Teaching Shakespeares Theatre of the World

This Element engages Shakespeare's greatest thought-experiment: how does one navigate the 'theatre of the world'? Throughout, it examines how Shakespeare challenges this metaphor's vertical hierarchies in response to changing understandings of cosmological order. Teachers will find rich contextual frameworks to help students investigate how Shakespeare recognises 'worlds' as emerging from dynamic variables, raising urgent questions about how identity and justice are environmentally constructed. Each discussion features student-centred 'Explorations', which are play-specific classroom activities, but also may be applied across Shakespeare's corpus and adapted for either secondary or university-level students. These exercises encourage students to practise non-linear critical and creative thinking, to contemplate big ideas and to generate new perspectives about the shared points of contact between Shakespeare's world and theirs.

List of contents

Prologue: Enter Chorus; 1. The theatre of the world in ancient, medieval and early modern contexts; 2. Thematic explorations of the theatre of the world; 3. Formal explorations of the theatre of the world; Coda: who's there?; References.

Product details

• Authors: Kristen Abbott Bennett, Kristen Abbott (Framingham State College Bennett
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Release: 30.11.2025, delayed
• EAN: 9781009111096
• ISBN: 978-1-0-0911109-6
• No. of pages: 75
• Series: Elements in Shakespeare and Pedagogy
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; Literary studies: general, Cognitive studies, Theatre: technical and background skills, Literary studies: plays and playwrights, Educational: Memory skills and creative thinking, Relating to Shakespeare / Shakespearean