Teaching Reading Shakespeare is for all training and practising secondary teachers who want to help their classes overcome the very real difficulties they experience when they have to 'do' Shakespeare. Providing a practical and critical discussion of the ways in which Shakespeare's plays present problems to the young reader, Teaching Reading Shakespeare considers how these difficulties might be overcome. It provides practical guidance on: confronting language difficulties, including 'old words', meaning, grammar, rhetoric and allusion approaching the plays through narrative at Key Stage 3; reading the plays as scripts for performance at Key Stage 3 and beyond; using conversation analysis in helping to read and teach Shakespeare; reading the plays in contextual, interpretive and linguistic frameworks required by examinations at GCSE and A level The chapters can be read individually as developed investigations of particular aspects of teaching Shakespeare, or together as an accumulating argument about the teaching of Shakespeare as a practice. A brief Epilogue explores the question of why Shakespeare should be taught at all.At once practical and principled, analytical and anecdotal, drawing on a wide range of critical reading and many examples of classroom encounters between Shakespeare and young readers, Teaching Reading Shakespeare encourages teachers to develop a more informed, reflective and exploratory approach to the teaching of Shakespeare.