Posted By Christopher Waugh on Sep 10, 2014 | 1 comment

What better way to begin Year 9 English than with the Bard himself? We are incredibly lucky to be able to walk the same streets as Shakespeare did and here at the London Nautical we don’t take this privilege lightly. We launched our Shakespeare study today by diving straight into his language and exploring intricacies of the Prologue to the famous play Romeo and Juliet.

Throughout this programme we will be reading this play as a class. We will be enacting key scenes. We will be modernising scenes from the play. Shakespeare’s language will be an important focus for us – particularly his use of the poetic devices of rhythm, rhyme, metaphor and alliteration. We will delve into the universal themes that are implicit in all of William Shakespeare’s works and explore how these apply to our lives today. We will also be running, in parallel, a comparative study of the Baz Luhrmann film Romeo + Juliet and considering how the film re-interprets the symbolism and dramatic devices.

There will be many moments where students skills as readers, writers, viewers, performers and researchers will be tested and extended. Some assessment of these functions will be informal, and some formal – including an analytical essay, an enacted modernisation and a visual presentation.