15 MINUTE SHAKESPEARE TEACHING RESOURCE

Folger Shakespeare Library has many resources available for educators who wish to teach Shakespeare’s plays, or prepare students to see a production. That resource that I have chosen to explore is Folger’s 15-Minute Plays. The 15-Minute Play is a pre-written plot summary of a Shakespearean play that is designed to be recited in class by the instructor, with intermingled quotations from the play recited by students. Before commencing the plot summary, the instructor will split students into groups and assign each group a set of 2-3 predetermined lines. Without giving the student groups context, give them 5-10 minutes of work time to prepare a dramatic reading of the lines. Once the students have prepared, the instructor will begin the plot summary, causing student groups to interrupt with their line recitations at predetermined points. Folger Shakespeare Library has several popular 15-Minute Play options available for free, such as Hamlet and Romeo & Juliet. Each 15-Minute Play resource included a downloadable instructor’s packet, which contains the line cards to give to student groups, as well as a prewritten plot summary with annotations to show when to cue students to perform their quotes.

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I personally plan to use the Othello 15-Minute play at the beginning of a unit centered on Shakespeare & language. I think this is a great tool for quickly introducing students to the plot of a play, so that we then have more time for close reading and digging deeper. I find this concept similar to that of a “Story Whoosh” which is an Active Literacy strategy, though I think the 15-Minute Play provided a little more opportunity for students to interact with the language of Shakespeare early on, by having them play with and perform isolated quotes, which are then given context by the plot summary. I think this linework will lay the groundwork for some more in-depth scene work and language analysis later in the unit, which is why I chose to begin the unit with the 15-Minute Play instead of a “Story Whoosh”. Folger Shakespeare Library does a great job of outlining the activity so that there is minimal prep work on the part of the teacher, however, I had a hard time trying to find the resource online for certain plays- for instance I had to get the Othello instructions from a fellow teacher because I couldn’t seem to access them online for that particular play. 

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I am looking forward to reevaluating the resource after teaching it and reflecting on how it goes. The only potential problem I foresee is student participation, as I have some students who are anxious when it comes to anything performative in class. I do plan to follow-up the 15-Minute activity with small group discussions of the lines student groups were assigned, their significance in the context of the overall play, and what the sub-text of each line could be.