At Poly Prep, on the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth, Gail Karpf’s 7th grade English class was newly into the study of the Bard’s play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, using 21st-century technology. They were studying the 16th-century comedy using a new Shakespeare app on their iPads.

Last year, Headmaster David B. Harman P’04, ‘06 introduced Marisa Gomez (English Department Chair) to Alexander Parker, publisher of The New Book Press, which publishes the WordPlay Shakespeare series.

The Shakespeare app is part of the Wordplay Shakespeare Series. WordPlay explains in its foreword to the video portion, “Shakespeare wrote his plays to be performed and watched: information crucial for understanding them is contained in body language, oratory, emphasis and positioning. This is why just reading his works often presents difficulties for students and adults.” The app gives students access to “the peerless prose next to carefully filmed performances.” The text in the app was compiled from sources including “the first folio of 1623 and the Globe edition of 1866.”

Read more:
https://www.polyprep.org/podium/default.aspx?t=204&nid=711257&sdb=1