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I have to say, as much as I enjoy your blog, I don’t think it’s a good idea to push Shakespeare on such young children. Shakespeare’s plays are for adults, and though I read some of them as a teenager, I didn’t really appreciate them til in my 30s. If you try to explain his plays to youngsters, you’re going to constantly run into concepts that just aren’t for kids to hear about: murder, lust, revenge, adultery … Now granted, I have taken my 4 year-old to see a couple of free plays in the park, where I could enjoy them and she could watch a little and then play a little. She has no idea that people die at the end of Romeo and Juliet: her interpretation was that “everybody fell down”. Which was true enough, and I didn’t feel a need to extrapolate. I think it’s best to give her the space to know about Shakespeare and to know that I love his work, and then she can come to his plays when she is ready. But there’s just no need to rush into it. A four year-old who can recite To Be or Not to Be is just like a dog doing a trick, and kids shouldn’t be used for our amusement. Just a friendly suggestion from a regular reader.–Bob