Drama: Tales from Shakespeare

Tales from Shakespeare, edited and illustrated by Marcia Williams provides a fun and exciting new approach to Shakespeare that makes it more accessible to students while keeping much of the original language. Williams has adapted and abridged 7 different classic Shakespeare plays (Julius Cesar, MacBeth, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Winer's Tale, Hamlet, and the Tempest) into a graphic novel. She kept all of the original dialogue in Old English on the comics themselves while adding in descriptions of the actions in modern English under each frame to help readers follow along with the story. Additionally, the borders of each page contain commentary from minor characters expressing their concerns and disbelief at the events happening on each page.

This book can be a great way to help introduce reluctant readers to Shakespeare as it presents it in a more friendly and comical way, providing scaffolding through narration and illustration, while still presenting the original dialogue. It is certainly one that would require in depth analysis from a teacher to help students get the most from the book, and should be used to supplement the original plays instead of replace them since it presents significantly abridged plots, but it is a wonderful resource for teachers struggling to engage their middle school or high school students in the original Shakespeare without watering down the original content.

From a social justice perspective, I think a unique take on any use of Shakespeare would be to analyze the way people are using it in society. For example, there are groups that organize prisoners to put together plays and learn about acting and theatre as part of their rehabilitation as well as public theatre groups that provide free performances to allow for a diverse audience that can enjoy the works of Shakespeare. These movements can be used to discuss different types of social action and all the myriad of ways we can use our talents to help others and make a significant impact in the world.

As with most other books I've discussed, I would likely not use this book in my science classroom, but if I was a high school English teacher I would love to use it as a way to introduce a unit on shakespeare. I think it could be really cool to have different groups assigned to different plays in the book and then do some reader's theatre with it before diving into the full length play for our unit. It gives students initial exposure to the dense wording used in Shakespeare's plays while providing appropriate scaffolding for them to be able to translate it into ASL.