"How would our world look if we took critical hope, empathy, and love as the starting point for our learning and our lives? Shakespeare’s Guide to Hope, Life, and Learning presents a conversation between Shakespeare’s most popular plays and our modern experience, between teachers and learners, and between the hopeful and the world at large. The book analyses four Shakespeare plays--King Lear, Hamlet, As You Like It, and Henry V--and reveals how they help us to occupy, appreciate, and responsibly interrogate the perspectives of others. Lisa Dickson, Shannon Murray, and Jessica Riddell explore a diversity of genres--tragedy, history, and comedy--with distinct perspectives from their own lived experiences. They carry on lively conversations in the margins of each essay, mirroring the kind of open, on-going and collaborative thinking Shakespeare demands of us. In their quest for critical empathy, they approach each play with the question: "What is the most wonderful thing about teaching this play in our classrooms?" The book is informed by ideas of justice and transformation, articulated by such thinkers as Paulo Freire, Parker J. Palmer, Ira Shor, John D. Caputo, and bell hooks. In exploring the joy of teaching and experiencing Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s Guide to Hope, Life, and Learning advocates for a critical hope that arises from classroom experiences and moves into the world at large."-- Provided by publisher.