During the 1800s, textbooks called “readers” not only helped students learn to read, but supplied them with material to memorize and present. Among the best known of these were the McGuffey Readers produced by Professor William Holmes McGuffey. Like modern textbooks, readers were created for different grade levels. Those intended for older, more advanced students often included short sections of Shakespeare’s plays, which were sometimes used to teach moral lessons. For many, these fragmentary samples were their first—and perhaps their only—encounter with Shakespeare’s works. Jonathan Burton explores the meaning of these passages to students of the day.
Jonathan Burton
Associate professor of English, West Virginia University
How McGuffey finessed religious objections to the plays
Shakespeare and morality
Shakespeare in the early McGuffey Readers
