Teaching Hamlet and Henry IV, Part 1: Shakespeare Set Free

The world’s leading center for Shakespeare studies! Created, taught, and written by real teachers, The Folger Shakespeare Library is one of the world’s leading centers for scholarship, learning, and culture.

Dedicated to advancing knowledge and increasing understanding of Shakespeare and the early modern period, the Folger is home to the world’s largest Shakespeare collection and one of the leading collections of books and materials of the entire early modern period (1500-1750). Combining a world-class research library and scholarly programs; leadership in curriculum, training, and publishing for K-12 education; and award-winning performing arts, exhibitions, and lectures, the Folger is Shakespeare’s home in America.

This volume of the Shakespeare Set Free series is written by institute faculty and participants, and includes the latest developments in recent scholarship. It bristles with the energy created by teaching and learning Shakespeare from the text and through active performance, and reflects the experience, wisdom, and wit of real classroom teachers in schools and colleges throughout the United States.

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.