S.O.S.

How to Use This Book

The S.O.S. Way: A New Approach to Shakespeare

Many students and even instructors are intimidated at just the mere mention of a Shakespeare class. Preconceptions abound that Shakespeare’s language is difficult, his poetry obscure, and his drama no longer relevant. Sometimes, however, all that’s needed to make Shakespeare not only readable and meaningful, but also rewarding and enjoyable, is a modern approach to this timeless literature. S.O.S.: Students on Shakespeare contains the work of students who have creatively expressed their own ideas on Shakespeare—through an effective device called the “ideas paper”—and then translated their ideas into out-of-the-ordinary essays.

These students wrote their ideas papers separately, but when their ideas were grouped together for this book, group discussions emerged—lively, argumentative, humorous, and passionate discussions of four famous plays by William Shakespeare. No single interpretation of the plays is offered in this book. Rather, the ideas and essays that follow suggest a wonderful variety of interpretations.

S.O.S.: Students on Shakespeare may be used to facilitate group discussions. It may also be used as a guide to the teaching and learning technique called the ideas paper, which is explained and illustrated on the following pages. Above all, the students who wrote this book hope that it will encourage you, the reader, to come up with your own interpretations of Shakespeare.

As the title implies, S.O.S.: Students on Shakespeare is a unique response to the “internationally recognized distress signal” for help with Shakespeare!