Shakespeare: A Winter's Tale

We've read the Lamb's version of A Winter's Tale. Now, we're ready to have a go at watching the show. This is going to have to be a video, since I don't know of any Shakespeare is playing reasonably locally, much less this particular one.

Hurray for YouTube.




As has been the case in the past, listening to the real text is considerably harder than getting through the Lamb's version. But I got a very timely email from Mistie at Simply Convivial about how she does Shakespeare, and I decided to put off Plutarch for a little bit longer (we alternate from Shakespeare to Plutarch and back again), and to try some of the things she suggests. The first is that we learn some lines from the play. And Good Reads has a nice list. I am particularly fond of the queen's lines at her arrest. We haven't updated our memory work in a while, so that works out nicely.

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“There's some ill planet reigns:
I must be patient till the heavens look
With an aspect more favourable. Good my lords,
I am not prone to weeping, as our sex
Commonly are; the want of which vain dew
Perchance shall dry your pities: but I have
That honourable grief lodged here which burns
Worse than tears drown: beseech you all, my lords,
With thoughts so qualified as your charities
Shall best instruct you, measure me; and so
The king's will be perform'd!”

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Then, I think that we'll change things up: when we did Comedy of Errors, we made peg people dolls for the important characters, and put on a mini version of the play after we'd watched it. In this case, I think we'll try making them up before we watch the show, and then the kids can move them around as the players come on and off the screen if they want to. We can do the same thing with the Librivox version, which will give the kids the chance to see different interpretations of the same play, which we haven't done before. This one has a lot more characters than Comedy of Errors, so we'll use some of the old dolls and make a bunch of new ones next week. That will be a fun project for everybody.

And, thanks to Mistie's suggestions, I'm also looking around the local area to see what plays might be playing in the next while. If I can find some, I'll probably choose our next play based partly on what we can go and see live. That would be fun.