The Art of Tragedy · Year One · Fall Term
How much is fate, and how much is our own hand?
Fifteen weeks with Shakespeare’s shortest, fiercest tragedy, for homeschool and co-op students in grades 9–12. We read the play itself, aloud and act by act. Students narrate before anyone tells them what to think, and by the end of the term they are arguing a thesis they arrived at themselves.
Not another dusty Shakespeare unit
Most Macbeth study guides are comprehension questions, vocabulary lists, and a test. This one starts somewhere else: with the student telling back, in their own words, what they met in the reading. Charlotte Mason called narration “the art of knowing,” and it is the backbone of every week.
I taught AP Literature and AP Language in public school for nine years before I homeschooled, and I hold a master’s in Literary Studies. This study keeps the rigor of that classroom and changes what the rigor is for. The analysis is real. It simply grows out of what the student noticed, not out of what I told them to find.
When I returned to teaching Macbeth, I knew I didn’t want it to feel like just another dusty Shakespeare unit. I wanted it to breathe.
From the Journal · Blending Old Loves and New Rhythms
How the term moves
We go through the play act by act, alternating two kinds of weeks, so no one is asked to analyze a scene they have not yet simply read and told back.
Read the act aloud, together. Then narrate: oral at first, written as the term goes on. Some weeks the narration is a tableau, with students freezing a moment from the play into a living picture.
Each one opens the same way:
The arts sit beside the text. We listen to Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain while reading Act I and look closely at Henry Fuseli’s Macbeth painting, so students meet Shakespeare as part of a larger cultural conversation and not as a play in isolation.
From narration to argument
The essay never appears out of nowhere. A student who narrates faithfully for ten weeks has been gathering the evidence for a thesis without knowing it. Read the full approach.
Where the term gathers
How to get it
Macbeth in the fall and Wuthering Heights in the spring, with weekly lessons, handouts, projects, writing, and capstone materials. An optional Honors track is built in.
Want teacher feedback or a live class? See every way to learn.
Questions parents ask
Grades 9–12, though honestly the better question is: is your student ready to sit with a hard book and have a real conversation about it? Grade is a guideline. The student is the guide.
No. Narration doesn’t require prior knowledge, only honest engagement with the text. A student who has never read Shakespeare can absolutely begin with Macbeth.
Yes. You’ll need a copy of Macbeth. Any standard edition works, and the play is in the public domain, so it is easy to find online or at a used bookstore.
Yes, and this approach may be exactly what a struggling writer needs. A student who “can’t write” usually doesn’t yet know what they think. Narration addresses that at the root, and the move from narration to essay is gradual by design. More questions answered here.