Charles Isherwood, NY Times
December 26, 2013

Pity the English teacher of today, faced with a roomful of adolescents busy updating their Facebook status, communicating on Snapchat or gossiping via text message about the latest perfidy committed by a frenemy. Trying to instill in students a passionate interest in Shakespeare (or even a passing one) has never been a teacher’s easiest task. With all those digital distractions, the challenge of awakening teenagers’ interest in his plays has surely become harder.

The abbreviated discourse of texting and tweeting are a mighty distance from a dense Shakespearean soliloquy. A funny Roz Chast cartoon from The New Yorker several years ago riffed upon how removed new generations are from the language of Shakespeare. Ms. Chast’s Romeo and Juliet converse through as a series of text messages, with a version of the balcony scene concluding thus:

Juliet: xoxoxo bye see u tmw

Romeo: xoxoxoxoxo bye

A new project called WordPlay Shakespeare attempts to harness students’ aptitude and affection for new technologies to help them engage more easily with the plays. Created by the New Book Press, these $9.99 e-books can be downloaded from iTunes and are, so far, available only in the various Mac and iPad formats. The books combine the full texts of the plays with video versions made specifically for the series. When you open the “book,” a page of text appears on the left half of the screen, much as it would appear in a standard book. On the right half, a quick click brings up an image of actors performing the passage opposite. […continued] Read Full Story

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