What Shakespeare topic do you want me to tackle next? ⬇

Thank you for the Folger recommendation. I think that will help a lot. I’m excited to start my Shakespeare era!

Thank you, Valerie, for this helpful introduction to Shakespeare, and the link to find his work online. The whiteboard was a useful visual aide to keep me focused because seeing and hearing you really helped to impress what you were trying to covey, and I hope you’ll continue to employ it in future videos. I had to read Romeo and Juliet in middle school and never really understood it, so maybe that’s where I should begin, again, with Shakespeare. Anyway, great video, thanks, and I hope you enjoy the weekend!

Love this! I’m planning to start reading Shakespeare with my 6 and 9 year old this summer, so I’m definitely excited for this video!

LOVE the white board !!!! I find it easier to learn anything with visuals, even just a few words to prompt things along. Thank you for sharing this video. I want to love Shakespeare, but as you mentioned, I get stuck not understanding a passage, or line and get frustrated that I'm not smart enough to get it. I'll take your advice and skim over those parts and keep going along. I will look in to the Folgers Editions... Right now I'm trying Romeo & Juliette in the "No Fear Shakespeare" which has one side written as Shakespeare did, and the other page has a modern English translation line for line. I find that helpful.

As a non-native speaker, I found the No Fear Shakespeare editions very helpful. I found it very useful that I could read the modern English translation next to the original one, that way I didn't have to keep a list of words myself. Those editions are also pretty cheap.

The whiteboard era begins! 🥳🎉🎉 I'm not sure what my first Shakespeare was, either Hamlet or Henry V because I'd seen and loved the movies. I must have been about 12 or maybe 13, so my mom had to help me get them from the adult section of the library, and the librarian kind of winked at me and said, "For school or fun?" I said "For fun," and she looked stunned and didn't believe me until my mom confirmed. 🤣 To this day, Hamlet is my favourite. The vibes just speak to me, lol. There aren't very many that I fully enjoy, I'm afraid, but most of the ones I do love are tragedies. I'm not the right audience for his style of humour, and a lot of the histories don't really interest me, but you're right about seeing them being better than reading them. Even if it's a play you don't like, you can tell the actors are having the time of their lives, and it's hard not to get swept up in that. Thanks, prof!

Another great video ... Your time and efforts are greatly appreciated!

Hi! This is awesome and very useful. Thank you for doing this!

You are an excellent teacher and the whiteboard is a good addition 😊

I think the whiteboard is great! I've been wanting one myself for quite some time but not for talking about Shakespeare, I don't know anything about him 😅 (that's why this video was right for me 😀).

Good start. One suggestion: don’t worry about spoilers! The plays are over 400 years old. Their plots are ubiquitous in Western literature. You’re not going to say anything interesting about Shakespeare for the rest of us if you try to preserve the ignorance of the least well read. I started in on Shakespeare when I was in the 4th grade. I think I heard somebody on the radio saying I wouldn’t get it if I were to young. So, in my insufferable hubris 64 years ago, I started with Merchant of Venice. Then Julius Caesar. Soon after: Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Hamlet, Midsummer Night’s Dream, … . Then I discovered Marchette Chute’s Stories From Shakespeare and Lamb’s Tales From Shakespeare. Did I understand it all? No. But I understood more than if I hadn’t read it. Besides I could always read it again. My favorite play from then, which I probably knew only from Lamb’s summary, was Pericles, Prince of Tyre. A positively cringeworthy melodrama to be sure, but I can understand why my 10-year old self loved it.