Macbeardie Kindle Edition

How to Understand Macbeth without Understanding Shakespeare’s LanguageMany students dislike Macbeth. The language is archaic and hard to understand; tedious and boring. Shakespeare wrote it as a play - to be seen, not to be read. This book, a parody, was written with the hope of making Shakespeare's famous play more understandable. The first section of Macbeardie is a short rewriting of the story. The storyline is very close to that of the play, with two main differences. First, most all of the characters are dogs. Second, it is essentially nonviolent, with killing replaced symbolically by dognapping. Dialog is written in verse, reflecting some of the important lines from the play.Following the rewritten story is a side by side comparison of the story’s narrative with a synopsis of the play. If students read this comparison, they will get a sense of the roles of the main characters in the play. The names of the dogs often are similar to the characters in the play but may reflect the types of dogs they are. For example, Shakespeare’s Banquo is Barkquo in dogspeak. Malcolm is Malcollie. Macbeth is Macbeardie, because in the story he is a Bearded Collie.The last part of the book includes a number of activities intended to be both fun and educational. There are word searches. Also crossword puzzles (with answer keys). There is an opportunity to learn the various breeds of dogs native to Scotland, where the story takes place, and connect the breeds to the characters in the story. Then there is a matching activity - matching each character in the story to the correct character in Shakespeare’s play. There also is a jumble word game to reinforce names of characters. Finally, there is a challenging activity to put listed events chronologically in the same order as the story/play.My hope is that if students were to read the book and do the various activities, they would have a fairly good understanding of the play, whether they had read it or not. And as a bonus, they will know the various Scottish dog breeds! Read more