Comics in Education Presents: Shakespeare, the Animated Tales

by Glen Downey, Comics in Education, www.comicsineducation.com

From the BBC 2 series, Shakespeare: The Animated Tales. This is a still image from A Midsummer Night's Dream

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Don't underestimate the appeal to visual learners

If you're not up to the challenge of ordering Oxford's graphic novel versions of Macbeth or Romeo and Juliet for fear of your colleagues' admonishing stares, consider the wealth of YouTube clips from Shakespeare, the Animated Tales. This series covers some of the most beloved of Shakespeare's plays and is an excellent way to help students improve their understanding of the Bard and his work.

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The series ran on BBC 2 from 1992 to 1994 and consists of twelve half-hour long programs.  The series even inspired the Shakespeare Schools Festival, an annual event in which students perform half-hour long versions of Shakespeare's plays. If you're interested in the series, it can be ordered online. Here are the plays that are featured:

SERIES 1

• A Midsummer Night's Dream
  
• Hamlet
  
• Macbeth
  
• Twelfth Night
  
• The Tempest

SERIES 2

• Richard III
  
• The Taming of the Shrew
  
• As You Like It
  
• Othello
  
• Julius Caesar
  
• The Winter's Tale
  

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What younger students will enjoy about the series are the different approaches to animation in each of the videos--approaches that attempt to match well with the play in question (you can see this just by looking at the still frames above).

And heck, whose to say that some of our older students couldn't benefit from having a look at Shakespeare, the Animated Tales?

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If you enjoyed this video, you might also enjoy:

• Should We Use Comics to Teach Shakespeare?
  
• How Do I Start My Shakespeare Unit? With Minecraft, Obviously!
  
• Comics in Education Presents: Shakespeare's Career as a Playwright
  
• Visual Brainstorming and Hamlet, or How the Key to the Play Is Its Very First Line
  
• Visual Brainstorming and Othello, or Are Iago and the Joker really all that alike?
  

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