Shakespeare's audiences would go to the theatre with notebooks. The audience would jot down new words they heard throughout the performance.

These new words would then later be copied down into commonplace books.

The influence of Shakespeare's choice of words can be examined in the classroom:

  • To help students understand how powerful and effective Shakespeare's newly created words were
  • By asking students to consider the effect hearing the word 'assassin' may have had on the audience

Peter Shears, who is the Head of English at Cardinal Newman Catholic School, was inspired to suggest this teaching idea after hearing Professor Tiffany Stern (Royal Holloway, University of London) speak about London's Theatres at the time of Shakespeare at the English CPD day on Shakespeare in context.

Schools Programme members and course attendees can download the resources from the event in the PTI Staffroom.

Want to discover more inspiring subject knowledge? See our upcoming courses and events for 2017, including our upcoming CPD Subject Days on Making the most of shorter C19th fiction and The shape of poetry: Challenging views on the unseen, and our New Teacher Subject Day course.

Find more knowledge nuggets here!

Image: by C. Walter Hodges via Wikimedia Commons licensed via Creative Commons (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en)