We had a house full of very enthusiastic actors this afternoon when the Group of Four met for the second week of our Shakespeare unit. Once again we began with insults, most delivered with some acerbity but all received with much laughter. I guess there is nothing quite like having your mother encourage you to insult your family and friends in public. Next we spent some time talking about sonnets and looking at both the prologue of Romeo and Juliet and Romeo’s description of Juliet in Act I, Scene V. As the actors were getting quite impatient for their rehearsal time we began but did not finish a hockey sonnet!

The children were allocated a role and given a cropped scene to learn four days ago. Most of the girls had arrived with costumes, much to the surprise of the family of all boys. The boys, however, did come with very impressive swords for their fight scene. All had come well prepared, with their lines memorised. The performance opened with L12 delivering the prologue and then the first of our Juliets for the afternoon gave us a soliloquy from the balcony scene. L12 was the next Juliet partnered with a fine Nurse for Act II,Scene V. B6 was delighted to be Benvolio in a fight scene between the Montagues and Capulets. Lord and Lady Capulet’s argument with their daughter was acted with great emotion and finally we saw A10 as Juliet visiting the Friar and receiving the potion which would give her the appearance of death.

Once again we saw the children use their own initiative to make this unit a success. This was the first taste of Shakespeare for some of them and has left them wanting more.

I have been reading some of Aesop’s fables to B6. He has retold three of them in his own words, here is the first.

One day there were two children walking along the road. One of the children, whose name was Mary, found a horse and said, “I found a horse.”

The other child, Nicholas, replied, “You mean, we found a horse. When travelers find something they ought to share it.”

Mary said, “Oh no, I found this horse and now I am going to ride it.”

Just then three big men appeared, two on horses and one walking, all with drawn swords. The man on foot shouted to the children,”You thief! You thief!”

Mary, who had found the horse, turned to Nicholas and said, “Oh help, we are in trouble.”

Nicholas replied, “Oh no, you found it, you can be in trouble.”

“Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?”
“I do bite my thumb, sir.”

This was the quote of the day, yesterday, when we began our Shakespeare unit with the Group of Four. We started the afternoon with an insult delivery contest. Two children at a time were given a page of Shakespearean insults and they had 30 seconds to choose one and then deliver it with as much style or venom as they could muster. Most of them were barely able to control their laughter, so I don’t believe anyone’s feelings were hurt. If you feel the urge to insult anyone in true Shakespearean style look here.

We did manage to move on from insulting each other to the consideration of figurative language, writers’ styles and ‘what’s in a name?’ The youngest children also made puppets and the older children wrote news headlines for some of the play’s main events. We gathered ideas from a couple of very helpful sites, The Folger Shakespeare Library and The Acting Company

Once again we benefited from the first hand experience of one of our families’ uncles. (Yes it was the same family who provided the aunt and uncle who had been to Ecuador) This time they called their uncle who is an actor and has acted in and directed various Shakespeare plays. He left a message on their answering machine which we listened to; excerpts of a couple of Romeo’s speeches.

To prepare for this unit at least three of the families read retellings of Romeo and Juliet. A10 and L12 read the Charles and Mary Lamb version. I read the Edith Nesbit version to B6. Now they are only interested in the lines as Shakespeare wrote them. It has been exciting to see their enthusiasm for the play grow and their interest in Shakespeare’s life and times. As our family is studying the Renaissance and Reformation this year we will be delving into more of the bard’s life and work.