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Exploring Shakespeare's Comedies at A Level

A comprehensive teaching pack written specifically to explore Shakespeare’s comedies at A Level. A perfect accompaniment to AQA B English Literature’s unit Dramatic Genres.

Thoroughly researched and produced by a clearly knowledgeable and experienced practitioner

B Hart, Teacher & Peer Reviewer

It includes an overview of the comedy plays and its relation to the genre, then offers a detailed evaluation of five key plays and final assignments questions.

  • The Comedy or Errors
  • As You Like It
  • A Midsummer Night’s Dream
  • The Merchant of Venice
  • The Tempest

Each evaluation of the play features:

  • Important contextual information
  • How this play links to the genre and Shakespeare’s conventions
  • A brief summary annotated with genre exploration prompts
  • Useful comedic concepts to apply
  • Main character evaluations
  • Shakespeare’s style
  • Activities to help students explore key extracts
  • Discussion prompts

Written in a student-centred style, from a writer who is passionate about the Bard, it can easily be used directly by students to support self-study and to compliment your existing SOW.

A wise investment because it covers a variety of plays and would be a good place for teachers to start from if they intended on developing a more in-depth scheme

B Hart, Teacher & Peer Reviewer

What do teachers say about this resource? (5212)

Very thorough and extremely comprehensive. It was a good read and easy to access. Very, very helpful for the research and delivery of the new genre in this specification. I particularly liked how it adopted a 'from the beginning' approach to both Renaissance Theatre and the Greek influence. In my case, it could enhance students' learning because I, as their teacher, could improve my subject knowledge immensely. I like how each play is addressed both individually and as part of the genre as a whole.

S Johnson, Teacher & Peer Reviewer

An incredibly useful resource that would be excellent for a department that is wide-ranging in its choice of comedy texts. This is a wise investment because it covers a variety of plays and would be a good place for teachers to start from if they intended on developing a more in-depth scheme. The tasks are engaging and ensure that pupils have to address the structure and language of the text, as well as context both in terms of comedy and Shakespeare. Pupils are being asked to consider comedy at each stage, which is crucial to this piece of coursework. Really well-structured. Thoroughly researched and produced by a clearly knowledgeable and experienced practitioner.

B Hart, Teacher & Peer Reviewer

A good assemblage of researched contextual and critical information about Shakespeare's comedies with examples from the plays and focus questions. The information is useful for teaching and saves a lot of research time.

G Davies, HoD & Peer Reviewer

Thorough and interesting. This would work best for a teacher intending to cover several comedies and then focus on one for the coursework task. This approach is worthwhile and would lead to good appreciation of genre. The strength in detail regarding genre is the strong point. To remind me of the need to keep the students' writing in a genre-aware way, I would buy it.

B Coulthard, HoD & Peer Reviewer

The key comedies have been selected and there's enough information on each one to give A Level students a starting point for analysis and further research.

E Gardiner, Teacher & Peer Reviewer