About the author

Cedric Bennett writes scene-by-scene guides to the plays of William Shakespeare, along with student workbooks for the classroom.

I came to Shakespeare as a theater director long before I read him the way a teacher does: for staging, rhythm, and the choices actors have to make. Directing productions taught me things about the plays no classroom ever could — how a line actually lands when it's spoken aloud, where an actor needs room to breathe, and which "difficult" passages become perfectly clear the moment someone stands up and says them.

Teaching at the Milan Academy of Arts and staging plays with students turned out to be a far better way into the text than any textbook. It still shapes how I read a play: less as a text to be dissected, more as a score waiting to be performed.

Too many Shakespeare resources either drown readers in footnotes or skip the hard parts entirely. I try to do neither. Each guide walks through a play scene by scene — what happens, why it matters, and what's actually worth discussing — and the workbooks give students room to think on the page, not just fill in blanks.

I've also spent more hours than I'd like to admit arguing with Shakespeare, mostly about whether Othello is really the flawless military man everyone assumes he is. (He isn't, and that's rather the point.)

Whether you're a student facing your first Shakespeare play, a teacher planning your next unit, or simply a curious reader — welcome. And to the teachers: thank you for the work you do every single day.