break the ice
catch a cold
a heart of gold
Love is blind.

Have you ever used one of these common phrases in English? If you have, you have used language that came to us from Shakespeare. April 23 is the 400th anniversary of the death of the great English writer William Shakespeare. Shakespeare wrote at least thirty-eight plays and more than 150 short and long poems. Hundreds of years after his death we still read and watch performances of his work. Shakespeare is also the most translated author ever. According to the Folger Shakespeare Library, his work is read in at least eighty languages.

Shakespeare’s language can be a challenge for fluent English speakers. If you’re an English language learner, you might think that Shakespeare is not for for you, but there are many different ways you can learn about his work, his life, and his language and improve your English skills. You probably know something about the characters and the plots of some of his most famous plays, like Romeo and Juliet, already. Be part of this year's big Shakespeare celebration! Try some of these free websites and books and e-books from the library to learn more about the Bard.

Free Websites

These  lessons  are best for intermediate to advanced English language learners

British Council Learning English: Shakespeare
Why are his plays still so popular four hundred years after his death? Watch these video lessons about Shakespeare's life and his writing, and listen to people talk about why they love Shakespeare. Each video has exercises to help you check your understanding and learn important vocabulary.  

British Council Learn English Teens
Watch animated videos that explain the plots of five of Shakespeare's most famous plays: Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, and TheTempest. There are exercises after each video to help you check your understanding.

BBC Learning English: Shakespeare Speaks
This is a series of animated video lessons to help you learn well-known expressions that Shakespeare introduced into the English language, like "dead as a doornail" and "wild goose chase." There are exercises with each video to help you test your comprehension and practice the new vocabulary.

The Influence of Shakespeare on Everyday English
This video on the EngVid.com website introduces common English expressions like “break the ice” and “catch a cold” that come to us from Shakespeare’s plays. You can do a multiple choice quiz after the lesson to test your knowledge.

Shakespeare on VOA Learning English
This website has many types of lessons for language learnerr at all levels, including  a two-part report about Shakespeare. You can listen to the stories and read along on the screen: The Works of William Shakespeare Remain Full of Life and William Shakespeare: Star of Stage and Screen

Folger Shakespeare Library
The Folger Shakespeare Library website has many interesting and helpful materials. Some good places For English language learners to start are their FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page, which gives information about Shakespeare’s life and work and the brief synopses or summaries of all the plays. If you are already familiar with some of Shakespeare’s plays and characters, you can test your knowledge with this Who Am I? Quiz on the Shakespeare for Kids page.

Advanced language learners can take a virtual tour of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. in this one-hour “Experiencing Shakespeare” video on the PBS Learning website. This video does not have captions available.

Shakespeare’s Globe: Fact Sheets
The Globe Theatre in London also has lots of information about Shakespeare on its website. You can read about the plays,and learn how they are staged and performed. This is a link to short fact sheets about Shakespeare’s life, the original Globe Theater, where many of his plays were first performed, and other topics.

Read an adapted version of a Shakespeare play:

Would you like to read Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, The Merchant of Venice, or A Midsummer Night’s Dream? There are simplified versions of some of Shakespeare’s most famous plays written for English language learners. You can request some of these adapted plays in the library catalog.

The Shakespeare Today series retells some of Shakespeare’s most famous plays in today’s English. This series is intended for teen readers, but it could also be fun reading for adult English language learners. You can borrow some of these twenty-first century versions of Shakespeare from our e-book collection.

Visit our eBook Central page for help borrowing and downloading e-books from the library.

Tales from Shakespeare by Tina Packer retells ten of Shakespeare’s most famous plays with illustrations by Gail de Marcken.

Stories from Shakespeare by Geraldine McCaughrean retells the stories ten of the most famous plays and includes quotations from Shakespeare.

Leon Garfield's Shakespeare Stories, which retells twelve of the most famous plays, is available from the library as an e-book.  Shakespeare Stories II by Leon Garfield retells nine less frequently adapted Shakespeare plays.

These next two books are very well-known children’s books written in the nineteenth century.  Some of the vocabulary and sentence structure will be challenging for students learning English in 2016. The books are now in the public domain, so they are available online for free. You won’t need a library card.

The Children’s Shakespeare by Edith Nesbit, originally published in 1895, retells twelve of Shakespeare’s most famous plays.  Each story is about four or five pages long. You can download and read this book through the Hathi Trust website. You can also listen to a free audiobook from Librivox.

Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb was first published in 1807. This book tells the stories of eighteen of Shakespeare's plays, and each story is about 10-12 pages long. You can download and read Tales from Shakespeare through the Hathi Trust website. You can also listen to a free audiobook from LibriVox.