The Merry Wives of Windsor

As a part of our summer Shakespeare studies, I wanted to take the boys to see a live performance, because, of course, Shakepeare's plays were originally written to be watched, not read!  Doing a quick search on the internet, I was able to come up with a few choices of venue locally for some Shakespeare in the park. It was especially exciting to find out that a favorite locale of ours, the Franconia Sculpture Park, was presenting The Merry Wives of Windsor, as a part of their weekend concert series this past Saturday.

 The weather was gorgeous, so we packed a picnic dinner and spent a great evening with friends and the Cromulent Shakespeare Company.  Having prepared the boys with the plot beforehand, they were able to follow the storyline easily and even picked up on much of the humorous word play.  I'm so glad we went!

John Falstaff-A favorite character of Queen Elizabeth!

Sir Hugh and Doctor Caius

Mistress Ford and Mistress Page-The Merry Wives

Mistress Quickly

Falstaff, you Banbury Cheese!

Full cast, final bow.

Our hillside seating

Sunset over Sculpture.  Time to go home after an excellent evening!

Shakespeare Summer

Monkey Island Academy officially put a fork in the 2011-12 school year earlier this month, but we still have some interesting and educational plans simmering on the back burners for the summer, a study of Shakespeare being among those plans.  Here is a bit of what we have done so far...

We have enjoyed a few leisurely readings from Leon Garfield's Shakespeare Stories. These well-written takes on  Shakespeare's plays make him more accessible to the younger set.

Continuing with our tea time readings this summer, our focus has been on a couple of Shakespeare's more well known sonnets ( 18-Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? & 116- Let me not to the marriage of true minds...) with discussion questions from The Harp and the Laurel Wreath by Laura Berquist.  This was one of my first home school book acquisitions, and one which I refer to often for poetry selections for memorization and discussion.

The older boys and  I are currently listening to Bill Bryson's Shakespeare The World as Stage.  This is fantastic.  Ben and I listened to it last year in the car, and the information about Shakespeare's life, family, and the culture of the times he lived in, held us in rapt attention every moment.  The second listen does not disappoint, either. 

We also watched part of In Search of Shakespeare, a PBS production hosted by Michael Wood.  This was perfect to occupy some time during our recent rainy spell.

We have done all this on a very casual basis, and the boys seem to be enjoying our studies.  I have a few more tricks up my sleeve to add to the study, including a live performance, and will post again as we get to them. Stay tuned!