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• A Midsummer Night's Dream
• The Comedy of Errors
• As You Like It
• Twelfth Night
• Taming of the Shrew
• Other comedies

Shakespeare is perhaps most famous for his tragedies and most loved for his comedies. There are infinite ways to define “comedy,” but as we stated above, one simple one for kids is that in a comedy, none of the characters die. Conflicts are resolved into some kind of harmony. There is a sense of joy and completion at the end, even if – as in the “problem comedies” such as The Merchant of Venice, or even in Twelfth Night – not all of the characters share in the happiness.

There are wonderful moments and scenes from all of the comedies that work well for children – the Induction and servants in Taming of the Shrew, the fake duel in Twelfth Night, Launce and his dog Crab in Two Gentlemen of Verona. But over time we’ve settled on A Midsummer Night’s Dream as the classic “starter play” for young people. That’s why we feature it in our “Do your own Shakespeare” section for students. It has it all – wild comedy, lyrical poetry, intense emotion, playful energy, the craftsmen putting on a play… it’s perfect, and kids fall in love with it at first sight.

The other comedies on our list require a bit more maturity and might be more appropriate for kids in grades 6-8, though, again, many wonderful scenes can be drawn from them – and the stories, if told in narrative form, are often engaging and inspiring for younger kids (see Lois Burdett ‘s books for examples of how much fun very young kids can have with pared-down versions of these stories)

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A Midsummer Night’s Dream

This is the classic “introduction to Shakespeare” play for young readers and performers. Written early in Shakespeare’s career, it features the magical fairy spirit world of the forest outside Athens, inhabited by Oberon and Titania, King and Queen of the fairies, and their helpers, most famously Puck, the “mischievous sprite.” There are also the “rude mechanicals,” the Athenian craftsmen who stage the hilarious play-within-a-play, “Pyramus and Thisbe.” And you also have the intense conflict between old friends – Lysander, Hermia, Demetrius, and Helena – over who loves whom.

Through Shakespeare at Winedale Outreach and Camp Shakespeare we have worked on scenes on this play with many children in grades 4-7 and all have responded with deep enthusiasm to the story, the character, and the richness of the language. There are plenty of juicy roles for everyone and the final “Pyramus and Thisbe” performance always provides an air of celebration.

Midsummer can also be immediately enjoyed by very young children, who need little prompting to flit about as fairies and Pucks, so it’s probably the best “starter play” for kids in grades K-3.

From a teaching perspective, “Midsummer” offers a rich variety of themes to inspire classroom discussions, curriculum connections, and student writing: friendship and loyalty, parent-child relationships, true love vs. infatuation, and the whole fascinating question of what dreams are and how they relate to our waking life. Basically, it is a masterpiece that offers a complete package for the teacher

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The Comedy of Errors

One of Shakespeare’s first plays, this is a zany comedy about mistaken identity. Two sets of identical twins, separated at birth, end up in the same town many years later without realizing it. The play is set in the ancient port city of Ephesus and is populated with all sorts of strange characters.

With lots of madcap physical humor and rhyming verse, this is a very accessible play for even young children. Dr. Ayres has worked on this play twice as part of his Camp Shakespeare summer program at Winedale, most recently in 2004 with an all-girl group, and it has been a delight each time. It is perhaps not as profound and multi-layered as Dream, but what it lacks in haunting poetry it makes up for in opportunities for energetic ensemble work.

One advantage of this play for kids is that the lines are distributed fairly evenly over about 10-15 characters, so everyone can keep busy. Also, it is a short play and moves at a brisk pace, especially with some judicious editing. One challenge is that many of the jokes involve wordplay and puns that made more sense 400 years ago to an Elizabethan audience; the students will need time to get used to the characters’ ways of speaking and cracking jokes. Sometimes they will simply have to say something as if it is funny, and trust that the audience will “get it".

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As You Like It

This lyrical tale of the journey of a diverse set of characters into the Forest of Arden has some wonderful scenes and moments that work well for children. In the summer of 2005, the students of Camp Shakespeare, Dr. Ayres’s program for kids ages 10-13 at Winedale, gave a beautiful and insightful performance of this play.

Due to its large sections of prose dialogue, however, it does tend to work better with children who already have some experience with Shakespeare’s language. The lead character, Rosalind, is the Hamlet of the comedies – eloquent, witty, ahead of everyone else in the play, and never at a loss for words. In the Camp Shakespeare performance, two different girls played Rosalind, alternating scenes to share the lines.

There is a great wrestling scene in the beginning, when Orlando, a young man trying to break free of his servitude to his elder brother, takes on big ol’ Charles, the Duke’s terrifying wrestler. There are also many great conversations between characters in the Forest of Arden, and a beautiful set of songs – some sung by Amiens and the foresters as they accompany the banished Duke, another sung by two of the banished Duke’s pages.

This latter song, “A Lover and His Lass,” has become known as the unofficial Winedale anthem – it’s a song we often teach to visiting groups.

The challenge of this play, along with its lengthy sections of prose conversation, is that it has at its center a love story, as Rosalind falls in love with Orlando, then disguises herself as a man to escape the evil Duke and runs into Orlando again in the forest while still dressed as a man. She keeps her disguise going, and uses the opportune encounter to give Orlando a series of lessons on how to woo a lady – doing this as a boy playing “Rosalind” – until the end of the play, when she emerges as the real Rosalind. It’s a subtle and wonderfully comic situation that takes some maturity to perform: a girl playing a boy playing a girl, who is “pretending” to be in love with the man she actually is in love with.

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Twelfth Night

This is another mature and witty comedy that has great moments for kids, but asks for a bit longer attention span than Midsummer or Errors. Like As You Like It, the protagonist is a heroine – this time, Viola, a young woman cast ashore in Illyria in a shipwreck. Like Rosalind, Viola adopts a man’s disguise as a temporary survival tool, and gets herself into an interesting situation – this time as the messenger of the lovestruck Duke Orsino, who is unsuccessfully wooing the beautiful Olivia.

Viola’s intelligence, resourcefulness, and wit as young “Cesario” quickly brings her to the attention of the Duke, who sends the “young man” on yet another love mission to the resistant Olivia. But Olivia falls in love with Cesario, at the same time as Viola herself is falling in love with the Duke.

Mix in a whole other cast of characters – the hard-partying Sir Toby Belch, sweet and silly Sir Andrew Aguecheek, the stiff head servant Malvolio, the sweet and bitter singing fool Feste, and others – and you have a lively, combustible situation, which Shakespeare enjoys to the fullest.

There is an excellent film version of the play, directed by Trevor Nunn, that can be useful in teaching the play. Again, it is probably most suited for students in grades 6-8 and older.

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Taming of the Shrew

There is plenty of raucous physical comedy in Shrew which can be fun, especially the scrambling servants in the household of Petruchio, the madcap wooer of Katherine, the “shrew” of the title. The play also opens with something rare in Shakespeare – two Induction scenes, which establish some of the themes of the play, but with characters entirely separate from the main story. The Induction scenes work very effectively as stand-alone scenes and a provide a wonderful opportunity for teamwork; for many years Dr. Ayres has used these scenes as a group exercise in play and group invention.

The main story, the wooing and “taming” of Kate by Petruchio, is a challenge for modern theater artists, who often feel compelled to either treat it as cartoonish fun or as fodder for a critical and political reinterpretation. In other words, adults rarely approach this play without plenty of baggage. Kids, on the other hand, enjoy the wit-bout between Kate and Petruchio, the roustabout humor, and the vigorous energy of the commedia del arte style. But it does take some maturity and skill to handle the subtle shifts in tone used by Petruchio as he uses his wits to achieve his goals.

The best performances of this at Winedale have played it “straight,” accepting the play as a valid work on its own terms. There is plenty to enjoy and explore here, but this is a play you will want to read thoroughly on your own first.

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Other comedies

Each of the remaining comedies has moments and scenes that are great to work on with kids, so don’t rule them out. And there have surely been many productions of these over the years by younger students, and probably some very good ones. But each also presents a real challenge if you want to do an entire play with your class during the year. Here’s our take on these plays and why they require more fancy footwork than a play like Midsummer or Comedy of Errors.

Two Gentlemen of Verona is one of Shakespeare’s first plays and has wonderful scenes with Launce and his dog Crab, and some funny and lively ones with pirates; but the main love story can be difficult to pull off. Love’s Labor’s Lost is a feast of language and wordplay, but is perhaps too rich a meal for younger students. The Merchant of Venice, like Shrew, has stirred much debate in modern times, and the anti-Semitism of many of the leading Christian characters is painful to read and hear; it’s a fascinating and prickly play that would be a rewarding project for very mature students. Much Ado About Nothing is charming and lovely, but the Benedick-Beatrice love story requires a balance of wit and insight that makes it a challenge for younger students. The Merry Wives of Windsor has a funny cast of small-town oddballs that often leads directors to set it as a ‘50s situation comedy; it’s perfect for high school students, but perhaps not the best investment of time for a younger group. All’s Well that Ends

Well and Measure for Measure both deal frankly with mature themes and would be difficult to adapt for K-8 students, though we know of a summer Shakepeare program for children in Madison, Wisconsin, that has staged Measure and other “problem plays” with kids of all ages (click here to see their website).

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