Romeo and Juliet

[gategrrl]

Mwa-ha-ha-ha

Mermaid has started her unit on Romeo and Juliet today, and after going through the introduction, I started reading Scenes 1 and 2 to her (she's not a big reader, and it would have taken her ages to work through the complex puns, language and rhyms on her own). I filled her in on all the double and triple entendres and puns that Shakespeare loved to put into his character's mouths, and she was curled up on the couch either laughing or horrified, or simultaneously both, especially when "tool" came up.

She fixed her self a salad for lunch, and on her own, turned on Netflix (how I adore thee, Netflix!) and started watching an early BBC John Gielgund version of the play! Some of the sex-word-play wasn't there, I noticed but that's fine. It makes the words come alive for her. And to me, THAT is what counts. I love Shakespeare. I hope on some level I can get her to love his plays, too.

Comments

[aizjanika.livejournal.com]

I used to do that with my kids, too.

It's funny, but I didn't enjoy Shakespeare when I was a senior in high school, but I read Julius Caesar with lyraeinne and then Hamlet and MacBeth with MW, and we all loved the plays. So much fun! I don't know what scholars would think of this, but I bought those books that had Shakespeare on one page and, on the facing page, the same lines in modern English. We'd read the modern English first, then read the page again in Shakespeare's English. My kids were probably older than Mermaid, so I bought two copies of the books, too, and we would choose parts and read it aloud.

I wish I'd been able to get DVD copies of the plays, but they weren't readily available at the time--or I didn't know where to find them and probably couldn't easily afford to buy copies.

It sounds like you both were having fun with it. :-) Are there any other Shakespeare plays or anything else included in the unit?