Here's the curriculum sequence I developed to help students connect image and meaning, performance and writing.

Lesson 1 Seeing Shakespeare’s Language
Lesson 2 Writing About an Image in the Play
Lesson 3 Performing a Collage of Imagery

Shakespeare’s primary interest is in showing the nature of the world.  His plays describe reality by representing scenes on stage, and through the characters’ language.  Over the past several weeks, we have repeatedly discussed Shakespeare’s enduring ability to describe reality.  I began my research process by asking whether Shakespeare’s primary metaphor for reality was text or image.  To better understand the relationship between these facets of Shakespeare’s plays, this paper will examine three different traditions of visual interpretation arising out of Medieval Christianity, Renaissance Humanism, and the Protestant Reformation.  I find these interpretive contexts to be fruitful approaches to Shakespeare’s plays.  I have suggested examples of where they are relevant, but the emphasis remains on Shakespeare’s historical context, and not on analysis of his text.

This is a brief presentation summarizing my research topic.