Covers Elizabethan theater, later changes in theatrical practice, scholarly interpretations, staging problems, analysis of principal characters. "Not an obscure or otherwise dull page in the book." — N.Y. Times Book Review.

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First published in 1959, Poetry without Tears is a book not about what poetry is. The author argues that this book is not concerned with the educational resurrection of a dead art but about the artistic resurrection of education. Poetry is a force released in activity. That is how an educationalist and a poet see it. It is rarely how critics and academics see it. They see it as a series of poems, correspondingly it is as a ‘Collection of Poems’ that it is taught. Basic educational truths are frequently overlooked in our teaching of the arts, and no art suffers more from this than poetry. Baldwin goes on to say that in the end teaching is a creative activity and the creators are the best teachers. This book is a must read for students of both literature and education.

As a high school and college student, Mary Janell Metzger sat through old-school lectures that swamped Shakespeare in literary tradition and form, leaving no breathing room for individual interpretation. As a teacher, she yearned to connect students to Shakespeare's plays, and in Shakespeare Without Fear she tells you how she finally removed the barrier between text and inquiry by focusing on the rich interactive possibilities between student, teacher, and bard. Shakespeare Without Fear offers methods that will get students emotionally and imaginatively involved with the plays while developing their capacity for critical judgment. Ideal for the experienced teacher as well as for the English Education methods course, Shakespeare Without Fear first debunks the idolatry and polarizing academic politics surrounding the study of Shakespeare and then allays reader anxieties by setting up the plays as engaging historical works instead of items to check off a cultural literacy list. Next Metzger takes you into real classrooms for a complete look at how she and other educators teach several major works, including Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet, offering both a framework for teaching any Shakespearean drama and play-specific essential questions for teaching ten of his other most popular plays. Covering topics like teaching to standards, the challenges nonnative speakers face reading Shakespeare, and formatting lessons for AP instruction, Shakespeare Without Fear will help you create conditions where Shakespeare explodes off the page and into the imaginations of your students.