 You use clips from films of Shakespeare's plays extensively in your course. What effect has this had on your course? It's had a very dramatic effect. It's greatly improved classroom discussion for one thing. That's probably been the most wonderful thing that's happened for me. Especially in the large GUR class where students can want to hide out in the back and be silent. The film clips have really drawn them out and involved them in critical debate and critical thinking going on. Especially as they think about issues of context. About how one scene in Shakespeare play is related to another scene in the Shakespeare play. How things are interconnected. Sometimes I pick scenes to show them which I know are contrasting and that will evenly split the students. It's really interesting to see them line up supporting one clip versus another clip. For example, in Midsummer Night's Dream, Thesias, who's the Duke of Athens, he starts the play by wishing that time would go by more quickly until he can get married to Apolito. Apolito is a queen of the Amazons who he's just defeated in war. He wants to marry her after having defeated all of her followers and her people. He says, Apolito, I woo thee with my sword. And now one I love doing the injuries. The BBC version of this production is really interesting because it shows Apolito while Thesias is saying these words. It shows Apolito as moving around the stage like a caged animal. She's prancing back and forth. She looks like she wants to do anything but get married at this moment and she's shooting Thesias' looks of contempt. And so students like to notice that right away that she is not responding to this language but in fact very much rejecting it. And that's really important. How is it that a character is reacting who's being spoken to? Students as readers, they have to get used to imagining not just what is a particular character saying but what are the other characters on the stage doing while one character is speaking. And on the other hand though, I showed them a Royal Shakespeare production directed by Peter Hall and in this production, Apolito is dressed in leather, very 60s, and she is sitting in a garden surrounded by grass and by flowers and she is in a very natural scene and she is very much moving her lips in response to everything Thesias says. And she's puckering her lips in fact and she is drinking every word that he says. So is Apolito the Queen of the Amazons who has just been overthrown by Thesias in war? Is she happy about the situation? Is she not happy about the situation? How do the students feel that Apolito should be represented? And students tend to line up evenly for one scene, one film clip or the other and that produces really good debate. Other times I like to show two clips that are contrasting where I know students, the majority of students will hate one clip and really love another clip. For example, in King Lear, when King Lear says in response to Cordelia his third daughter who has rejected his desire for her to state her extreme love for him, when he says nothing will come of nothing. In Paul Schollfield's production, King Lear is very still, very old. He looks like he's about to expire at any moment. You think that the scene is so static that in the movement there's so little movement that you would think that King Lear is barely going to make it through this very scene. On the other hand, in Lawrence Olivier's version is his really great version. King Lear is both tired but also very, very much alive and Olivier brilliantly shows forth the life in King Lear's face when he says nothing will come of nothing. You get the sense of real regret that Lear has about the situation as it's developing. The students really like this second production as I do myself but what's interesting is for me in the role of an instructor to come back and say what's positive about the Paul Schollfield's also very accomplished production. What does it bring out about the scene that students will not have noticed? What it does for me first and foremost is students tend to identify with the young Cordelia and they tend to be very critical of the older Lear. What I have to do is try to get them to question their assumption that whoever is older is necessarily negative and to get them to think about the fact that Shakespeare is actually trying to get us to be...