What is it about Shakespeare that gets children so excited?
“The stories are so incredibly exciting. A lot of them are fairy tale based. Romeo and Juliet is taken from fairy tale and fable. Shakespeare had an incredible understanding of people’s psyches. He seemed to understand every person and every situation that was around. Recently another theory that seems to be coming to me is how Shakespeare stories [such as “The Merchant of Venice” and “Henry V”] deal with varying aspects of Christianity. Shakespeare is full of moral lessons. Is this filling a void that wasn’t getting filled otherwise? Is there something [the children] are really craving but they don’t realize they are craving yet? “Shakespeare is so much more complex than just the good, the bad, and the ugly. There’s always more than one side. There’s always a dilemma. It stretches their intellectual abilities. I need to ask the children about it…” But plenty of children are exposed to Shakespeare in school and never find that excitement… “I hated it. We had to study it from the age of
