The Hamlet Project

When I teach Shakespeare, I rarely acknowledge or engage with stage directions. They are most likely to be editor’s additions and don’t tend to help us engage with Shakespeare’s language much. That’s also the reason I mostly leave them out of this project.
But…in this case…this is such a juicy stage direction, it’s making me think about ways to utilize stage directions in general in my teaching.
There are some that are just so evocative – that say so much in a simple sentence. If you knew nothing about Hamlet but the fact that a character leaps into the grave, you actually know a great deal about the play.
If you knew nothing about A Winter’s Tale but that a character Exits pursued by a bear, you know something very intriguing about the play. I think I may be inventing an exercise for my upcoming workshops as I write this.