So right now in my homeschool co-op, I’m teaching Shakespeare to the middle schoolers. We’re actually putting on a play of as you like it. And one of the things I’ll do as we’re doing of our table reads, because getting ready to get ready to block it and everything is we’ll just be doing a table read everyone’s reading. And every once in a while I’ll say, “Okay, hold on. Hold on.” What did that character mean by that?
Ken Ludwig (00:15:05):
How about Hamlet? “Absent thee from felicity awhile.” As he’s dying, he has had poison. And he says to his best friend, “Absent thee from Felicity awhile.” Now, unless you take time and learn what each word means when there are strange words, I’ll do another one in a minute. Absent thee is just the language was absent, get yourself absent. He doesn’t want his best friend to drink the poison just because he’s had a difficult time this past year with his father and uncle. He says to his best friend, “Felicity is happiness, so don’t drink the poison. Absent yourself from the happiness. My happiness is dying, yours shouldn’t be dying. So don’t drink the poison, absent yourself from that happiness. Absent thee from felicity awhile.”
Sarah Mackenzie (00:16:00):
That’s the thing is when you parse down one sentence like that, which I think you taught me to do, using the Folger editions of plays because it has on the opposing side. So with my middle schoolers, I will have the Folger edition there actually they have classroom scripts because we’re using a slightly abridged, shortened version of the play because we can do our play for an hour. But it has actual Shakespeare language in it, so wonderful. But I use the Folger edition. So as we’re doing the table read it, and a lot of times I’ll be like, “Wait, what did that mean? What do you think that character meant by that?” And everyone’s like, “I don’t know.” And so then I’ll flip to it. And I think because I don’t know too, there is a shared inquisitiveness that’s not like, “Let me tell you what Shakespeare meant by this.” But like, “I don’t know, let’s see what that meant.”And then the deliciousness of the language I think makes the whole story come alive in a different way.
(00:16:55):
Let’s get into the how, because I think most of the people here… I see your comments coming in. Feel free to leave questions. Jennifer says, the line heavy is the head that wears the crown has been on my mind all day today and I just realized it’s Shakespeare. It’s so wonderful
Ken Ludwig (00:17:11):
Yeah, they’re Shakespeare. And that mirror I was talking about the fall stamp plays, which is Henry IV parts one and two. Henry IV is the king at the time, young, how his son is the prince who’s going to be king. And he seems like a kid who goes to the tavern too often and he doesn’t seem to take his responsibilities seriously. And his father, King Henry IV says he has a crown indeed and he’s getting sick also. So his son is going to inherit the kingdom. And he says, “Heavy is the head that wears the crown.” Which, of course, is a metaphor. He’s using that to say, well, it is actually heavy. Yes, this crown is heavy and it’s heavy on my head. But it’s also a metaphor, meaning something is like something else. And the metaphor is it’s hard to govern a country and it weighs heavily upon me as you are. Yeah. So she’s absolutely right. You should be thinking about it right now.
Sarah Mackenzie (00:18:15):
Yeah. Yeah. That’s brilliant. I love that. Oh, good. There’s some good questions coming in. So we’ll get to those in a little bit. Let’s talk about how, because I know that most of the people who are here are probably curious about that. Okay. So if we get excited about the why and we’re like, “Yes, I want my kids to fall in love with Shakespeare. I want to introduce Shakespeare. How do I do that?”
Ken Ludwig (00:18:36):
Okay. How do you learn that Shakespeare? It’s really easy. It’s really easy. And what worries me is that people start the book and they see a passage and I try to keep them very short beginning and very simple and make them grow a little harder as we go along. But it couldn’t be easier if I had kids here in this room with me, started with my daughter at six years old because I just love Shakespeare. But you can start at six, seven, eight, nine, or 10 and start is two things. Find nice short passages that they’ll be interested and memorize them together. Memorize passages. I do about 20 passages. I’m not trying to sell my book. Believe me, nobody ever made a living selling books, selling truth.
Sarah Mackenzie (00:19:15):
That is true. But I am actually trying to, because I will tell you that this is… And I talk to homeschoolers all over the country and it is absolutely the resource that we find most helpful. Whether you love Shakespeare and are well versed in his plays and his work or whether you’re brand new, it is absolute… You break it down step by step. You make it delightful and fun.
(00:19:38):
Anyone who’s not read this book, when you read the first chapter, I think what you’ll all of a sudden realize is, “Oh, this is the kind of teacher I want to be.” When we think in our minds of the inspiring teachers, the ones that come into class and they start talking about times and history that gets your… And you just were like, “I’m interested in anything this teacher’s interested in because they love it.” And that comes right through the page and it helps me then go, “Oh, this is the kind of teacher I want to be for my kids.” And then you give us the steps to do it. So anyway, you can say you’re not trying to sell your book, but I am today.
Ken Ludwig (00:20:10):
And that’s what I try to do. It’s hard when you write a book to show your enthusiasm, but I’m so deeply… And when I say you really don’t make money writing Shakespeare books, because they don’t sell the way big bestsellers do, but you do it out of love. And so when I say this, “Oh, look at this chapter.” I’m not trying to sell you a book. I’m trying to get you enthusiastic as I am about it. So it has short passages and explains and explains how to learn each one. They get a little more difficult. And so you’re going to sit down with your child. I did it on Saturdays and Sundays. We snuggled up together from when they were young and I teach them an easy passage to start. The first one in the book is I know a bank where the wild time blows.
(00:20:55):
Taught them what does the word bank mean? Well, it’s not a place you put your money, it means a bank of grass. It’s near a stream. It’s that little rising on each side of a stream. That’s the bank of grass. And I know a bank where the wild thyme, well, thyme, T-H-Y-M-E, is a flower. It’s an herb. So it’s a man named Oberon in Midsummer Night’s Dream, who’s telling his a little assistant, Puck, this genius Puck where to find Titania, his wife or his mate, because he wants to get revenge on her. So he tells Puck, where are you going to go? I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, where ox slips and the nodding violet grows. These are names of flowers. And then they start repeating like the way they do a nursery rhyme and they start to learn. So number one, teach them a short passage to start one short passage, then another short three lines, four lines.
(00:22:00):
And second of all, in order for them to memorize it, they have to know what each word means. If you don’t know, as you said, you can look them up, but for these passages, you don’t have to look them up because I explained them completely. A violet is a wonderful heroine of Twelfth Night. The first scene she washes up on shore after a shipwreck. I mean, boy, Shakespeare likes to get your attention right away. It’s like in Romeo and Juliet, you have two gangs fighting each other. And he always tries to get your attention right away.
Sarah Mackenzie (00:22:34):
In Hamlet, you’ve got a ghost right away. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Ken Ludwig (00:22:36):
Hamlet, hat’s right. First scene a ghost walks by. Exactly right. So in this, she says she washes up on shore and other sailors had washed up and she thinks everybody might be dead. And her twin brother was on this ship and she thinks he’s drowned. And she says in a very simply, “What country friends is this?” Or maybe they don’t understand what country why is saying, what country? Well, what land is this? Where am I? She’s saying, “Where am I? What country, friends? My friends who were on the ship with me, “What country, friends, is this?” And the captain answers, “It is Illyria, lady.” Just naming the name of the country, it was a mythical country, said it in Illyria. It is Illyria, lady. And she says, “My brother, he is in Elysium, perchance he is not drowned.” So there’s two words there. You might not know right off. Most people nobody knows.
(00:23:37):
What does Elysium mean? He is in Elysium. Capital E. Elysium was the land that Greek heroes went to when they die. So she’s saying hopefully. Well, that tells you, I think he’s dead, but maybe he’s in a better place. I hope he’s in a better place. She and her brother are, well, they’re twins. And I have a brother I’m immensely close to and that’s her heart. That’s herself. What’s interesting is that’s the other half of herself.
(00:24:05):
“What country, friend, is this? It is Illyria, lady. My brother, he is in Elysium, perchance he is not drowned.” Well, perchance is an odd little word, isn’t it? It just means maybe, I hope. Maybe he isn’t drowned. Perchance he is not drowned. And then the captain answers, “It is perchance that you yourself were saved.” There’s five little lines. They’re gentle. They tell us who she is, they tell us who the captain is, they tell us where they are. There’s five lines. You had to learn two words, Elysium and perchance because they’re simple. A lot of Shakespeare is simple. So memorize your passages and know what every word means so that you can memorize them, and that’s it. That’s it.
Sarah Mackenzie (00:24:51):
Christine just put a question in here about how do you deal with language or references with younger children that you don’t want them to catch onto? And something that I was just thinking as you were talking about that, Ken, is when I’m doing Shakespeare with my younger kids, like my ten-year-old twin boys, most of Shakespeare references that are inappropriate go right over their head like they don’t even know that they’re there. Then the pieces that we have to memorize, we do this parsing with, we look up in the Folger or in the How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare, in the passages that Ken chooses for you there you just walk through, you just read it with your kids. You walk right through the passage where he describes what a willow gate is, all the different pieces of the passage that you’re memorizing are. And then you just don’t worry about it because I promise you, they won’t pick up on this other stuff that you don’t explain. You don’t have to worry about how they’re older and then you can tackle it in a different way.
Ken Ludwig (00:25:44):
They will when they’re ready. Yeah. What are Romeo and Juliet doing in that bed? They are kissing and snuggling.
Sarah Mackenzie (00:25:52):
That’s right. That’s right. Okay. So since this is the second edition of the book, I always wonder about this. This book came out, was it 10… How many years ago was it that the first edition came out, actually?
Ken Ludwig (00:26:07):
Well, I got it right here. I don’t know. I’m brain like a sieve. As I say, get older as I get younger. It is 2013, so it is just 10 years.
Sarah Mackenzie (00:26:16):
Just probably 10 years. Okay. So now you’ve had a chance to let this book out in the world and share with everybody else how you introduced your own kids to Shakespeare. In fact, I’m curious to know if there’s anything that you think that readers tend to gloss over or miss that you wish they didn’t? Like okay, with this new edition, I really hope that you get this out of it that maybe wasn’t in the… Yeah. Is there anything from the first edition that you wish like, “Oh, I wish readers had gotten that, so I hope they get it from this new edition?”
Ken Ludwig (00:26:53):
Yeah. Yes, I do. Really, it goes back to what I was talking about. It’s in Shakespeare to say the word and then to hear a complex line, “Absent thee from felicity awhile.” You go, “Oh, no, this is too hard. It’s too much for me. Take it slowly.” And as hard as I tried to explain that in those first three or four chapters. It’s easy. We’re all busy. We read a chapter quickly and the chapters aren’t dense it just says, and what I say in the book, which is how I taught my children, is don’t miss this. This is the thing I might miss is repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat. I know a bank, I know a bank, I know a bank, I know a bank. I know a bank do that about five times. So they in their sleep would say, “I know a bank.” and then add where the wild thyme blows, where the wild thyme blows, where the wild thyme blows, where the wild thyme blows. I know a bank where the wild time blows.
(00:27:57):
And you now know a line of Shakespeare that will always stay with you. You’ll never forget it. My daughter went away to college knowing a thousand lines of Shakespeare and not because she’s a genius. She’s a wonderful human being. She’s now a nurse, but she went away having this in her heart and it made a difference. It makes a huge difference. It makes a difference because of all those things I said earlier. You understand. They tell us, they don’t tell us what to think. Yes,
Sarah Mackenzie (00:28:33):
Right.
Ken Ludwig (00:28:34):
It’s important. They tell us what to think about. They’re not didactic. It doesn’t say, “Oh, you should do this, you should do that.” It says, “You’ve got to listen to your heart. What do you think about this?” He writes, plays that sort of often show two sides of the question. It doesn’t tell us what to think. He tells us what to think about.
Sarah Mackenzie (00:28:57):
Do you know Tim McIntosh from… He has a website called Tim Teaches Shakespeare, and he has a podcast called The Play’s the Thing.
Ken Ludwig (00:29:05):
I’m afraid I don’t.
Sarah Mackenzie (00:29:06):
Oh, I’ve got to make an introduction. You will love him. He reminds me a lot of you actually in his teaching style. Oh, gosh, he’s just wonderful. And he uses your book, in fact, and recommends it all the time in teaching Shakespeare. He has a podcast called The Play’s the Thing.
(00:29:22):
And I’m seeing some questions come through the chat of like, “But how do I calm fears for kids who think it’s too complex or I feel really inadequate?” I think if you were to pair How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare by Ken Ludwig the book with going to Tim McIntosh’s podcast, which is called The Play’s the Thing, and just find play, I think in How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare, you start with a Midsummer Night’s Dream. So find Tim’s, he has maybe four episodes or five, but there’s probably five episodes because there’s probably an episode per act. It’s more like a teacher resource. So he and a guest will just talk through act one. And so-
Ken Ludwig (00:29:59):
Oh, good.
Sarah Mackenzie (00:29:59):
… I’m teaching Shakespeare at my co-op and I just listen to them because I learned all kinds of things I would’ve missed. And then when I’m teaching the students, I sound like I know what I’m talking about.
Ken Ludwig (00:30:09):
Yeah, send me a link. I’d love. Yeah.
Sarah Mackenzie (00:30:10):
Okay, I will. I will. Here’s a really good question. There’s actually several really good questions. I’m trying to decide which one to ask you first. Catherine. I’m going to start with Catherine’s question. She said… Oops, where’d she go? Here we go. Let’s say you’re a mom who enjoys reading and memorizing Shakespeare in your home school, but you’re talking with a friend and the friend says, “Shakespeare? Didn’t she say your child’s struggling to read at grade level and can’t remember math facts? Don’t you think you should wait for Shakespeare until you have the basics down high school? Wait till high school.” How would you answer her? That’s what Catherine wants to know.
Ken Ludwig (00:30:45):
I would answer her no matter what the age of the child is is you’ve got to demystify it. You’ve got to talk about the joy of it and the fun of it, and make them interested by telling them the simplest story about it that, oh, just take one of the most accessible stories as you like it, as you like it. Two women friends who love each other and they live in a fairy tale kingdom. And in the first or second scene, the heroine Roslyn, who’s one of the great talkers in Shakespeare, falls in love with a handsome guy. He’s in a wrestling match and falls in love. If you introduce it that way. And don’t make it complicated. Tell them the story first at an appropriate age level and tell it simply and make it attractive because they all are attracted. She falls in love with this wonderful boy. But the boy, it’s just like our own times. There’s two political parties. There’s a usurper on the throne and the boy she falls in love with is named Orlando and he is banished. He has to leave the kingdom. She’ll never find him again.
(00:31:51):
So what does she do? She goes into the forest herself. And because there are people there who could take advantage of women or this, she dresses as a boy. So that’s the whole story. You now know the entire story of As You Like It. Girl meets boy, falls in love with him. He is banished so she can never see him again. And she says, “She’s a plucky young woman.” She says, “You know what, I’m going to go find him in the forest.” And it’s called the Forest of Arden. And just like in Midsummer Night’s Dream, forests are magical places. And she follows him into the Forest of Arden, tracks him down, and then reveals who she is and he’s in love with her too. That’s a pretty good story. You’re not going to scare kids off with that story, and I can take every one of Shakespeare’s plays and tell it that way so that your son or daughter goes, “Tell me more.”
Sarah Mackenzie (00:32:45):
Yes. Which is actually what you do, I think, in How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare is like you present it in such a way that we go, tell me more, that I as a parent, as a person who maybe hasn’t read this play yet or seen this play yet, will think, “Tell me more.”
(00:33:00):
I’m trying to pull up, see if I can figure it out. Let me see if I can do it. Okay. This is a book by Usborne called The Complete Shakespeare. And for anybody who’s watching this and is like, “I don’t think I’ll get my kids into Shakespeare.” This is always the version I start with. There’s like eight plays or maybe are all the plays in here. It says all the plays on the cover, but now I can’t remember if it’s all of them. But with my middle schoolers and my homeschool co-op, I just read As You Like It and I’ve read it right from here. It’s illustrated so your six-year-old would also enjoy it. But what this will do is tell the story in a way that’s extremely, it’ll captivate… I mean, the stories themselves are super captivating. They don’t need much help. They just need us to get out of the way or maybe to set aside the language for a second to get our kids excited about the story and then they’re in the language. Yeah.
Ken Ludwig (00:33:48):
Oh, I’ll bet that I don’t have that. Oh, that looks great. Oh, boy.
Sarah Mackenzie (00:33:50):
Yeah. Yeah.
Ken Ludwig (00:33:51):
Great.
Sarah Mackenzie (00:33:52):
Okay. Let’s see. I was going to put a question up that I just saw come in. I just saw one. << Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo >> Oh, here we go. This is a good one from Janelle Burke. I think I can put it on screen. There we go. Janelle just left this on YouTube. Is there a way to teach a ten-year-old and a high schooler a play at the same time?
Ken Ludwig (00:34:13):
Boy, that’s a good question.
Sarah Mackenzie (00:34:15):
Go ahead. I have some thoughts too, so I can throw them in anytime.
Ken Ludwig (00:34:19):
I’ve never had to. I’ve never tried to. Let me rave for a second about Stratford-upon-Avon in England. If you’re traveling, go there. That was Shakespeare’s birthplace. And there the five great houses where he walked and lived are there. And you learn everything about Shakespeare you ever need to know at Stratford-upon-Avon, and it’s run by a group called the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. It’s a charitable organization. They get 600,000 visitors a year.
(00:34:48):
And I was teaching, so Shakespeare Week, I was at Shakespeare week two weeks ago. They have once a year. It was the 10th anniversary in Stratford. And what I did for the week is I taught Shakespeare to underprivileged kids who don’t have a chance to learn. So I had a big tent put up in the backyard back of Hallscroft, and I taught the kids Shakespeare and they were 13 years old. But my point is I’ve never taught a group that are different ages at the same time. So I taught my daughter when she was seven, eight, then my son came along and I taught him. So I don’t know what it’s like. So what do you do? You tell me.
Sarah Mackenzie (00:35:29):
Well, actually, I think your book is still the foundation because you’re going to introduce the plays to me as the teacher, and then I’m going to be able to introduce them, the play to both of my kids, the ten-year-old and the high schooler at the same time. They can memorize the same passages. I still with my high schooler would still start with that Usborne book, that adaptation. You’ll read it really quickly. And then what I tend to do, and we have an episode on the Read-Aloud Revival about this, Janelle, that we can probably put in the comments. It’s a episode on simple ways to teach Shakespeare with a wide age range. And the recommendation we have in there is you read an adaptation, use Ken’s book to help you memorize the language and for you to fall in love because I really think you sitting at the feet of a teacher who’s really excited is very key.
(00:36:13):
And then also listening to a professional production of the play, like the Archangel Productions or the Royal Shakespeare company has some, you can find them on Audible or your library or any audiobook. So a lot of times we’ll listen to it and the kids will draw a picture from the scene they’re hearing or they’ll follow along in the play, or they’ll just play with their Legos while we’re listening. But because they already know the story, because you read an adaptation and they’re already memorized some of the language, it doesn’t feel nearly as difficult as it would. I would do it the same way with both of them. Interestingly, your ten-year-old may actually memorize more quickly than your high schooler.
Ken Ludwig (00:36:59):
Yeah. Yeah. Another resource that I love. So listening is great when you’re doing blocks. I agree. At two and a half year old, I’m already reading some Shakespeare too because it’s calming and it’s beautiful. But the other resources they get a little older is videos that you can easily stream. Now, The Globe, you know that in England, he starting about mid-career, they build a big theater called The Globe Theater on the South Bank of England. It ultimately burned down during one of his plays.
(00:37:33):
During Henry VIII, the fats roof caught fire, but for a lot of the meat of his greatest period, his plays first appeared there. Well, they built a new Globe version of it, a beautiful reproduction about 20 years ago, 25 years ago. And it does remarkably wonderful productions of the plays, and they video them in wonderful ways. You get a sense of the audience, you get a sense, and they have wonderful productions of Shakespeare. So go to Globe Player and subscribe for, I don’t know, 50 bucks a year or something, and you can watch play after play after play. On The Globe stage, just the way they did them then that are mesmerizing.
Sarah Mackenzie (00:38:19):
Awesome. I was just watching As You Like It. It was a newer one. I was thinking it was the old BBC production, but it’s like a movie. With your kids, you probably want to preview first, just depending on your kids’ ages, what’s in some of these Shakespeare movies might not be or plays even, but you can get recommendations and find out from other people too. Look at some reviews and find out like, “Oh, is this…” Or just preview it.
Ken Ludwig (00:38:46):
For sure.
Sarah Mackenzie (00:38:46):
Yeah. Yeah.
Ken Ludwig (00:38:47):
For sure.
Sarah Mackenzie (00:38:49):
Okay, here’s a good question. I’m going to put this one up too. Esther’s asking why is it important to introduce children to a play like Macbeth and how can we deal with complex themes of the play? But we’ll start with the top of it. Why is it important to introduce a child to a play like Macbeth? This is similar to a question we got from Hannah before we started today. Well, I’m just going to read her whole message too, Ken, because it’s so encouraging.
Ken Ludwig (00:39:14):
Great.
Sarah Mackenzie (00:39:14):
I was very excited you were coming back to Read-Aloud Revival. She said, “We started his book, thanks to RAR when my oldest was six. It’s been an absolute delight. When she was 10, just last year we finished and we now have so many sweet memories together. The girls have fully fallen for Willy shakes. So now what?”
Ken Ludwig (00:39:35):
Sweet.
Sarah Mackenzie (00:39:37):
“What’s the best path forward? We’ve listened and read along to A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest, but we’re wondering Ken’s recommendations for solid next steps after his book. When we read a memorize the last thing, we all felt like we were saying goodbye to a beloved teacher.” So the good news, Hannah, is there’s a new edition and there’s a whole new chapter in the book that you can go [inaudible 00:39:55].
Ken Ludwig (00:39:56):
Two new chapters. Two new chapters.
Sarah Mackenzie (00:39:57):
Two new chapters.
Ken Ludwig (00:39:57):
Yes.
Sarah Mackenzie (00:39:57):
I did not realize that. Amazing. So then she says, “I think stepping into comedies is an easier choice.” What tragedies or histories would he recommend? Let’s talk about it.
Ken Ludwig (00:40:08):
Let’s talk about it. Yeah. Comedies are easier. You notice the first half of the book is mostly comedies. In fact, I do spend most of the time in the first half of the book on Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s so accessible, accessible to children. It’s set in a fairy kingdom. There’s funny characters. It’s hilariously fun. It really is genuinely hilariously funny, makes you laugh out loud. It’s joyous.
(00:40:32):
It’s got darker tones because he was a genius, but not dark tones in any horrible threatening way. But then why go to Macbeth? Macbeth’s a great example because it’s dangerous and it’s difficult and it’s thorny. I’m about to go see Ralph Fiennes on Friday night playing Macbeth a production that was in London and is now here. And you don’t teach Macbeth until your kids are of a certain age that they can understand it and put it in perspective because it’s filled with difficult questions. It opens up with three witches, and these aren’t pretend funny witches. These are witches who are going to try to destroy this man, Macbeth. And then you meet him, and he’s a hero in Scotland. He’s a hero. He’s just won of big battle. He’s a soldier. And being a hero means you’ve killed a lot of people and it’s pretty gory on stage, but already it’s a very gory story.
(00:41:32):
Duncan, the King of Scotland is going to come to his castle to pay a visit because Macbeth is such a great hero. And Mrs. Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, when we first see her after about three or four scenes is planning to kill him, to kill the king, kill Duncan because the obvious successor will be Macbeth himself, her husband, and he’ll become king. He’s have to kill a couple other people along the way. So what does it raise? That’s when I mentioned what maybe single word is Macbeth about that your kids could start to understand something in their souls, which is probably ambition. Ambition can be a very good thing, but it can destroy you. And it also talks about second thoughts. What happens is that is Macbeth towards the end of the moment when he’s supposed to go into the chamber at night and kill Duncan has second thoughts. Because he knows in his heart that it’s an immoral, such a deeply immoral thing to do.
(00:42:40):
And his wife, Lady Macbeth, keeps pressing him on. She’s the one with the real ambition. She’s the darker character, and she says, “Screw your courage to the sticking place.” What a great line. Nobody writes lines like that. “Screw your courage to the sticking place. Go in there and murder him.” And he goes in, he gets tries and she has to go in and finish the job, and they’re covered with blood. And indeed, first they’ve killed Macbeth’s greatest rival for the throne who comes back and haunts their banquet. His name is banquet’s ghost. So it’s a difficult place. So I wouldn’t be teaching that to anybody till they’re… I don’t know. Kids are different now than they were when my kids were growing up, but maybe 15, 13-
Sarah Mackenzie (00:43:33):
Yeah, I think there’s two. So in that Usborne collection, for example, there is a version of Macbeth that is pretty accessible. They kind of in writing the annotated, abridged version, I guess was not annotated, the abridged version, knowing their audience. These are like eight to 12 year olds who are mostly reading this book. Here’s what I love about Shakespeare. If I’m watching Hamlet, I am for sure getting something different than my 10-year-old is watching Hamlet, because every person who’s coming to this play, whether we’re reading it or listening to it or watching it, we bring our own experiences to it so your kids will get what they’re ready for because they hear the things that they’re not ready for, right?
(00:44:19):
We’ve been able to do Macbeth in The Usborne Complete Shakespeare stories. But I have not done Macbeth as like you were talking about unpacking it line by line or a full play because he’s 10. So yeah, I think in your book, actually, if you follow along with the, I think you have a Midsummer Night’s Dream, and then what? Twelfth Night and then, I can’t remember.
Ken Ludwig (00:44:41):
Yeah, comedies first. I do Twelfth Night and talk about other things in Shakespeare, and I spent a lot of time on Twelfth Night, which is a great comedy. I spent time on then Romeo and Juliet, we get to the first tragedy, but it’s more accessible because it’s not glory or mean-spirited. Do people get killed in sword fights? Yes, but it’s not that level of deep greed, deep ambition, lust that Macbeth’s a tough play.
Sarah Mackenzie (00:45:12):
Yeah. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Do you have a favorite Shakespeare play? Gina wants to know.
Ken Ludwig (00:45:21):
Yes. A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Sarah Mackenzie (00:45:24):
Oh, I don’t think I knew that.
Ken Ludwig (00:45:26):
Yeah, it’s so ethereal. It’s so great. It’s his first great comedy. It’s early and it’s about 1595 or so. He went to London in 1592 and he writes earlier, plays two Gentlemen have run Taming the Shrew, and he works his way up to it. And then he writes his first great masterpiece. It’s four separate plots that he’s juggling at the same time. It’s complex and you watch feel that it’s just so masterly. What are my other favorites? Twelfth Night’s wonderful, but it’s much more dense and it’s much more complex. It’s not difficult, but it’s complex. I don’t know if you have time for this, but I’ll read you my favorite passage from Twelfth Night. Can I?
Sarah Mackenzie (00:46:10):
Yes.
Ken Ludwig (00:46:11):
Okay. “At the end, after this five acts where she’s desperate about her brother’s death, remember her brother died in that shipwreck at the beginning. It’s her twin brother, their identical twins. And finally, they come face to face the big last scene. And he says, “Here I am.” And someone else on the stage, Olivia says, most wonderful, and I’ll start crying, but Viola says, because Shakespeare knew how to, I call it pulling the string. As a dramatist, when I write plays, you don’t want to just say, “Oh, you’re here. I love you, oh my God,” and run into his arms or brother’s, arms and hug. Fine. Fine. But that’s not great playwriting. And it’s not as an audience member, you don’t go, “Oh my God, I was lifted out of my seat by the language by the moment, by the moment.” Now it’s a compliment when I told you about unpacking the words. So let me read it to you and then we’ll unpack it for a minute.
Sarah Mackenzie (00:47:16):
Okay. Okay.
Ken Ludwig (00:47:18):
Listen. If nothing, lets to make us happy both, but this, my masculine usurped attire, I should stop there and say she’s been dressed as a boy, the whole play. So my masculine, I’ll do each word. Do not embrace me till each circumstance of place, time, fortune, do cohere and jump that I am Viola. Well, it pulls you out of your seat. Now, what does all that mean? I won’t take a lot of time here, but she says, well, if nothing lets to make us happy both, if the only thing that’s keeping us apart, if nothing lets to make us happy both, but this, my masculine attire, this men’s wear, this man’s outfit. Attire means outfit, clothes. But this my Masculine, usurped attire means I picked it up, I usurped it. I stole this outfit by you, sir. If nothing lets to make us happy both but this my masculine usurped attire, do not embrace me.
(00:48:33):
She’s holding it off. She’s holding it off. She says, “Do not embrace me until till each circumstance, till everything falls together, that our minds are one and our hearts are one. Do not embrace utility circumstance of place, time, fortune. Do cohere come together.” Cohere means come together, coherence, do cohere and jump. Why would he use the word jump? Nobody knows because he’s a genius. Don’t do it until all these emotions jump, jump that I am Viola. So spend the whole hour with one of your children unpacking those one and a half lines. It’s probably 20 words. And you go, “This is why he’s great.” So this is why Twelfth Night is great. Twelfth Night, he’s in his really high power mode. He’s at his absolute peak. That’s the period getting close to 1600. 1600 is Hamlet. I think dates are important. Just remember 1600s, Hamlet, he’s born in 1564 and he’s at his height with Twelfth Night and as you like in Henry V, and that’s the really best part of his career.
Sarah Mackenzie (00:49:57):
AJ says, Ken, your love of Shakespeare is so contagious. I told you, guys.
Ken Ludwig (00:50:04):
No. Good.
Sarah Mackenzie (00:50:04):
I told you. Yes, exactly. I feel the same way, AJ. Okay, so here we have Ken walking us through just one line from Twelfth Night. And I don’t know about you, but it makes me go like, “Oh, now I need to read it now. Now I want to know more.” That’s I think the whole premise of the book, which I keep meaning to put back up here and I keep forgetting too, so I’ll put it back up. How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare. There’s a brand new edition. It’s got two new chapters. What are the new chapters, Ken?
Ken Ludwig (00:50:33):
Chapters are on the same play. Because of the size of a book, I can only pick so many plays to talk about. Maybe there’s seven or eight in the first edition. And one of my favorite plays is Much Ado About Nothing. Much Ado About Nothing is a story. It’s the first romantic comedy. There are these two characters who just like when Harry met Sally, I don’t know what it is these days for kids that are romantic comedies. The Meg Ryan, Tom Hanks movies, they just spat at each other all the time from the minute there because there’s a suggestion that they had an affair before the play opens. It’s a happy play. It’s hilariously funny. It’s the best comedy, best laugh getter ever written. And they’re hilarious together. And so I always wanted to write about it. So I wrote both chapters about Much Ado About Nothing.
Sarah Mackenzie (00:51:26):
So fun. And Hannah will be excited because she read the whole last book and now she’ll get to come back to it for another play. For another play. Here’s a question that I don’t think I’ve ever asked you from Crystal, who says, “Mr. Ludwig, how old were you when you fell in love with Shakespeare’s works?”
Ken Ludwig (00:51:47):
I’ve got a great and a specific answer for you because I remember exactly. My parents for my 10th birthday. Why? I don’t know. My dad is a country doctor who just was a scientist and never thought much about literature. My mom knew that I was in love with the theater already, or I liked the theater and they bought me a recording. Hamlet played by Richard Burton. He did Hamlet on Broadway, and still to this day, the longest-running run of Hamlet on Broadway, Sir John Gielgud directed. And that voice of Richard Burton, if you know it now from Cleopatra, all the wonder, he had that famous marriage with Elizabeth Taylor, and they got married twice. He was just my favorite actor of that whole 50-year period in the second half of the 20th century. And he plays Hamlet and it’s so beautiful and it’s so sexy and alive and deep, and he was a great intellect, but oh my God.
(00:52:54):
And so I listened to it again and again at 10 years old, and again and again and again till anybody who says they memorize all of Shakespeare listening to it are probably lying because it’s awfully long. But you can memorize all the soliloquy. Soliloquy is when they come out and talk by themselves. And there’s only five soliloquies and Hamlet does. The famous one is To be, or not to be. And I remember them to this day, that what’s great, you remember things forever.Once you learn them. Oh, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt, fall and resolve itself into a dew. This is when he’s by himself. And that his new father, his uncle, horrible, the horrible Claudius has said, “Oh, be a good boy and just put it into your morning.” And he goes, “Ah, I wish that this flesh of mind would melt and resolve itself in to do, or that the everlasting God had not fixed his canon against self-slaughter, had not made his law, his biblical law against suicide, against self-slaughter.”
(00:54:09):
Oh, that this too sullied flesh would melt, fall and resolve itself into dew, or that the everlasting had not fixed his canon, like the canon of the church, his laws, his canon against self-slaughter because he’s that in despair. He wants to meet this student in utter despair. So you now say, “What’s going to happen?” And what has happened that night is the ghost of his father has appeared on the battlements of the castle, Elsinore Castle in Denmark, and says to his son, “Avenge my most foul and unnatural death. Kill Claudius.” And what’s he to do? That’s the story. So I could be so mesmerized. I just learned the syllabic reason and learned lots more and lots more and lots more. But I don’t know it all by heart.
Sarah Mackenzie (00:55:07):
I’m always astonished by how much though you can just recite off of nowhere. Seemingly nowhere, but I know it’s not nowhere for you. I want to put this question up. Make sure we get to this one. Jennifer is asking if we would need to grab the whole book before using it with our kiddos, or can we use it play by play chapter by chapter? Let me tell you how I use this book in my home school. And then, Ken, you can tell me if you have better ideas or different ideas how you’d like it to be used.
Ken Ludwig (00:55:35):
Great.
Sarah Mackenzie (00:55:35):
So when I’m introducing Shakespeare to either a co-school, co-op, or to my own kids, regardless of their ages, regardless of whether we’re doing Shakespeare with eight-year-olds, or I’m doing it with my eighteen-year-old, I always start with… Actually, I’m going to pull this question down for a second so I can put up the book again. Maybe if I can figure out how to do this. There we go.
(00:56:00):
Okay. So this is the brand new updated, How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare. So you can do it chapter by chapter, and I’m going to grab mine real quick. Okay. What I love about this book is that you don’t need to read the whole thing before you start. Actually, I would encourage you not to read the whole thing before you start. I would encourage you to read the first part. The introduction is going to get you really excited and the very beginning on the first page, I don’t know if you guys can see this very well. Ken, has you starting right now, right here by the fifth line, you’re starting to memorize. “I know a bank where the wild time blows, where ox slips and nodding Violet grows.” He has you memorizing right from the beginning and it’s two steps, two keys to memorizing.
(00:56:44):
First say it aloud, then repeat it. He just walks you through this in a very, very tiny chapter. Okay. Then he, I wouldn’t say interrupts himself, but he pauses for a second. So you start to memorize it and you’re memorizing with your kids. And then he has chapter two, the reason for this book, and I have half of these pages underlined. I don’t know if you can see that from there or not. So much good stuff. This is going to make you go like, “Oh, yes,” and get you kind of inspired as a teacher. And then he takes you right into passages where you’re walking through, he’s teaching you imagery and rhythm, but this is all you’re doing with your kids. So you really just read a chapter, do it with your kids, read a chapter, do it with your kids.
Ken Ludwig (00:57:25):
That’s exactly it.
Sarah Mackenzie (00:57:26):
Perfect. Okay, so at the same time I’m doing that, I would be reading a book like this one, The Usborne Complete Shakespeare. So at the beginning of How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare, he has a Midsummer Night’s Dream. So I would just be doing, read a chapter, doing it with your kids. And while you’re doing that as in the same timeframe you’re doing that, I would be reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream from The Complete Shakespeare. If that seems to satisfy your kids, that’s what I would do. And that’s going to be plenty. You’re going to get so much out of this by reading the book.
(00:58:01):
And if your kids seem compelled by it, like mine, just really their imaginations really turn on and get on fire about it, then you could go, “Okay, after you read The Complete Shakespeare and you’re still working through this book, you could start listening to passages from A Midsummer Night’s Dream or you can start asking other friends too, what’s a good movie version that is appropriate for your kids? Or you can preview one and then skip over any scenes that you need to skip over to make it appropriate for your kids.” So you can basically give your kids this experience by just giving them a front row seat to Shakespeare. But my best recommendations would be this book plus The Complete Shakespeare to help you get your kids excited about the stories.
Ken Ludwig (00:58:43):
I agree, completely. Just stay one chapter in their very short chapters. Read the chapter, it was just three or four pages, and then teach them that Shakespeare, that, and then you go to the next chapter, three or four pages and teach them that, and then it works like magic because you just don’t get bogged down.
Sarah Mackenzie (00:59:02):
Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. You don’t get bogged down. You don’t get way down by trying to feel like you need to know Shakespeare before you. For those of you who weren’t here earlier, I mentioned that in my homeschool co-op, I’m doing As You Like It, and the podcast, The Play’s the Thing which is hosted by Tim McIntosh is an excellent podcast and it’s really a teacher resource, so he’ll do episodes on plays and over the course of this semester, every once in a while I’ll listen to another episode on As You Like It, and it’s helping me see things that I missed.
(00:59:35):
Every time I talk to Ken, I see things that I missed. When he describes a passage from Twelfth Night or something, I’m like, “Oh, I didn’t get that last three times that I either read or watched it.” That’s the beauty of really good literature of any kind, Shakespeare otherwise is there’s always something new. There’s another layer that we can pull back. And, Ken, this has been absolutely fantastic. Lots of questions about where to get the newly updated version. I know on Amazon and online shops, it’s showing the older version, but we’re told that all the new versions are in the warehouse, so you should be able to get your hands on a new version of-
Ken Ludwig (01:00:12):
I know because it has a little yellow sticker in the corner that says New updated version.
Sarah Mackenzie (01:00:16):
Right here. Okay.
Ken Ludwig (01:00:18):
I haven’t had the new one on my end, but I know it’s out there.
Sarah Mackenzie (01:00:23):
Classic. Excellent. And I hope that everybody who came today is inspired to get back into Shakespeare, do a little Shakespeare. It’s a great way to end your school year. It’s spring, doing a little bit of Shakespeare and not worrying about how far you get. Just starting and seeing where it takes you is perfect too, because a lot of times in the summer you can find a local Shakespeare in the park and your kids will feel like, “Ooh, they’re meeting old friends.” I’ll tell you, I took my kids to a Shakespeare in the park last summer or the summer before. We hadn’t had a chance to familiarize ourselves. I hadn’t had a chance, I should say, to familiarize the kids with Hamlet, and it was Hamlet did not matter. Those kids were riveted. It was great. I think a lot of times our concern about Shakespeare being too complicated or too confusing is our own baggage from how we were taught Shakespeare, but we get to do it differently with our own kids.
Ken Ludwig (01:01:13):
And they started with the wrong ones. Don’t start with Julius Caesar, which they did so many years because it’s about all these older guys who are having political machinations and it’s very hard and you don’t want to start there. You want to start with Midsummer. It’s only like that. Can I say two things? We have time for safety?
Sarah Mackenzie (01:01:28):
Absolutely, yes.
Ken Ludwig (01:01:30):
Okay. One is if you’re traveling and you go to England, I just spent a lot of time in Stratford-upon-Avon. Stratford-upon-Avon is a little town where Shakespeare was born. It’s where he died, it’s where he raised his children, and there are five properties that he actually walked in and was in. It’s where also the Holy Trinity Church where he’s buried. His monument is very moving and don’t miss it. It’s a group that runs it, a big famous 501(c) nonprofit that runs it. They get 600,000 visitors a year. You won’t be alone, and it’s the most magical place in the world if you care about Shakespeare. So it’s in Stratford. The people who run it are called the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, and I heartily recommend you go there and spend time there.
Sarah Mackenzie (01:02:26):
I have never been, but I’m hoping. I was telling Ken before we hopped on, I’m hoping to make my way over there next summer because I’ll have a daughter studying in Scotland and I can’t wait. I am really excited. This has been wonderful. This sentiment from Jennifer really wraps up how I feel too. She says, “What a treasure Ken is. Thank you so much, Ken and Sarah. This has been a treat.” It has been a treat for us as well. It’s always a treat to chat with Ken. Ken, thank you so much for making the time to come be with us.
Ken Ludwig (01:02:59):
You’re remarkable. You’re so deeply remarkable. You’re such a great scholar and you have this wonderful family, and I don’t know how you do it. My hat’s off to you, but thanks for having me. I love being here.
Sarah Mackenzie (01:03:11):
Oh, thank you so much. And everybody, we will see you next time. Thank you for joining us so much. Everybody, have a wonderful-
Ken Ludwig (01:03:18):
Thanks for coming.
Sarah Mackenzie (01:03:19):
… rest of your day.
Ken Ludwig (01:03:20):
Thanks. Thanks, Sarah, so much.
Sarah Mackenzie (01:03:29):
All right. Now let’s hear from the kids about books their loving lately.
Isaac (01:03:38):
My name is Isaac. I’m free three years old and my fave book is [inaudible 01:03:45] the pig’s scent under the truck and he got not wet.
Sarah Mackenzie (01:03:56):
The pig’s scent under the truck and he doesn’t get wet.
Isaac (01:03:58):
Yeah.
Sarah Mackenzie (01:03:59):
And where are you from?
Isaac (01:04:06):
Florida.
Caleb (01:04:09):
My name is Caleb. I’m from Florida. I’m Florida. I’m four years old. My favorite book is Horton Hatches the Egg, when it’s not really a burden to baby elephant flying.
Amelia (01:04:26):
Hello. My name’s Amelia, and I’m six years old and I am from Florida. And my favorite book is Starlet’s Web because I think it’s so funny that a spider can save a pig and the farmers really think that it’s real, that the pig really is all that stuff.
Aina (01:04:56):
Hi, my name is Aina. I’m from Spain. I’m seven years old, and my favorite book is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory because I love the way Willy Wonka so funny with the kids and with everyone.
Maggie (01:05:16):
Hello. Name is Maggie. I’m 12 years old and I live in Pittsburgh. My favorite book is the True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. And I like it because there’s so many wonderful characters and there’s so many unexpected changes that happen too. Bye.
Sarah Mackenzie (01:05:34):
Thank you kids. Hey, if you want to leave a message for the Read-Aloud Revival to tell me a book that you loved so that I’ll air it on the show, go to readaloudrevival.com/message. Actually, that’s the same page that you mamas can go to if you have a question you’re hoping I’ll tackle on the show. So readaloudrevival.com/message is where you can leave me a voicemail.
(01:05:58):
Thanks to Ken Ludwig and his team for an excellent interview. As always, I just love talking to him. I really truly love this book, How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare. You can find it as well as all the other resources we mentioned in the podcast show notes, which are at readaloudrevival.com/241. I will be back in two weeks. In the meantime, go make meaningful and lasting connections with your kids through books.
