Shakespeare knew how to work an audience. To successfully engage an audience made up of a variety of people with different tastes, backgrounds, and abilities, Shakespeare had to write plays that would speak to many different kinds of people at once. He didn't assume a lowest-common-denominator approach and write plays that presented endless scenes of action strung together by only the thinnest of plots. He didn't write plodding, introspective, and self-indulgent discourses that demanded patience and restraint from the audience. He didn't create mindless catchphrases or scrub high-minded or controversial issues from his works. (http://www.bestthomasabo.com/earrings-c-5.html) He wrote plays that entertained and educated an extraordinarily wide audience—and continue to do so.
In some ways, Shakespeare was an early proponent of differentiated instruction. There wasn't an honors Globe, a regular Globe, and an inclusion Globe. There was one Globe with one show written in a manner accessible and engaging to the many. What an English teacher he'd have made!
In fact, as the authors in this issue make clear, Shakespeare is teaching English—with some help—in classrooms across the country and in increasingly intelligent and relevant ways. When I asked Michael LoMonico, Senior Consultant on National Education at the Folger Shakespeare Library and my colleague in English Teacher Education at Stony Brook University, to guest edit this issue of English Jour- Macbeth, Children's I had no idea of the scope of articles he'd put together. Articles in this issue include how Shakespeare's works can educate English language learners; inspire adolescents with autism; help students understand the aesthetics and rhetoric of borrowing ideas and works from other artists; create contexts for students to explore new literacies; and encourage students to engage in complex analyses of film, textual scholarship, the rhetoric of rhyme, and the sonnet tradition.
This issue also showcases beautiful photos contributed by the Folger Shakespeare Library's Teaching Shakespeare Institutes, which celebrate their 25th anniversary this year. (http://www.thomassaboclub.com/pendant-c-12.html?page=1&sort=20a) I thank Michael and his colleagues at the Folger, all the authors in this issue, and our editorial staff and reviewers for showing the excellence and innovation Shakespeare still inspires in English classes.
Thomas Sabo is a professional jewellery manufacturer and a wholesaler who owns its expressive developing histories. It is also a leading online retailer in silver jewelry line.
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