I am a confirmed, incurable Bardolator. My first brush with Shakespeare was a striking promenade performance of Macbeth at the Arcola Theatre when I was thirteen. As a teacher, I strive to create similar moments to captivate my students. Thomas (Thomas, 1998) comments that ‘we’ve lost sight of the things that made [Shakespeare] popular with ordinary people in his own day – his ability to write vividly and memorably for performance.’ I want students to know ‘we no longer have “Shakespeare”, but rather “Shakespeares” (Hulbert et al., 2009) and ‘their Shakespeare’ has value. With this in mind, I reflect on some of the issues surrounding the study of Shakespeare, through my own Shakespeariences in the classroom. Early on with a new GCSE class, I asked students to respond to the following: All students must study a Shakespeare play as part of their English GCSE. Do you agree with this idea? I thought this would be an effective way to gauge individuals’ writing s
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