Folger Guide to Teaching Romeo and Juliet

Created by experts from the world’s largest and most well-respected Shakespeare archive, The Folger Guide to Teaching Romeo and Juliet provides an innovative approach to teaching and understanding one of Shakespeare’s most well-known plays.

Romeo and Juliet is one of Shakespeare’s most well-known plays, and certainly the one most commonly taught in schools. It’s the story of star-crossed young lovers who can’t come together because they live in a society governed by blood feuds, violent duels and acts of retribution. Shakespeare’s tale of Romeo and Juliet, the adults who fail to help them, and the price that is ultimately paid by so many is a moving story that gives us some of the most familiar and memorable passages in the English language.

The Folger Guides to Teaching Shakespeare series is created by the experts at the Folger Shakespeare Library, the nation’s largest archive of Shakespeare material and a leading center for both the latest scholarship and education on all things Shakespeare. Based on the proven Folger Method of teaching and informed by the wit, wisdom, and experiences of classroom teachers across the country, the guides offer a lively, interactive approach to teaching and learning Shakespeare, offering students and readers of all backgrounds and abilities a pathway to discovering the richness and diversity of Shakespeare’s world.

Filled with surprising facts about Shakespeare, insightful essays by scholars, and a day-by-day, five-week teaching plan, these guides are an invaluable resource for teachers, students, and Shakespeare fans alike.

Dr. Peggy O’Brien is a classroom teacher who founded the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Education Department in 1981. She set the Library’s mission for K–12 students and teachers then and began to put it in motion; among a range of other programs, she founded and directed the Library’s intensive Teaching Shakespeare Institute, was instigator and general editor of the popular Shakespeare Set Free series and expanded the Library’s education work across the country. In 1994, she took a short break from the Folger—twenty years—but returned to further expand the education work and to engage in the Folger’s transformation under the leadership of Library Director Michael Witmore. She is the instigator and general editor of The Folger Guides to Teaching Shakespeare series.