Manga Shakespeare: Macbeth

By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.

Manga Shakespeare: Macbeth is the very first Manga book I've ever read, and I enjoyed the experience. I've known very little about graphic novels or Manga, but I'm learning! And I do love Shakespeare in any form, and especially love his MACBETH. Before moving to 2nd grade after my medical leave of absence, I taught 6th grade for 16 years, and our 6th grade classes performed an abbreviated version of The Scottish Play every spring. It's the thing I miss most about my grade level change. So it was a pleasure to read another version of the play, and experience it in a whole new way.

The world of Manga is quite fascinating. There are visual traditions and things I don't completely understand yet (MacDuff had 4 arms, for instance, and the story was set in a post-apocalyptic future), but I know that there was always a real fascination and passion for it with some of my students, so I am curious to read more and learn about it. I am also pleased that the Manga Shakespeare books introduce readers, many of them young, to the plays in a way they can enjoy. The language is intact although abbreviated, and "reading" a Manga or graphic novel version of the story should probably be called "experiencing" the book because it is much closer to a performance of the play because of the interaction of the words and the graphic art.

An Introduction to Shakespeare

(photo by Katie Claypool)

My fellow blogger, Mental Multivitamin, introduced me to Harold Bloom's term "bardalotry:"

...the worship of Shakespeare, ought to be even more a secular religion than it already is. The plays remain the outward limit of human achievement: aesthetically, cognitively, in certain ways morally, even spiritually. They abide beyond the end of the mind's reach; we cannot catch up to them. Shakespeare will go on explaining us, in part because he invented us....

So, as one who practices bardalotry ... I'm always looking for good books on Shakespeare, and also for good books to introduce Shakespeare to young people, and I recently stumbled across a very nice series. I was slightly familiar with author, Marchette Chute, because my second grade students memorize and recite one of her little poems as one of their monthly poem projects. But as I was looking for books to choose for Historia's 2009 Shakespeare Reading Challenge, I ran into her again. Her series is very nice, for young and old alike, introducing them to Shakespeare, his worlds, and his plays! While snowbound last week, I read her book, An Introduction to Shakespeare, and enjoyed it. It's an old Scholastic paperback, geared for middle school and above, and the blurp on the back cover made me chuckle. It says the book is "A great grade booster you'll really enjoy. Score some extra points in class -- and add new meaning and excitement to your assigned reading. Journey back in time with this lively book that brings to life the world of William Shakespeare -- the greatest playwright who ever lived!"

I didn't find it lively, but I was very interested in all the information she packed into this small volume, and how easy it was to read and understand. She was very respectful of her audience, and wrote with great warmth. I learned a lot about Shakespeare that I didn't previously know, and I think this would be an excellent book to use as part of an introductory class. She wrote numerous other books, two of which I now plan to read for Historia's reading challenge:

*The Worlds of Shakespeare
*Stories From Shakespeare

From the ending to An Introduction to Shakespeare:

Among all Shakespeare's contemporaries, it was John Heminges and Henry Condell who had the greatest faith in the future. They were convinced that the reputation of their "friend and fellow" would be safe if only his work could be made available to the ordinary reading public.

...It is not our province, who only gather his works and give them to you, to praise him. It is yours that read him ... Read him, therefore; and again and again; and if then you do not like him, surely you are in manifest danger not to understand him. And so we leave him to other of his friends, whom, if you need, can be your guides; if you need them not, you can lead yourselves and
others. And such readers we wish him.
--John Heminges and Henry Condell

Their wish was answered. It was such readers he got, and no other writer in the world's history has been loved by so many people or has given so much happiness.

This was a very nice book to read to begin my Shakespeare Reading Challenge.
(Cross-posted at A Fondness For Reading)