Golden Lads & Lasses: Shakespeare for Children children's exhibition

This article collects the children's exhibition material featured in the Golden Lads & Lasses: Shakespeare for Children exhibition. Specifically, this article focuses on Games and Activities for children.

The world of Shakespeare’s stories and poems seems made for children. Through illustrations, riddle card games, and even paper dolls, explore the creative ways in which Shakespeare has been presented to children over the centuries. All of the objects and drawings seen here can be found at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Park's Shakespeare Characters

This picture game is one that could be played at the Twelfth Night Festival. The game is a large, hand-colored engraved sheet showing twenty-four Shakespearean characters in blocks, each the size of a playing card. Beneath each character is a silly riddle. Presumably, the cards were to be cut out and passed around the table where guests would take turns asking the riddles and guessing the answers.

Riddles from the Riddle Card Game

Q: Why is a flea like a railway?
A: Because it runs upon sleepers.
  • Othello from Othello
Q: Why is an honest man like barley sugar?
A: Because he is candid [candied].
Q: Why is a woman in error like a young lady taken prisoner?
A: Because she is mis-taken.
  • Henry VIII from Henry VIII
Q: Why is a cautious tradesman like a student in divinity?
A: Because he studies the profits [prophets].
Q: Why is a fretful man like a loaf of bread baked too much?
A: Because he is crusty.
  • Duke of Gloster from Richard III
Q: Why is an eating house keeper like a doctor?
A: Because he profits by consumption.
Q: Why is an invalid old man like a well driven nail?
A: Because he is in-firm.
  • Prosporo from The Tempest
Q: What bird is that which always calls its own name?
A: A cuckoo.
Q: Why is the cross on the top of St. Paul's like an abandoned character?
A: Because it is covered over with guilt [gilt].
  • Mrs. Page from Merry Wives of Windsor
Q: Why are trousers that are too big in every way like two towns in France?
A: Because they are too long [Toulon] or too loose [Toulouse].
Q: Why are children whose parents are dead like worn out shoes?
A: Because they are [left off-ens] orphans.
  • Hamlet from Hamlet
Q: Why is a boy doing his sums like a serpent erect?
A: Because he is an adder up.
Q: Can you spell Brandy in three letters?
A: B, R, & Y.
  • Romeo from Romeo and Juliet
Q: Why is the letter “F” like death?
A: Because it is at the end of life [E] and the beginning of the grave [G].
Q: Why is an endeavour to obtain perpetual motion like a barren tree?
A: Fruitless.
  • Beatrice from Much Ado About Nothing
Q: Why is a man searching for the philosopher’s stone like Neptune?
A: Because he is seeking what never existed.
Q: What “graphy” do young schoolboys like the best?
A: Top-ography.
  • Imogine from Cymbeline
Q: What is the difference between 5 and 20 and twice 25?
A: Twenty.
Q: What river would a person name if he suddenly recollected that he was in debt?
A: Ohio.
  • Rosalind from As You Like It
Q: What ingredient in a salad would express our native land?
A: Sweet isle [sweet oil].
Q: Why is a man approaching a candle like another about to get off his horse?
A: Because he is going to alight.
  • Shylock from Merchant of Venice
Q: Why is wit like a Chinese lady's foot?
A: Brevity is the soul /sole/ of wit.
Q: When is a ship not a ship?
A: When she is a-shore.
  • Katharine from Taming of the Shrew
Q: When is a tree as comfortable as a bed?
A: When its down.

A Daughter's Desperate Plea

In this activity, you will compare an illustration by Gertrude Demain Hammond with the text from William Shakespeare’s The Tempest that inspired it.

Have a look at the drawing. Take a moment to study what is happening in the drawing. What do you see?

Now read the text below:

If by your art, my dearest father, you have
Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them.
The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch,
But that the sea, mounting to th’ welkin’s cheek,
Dashes the fire out. O, I have suffered
With those that I saw suffer! A brave vessel,
Who had, no doubt, some noble creature in her,
Dashed all to pieces. O, the cry did knock
Against my very heart! Poor souls, they perished.
Had I been any god of power, I would
Have sunk the sea within the earth or ere
It should the good ship so have swallowed, and
The fraughting souls within her.
(The Tempest, 1.2.1-13)

In this monologue, Miranda begs her father, Prospero, a magician, to calm the rage of the storm and sea.

  • Can you see how the illustrator used the text to inform her picture?
  • What words or phrases were used to describe the power of the storm and force of wind? The destruction of the ship?
  • What clues does the illustrator give you of Prospero’s ability to command the storm?
  • Do you think Ms. Hammond did a good job?

Illustrations inspired by Text

These pictures were drawn to dramatize scenes from Shakespeare's play Hamlet . They are from a book called The Lives and Tragical Deaths of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, and the lovely Ophelia, which is illustrated with a foldout handcolored plate showing four scenes from the play.

In this activity, you will read a text from a Shakespeare play and then draw a picture based on that text.

Mercutio’s Queen Mab Speech

In the play Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio–Romeo’s best friend–describes Queen Mab, a fairy that drives her chariot across the faces of sleeping people and compels them to dream.

MERCUTIO: She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the forefinger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atom
Over men’s noses as they lie asleep.
Her wagon-spokes made of long spinners’ legs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
Her traces, of the smallest spider’s web,
Her collars, of the moonshine’s watery beams,
Her whip of cricket’s bone; the lash of film,
Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat,
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut,
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out o’mind the fairies’ coach-makers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love.
(Romeo and Juliet, 1.4.59-76)

Based on the description, what do you think Queen Mab’s chariot looks like? Draw a picture that illustrates the text.

Enobarbus’ Description of Cleopatra

In this monologue from the play Antony and Cleopatra, Enobarbus, Antony’s most loyal friend, describes the moment Cleopatra, the Queen of Egypt, arrives in Rome. This is the first time Antony sees Cleopatra and he instantly falls in love with her.

ENOBARBUS: The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne
Burned on the water. The poop was beaten gold,
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were lovesick with them. The oars were silver,
Which to the tunes of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggared all description: she did lie
In her pavilion—cloth-of-gold of tissue—
O’erpicturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature. On each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-colored fans, whose wind did seem
To glow their delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid did.
(Antony and Cleopatra, 2.2.227-242)

Based on the description, what do you think Cleopatra’s barge looked like? What do you think Cleopatra looked like? Do you think she was beautiful based on the description? Draw a picture of both Cleopatra and her barge.

Macbeth and the Three Witches

In this scene from the play Macbeth, Macbeth re-visits the three witches he met at the beginning of the play who predicted that he would become king. Fearful for his life, he asks the witches to conjure a spell to tell him the outcome of his treacherous deeds.

WITCH 1: Round about the caldron go;
In the poison'd entrails throw.—
Toad, that under cold stone,
Days and nights has thirty-one;
Swelter'd venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i' the charmed pot!
ALL: Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
WITCH 2: Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
ALL: Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
WITCH 3: Scale of dragon; tooth of wolf;
Witches' mummy; maw and gulf
Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark;
Root of hemlock digg'd i the dark;
Add thereto a tiger's chaudron,
For the ingrediants of our caldron.
ALL: Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
(Macbeth, 4.1.1-36)

Based on the description, can you draw the cauldron and the ingredients of the spell?

Modern Day Heroines

A heroine is often an ordinary person in extraordinary circumstances, who, despite the odds being stacked against her, typically prevails in the end. In 1851, during the Victorian era, Mary Cowden Clarke’s wrote the book, The Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Heroines, which explores the childhoods of Shakespeare’s female characters.

Click on Ophelia's Childhood to read an excerpt from The Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Heroines. This moment is a scene between Ophelia, her brother Laertes and their father, Polonius. All three characters are from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Below are some heroines you might know from books, comics, and movies.

Alice: Alice in Wonderland
Ariel: The Little Mermaid
Belle: Beauty and the Beast
Cinderella: Cinderella
Jean Grey: X-Men
Mulan: Mulan
Rogue: X-Men
Snow White: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Storm: X-Men
Sue Storm: Fantastic Four

Can you imagine what life was like when these characters were little? Choose one or two characters and write a short story based on what you think her childhood was like.

Twelfth Night Characters

What's a Hornbook Anyway?