Shakespeare's Guide to Hope, Life, and Learning

"What is the most wonderful thing about teaching this play in our classrooms?" Using this question as a starting point, Shakespeare’s Guide to Hope, Life, and Learning presents a conversation between four of Shakespeare’s most popular plays and our modern experience, and between teachers and learners.

The book analyzes King Lear, As You Like It, Henry V, and Hamlet, revealing how they help us to appreciate and responsibly interrogate the perspectives of others. Award-winning teachers Lisa Dickson, Shannon Murray, and Jessica Riddell explore a diversity of genres – tragedy, history, and comedy – with distinct perspectives from their own lived experiences. They carry on lively conversations in the margins of each essay, mirroring the kind of open, ongoing, and collaborative thinking that Shakespeare inspires.

The book is informed by ideas of social justice and transformation, articulated by such thinkers as Paulo Freire, Parker J. Palmer, Ira Shor, John D. Caputo, and bell hooks. Shakespeare’s Guide to Hope, Life, and Learning advocates for a critical hope that arises from classroom experiences and moves into the world at large.

Lisa Dickson is a 3M National Teaching Fellow and a full professor of early modern literature and literary theory at the University of Northern British Columbia.


Shannon Murray is a 3M National Teaching Fellow and a full professor of early modern and children’s literature at the University of Prince Edward Island.


Jessica Riddell is a 3M National Teaching Fellow, Stephen A. Jarislowsky Chair of Undergraduate Teaching Excellence, and a full professor of early modern literature at Bishop’s University.