Susanna Shakespeare
Study Guide
The Susanna Shakespeare plays are a succinct introduction to Shakespearean language and performance that also addresses universal themes to which audiences young and old can easily relate.
In Susanna Shakespeare we learn that William Shakespeare left his wife and family in Stratford Upon Avon to pursue a writing career in London. We discover what might have happened if his elder daughter, Susanna, followed him in hopes of adding herself to the writer's new life. Though her father sent her back to Stratford to live out her life, the trip sparked her interest in his writing. After his death she studied all of his work and used those words to deduce her father's thoughts and feelings about their family life.
When we learn to speak we need to have speech modeled for us. The same is true for learning a different type of language. Susanna Shakespeare's live performance of her father's words models verse speaking for the audience as the first step to becoming comfortable with hearing, reading, speaking and understanding it.
William Shakespeare wrote his plays in a largely illiterate society. He expected his words to be performed and passed down orally not to be read silently to one's self. These plays provide an opportunity for audiences to learn this language the way it was meant to be taught.
Text Used
Hamlet - Act III, scene iiTwo Gentlemen of Verona - Act II, scene vi
As You Like It - Act I, scene iii; Act V scene iv
Twelfth Night - Act I, scene ii
Richard III - Act I, scene ii
Othello - Act IV, scene ii
Two Noble Kinsmen - Act II, scene iv
Henry V - Prologue
King Lear - Act I, scene I
Antony & Cleopatra - Act V, scene ii
Sonnets #130 & #116