Grade Leve 4-8

8 Short Plays for the Classroom with Background Infromation, Writing Prompts, and Creative Activities

PLAYS:

The Song of Roland
     Story about the greatest of the legendary knights to serve Charlemagne

Basclavret
     The story uses the folklore of lycanthropy (a person becoming a wolf by witchcraft or magic), a subject of deep fascination to Europeans in the Middle Ages, as a backdrop for a morality tale.

Robin Hood Helps a Sorrowful Knight
     Adapted from what scholars believe may have been the first of the many stories about the legendary English outlaw Robin Hood. 

The Making of the Magna Carta
     This play is a dramatization of the events leading up to the creation of the Magna Carta, the document that was to become the foundation of the British Constitution and the law of many democratic nations, including the United States.

The Divided Horse Blanket
     This story was meant to warn parents about what might happen to them if they handed their land over to their children without safeguards such as a written contract.

Joan of Arc
     Tells the life story of the French national heroine who became a Roman Catholic saint.

Patient Griselda
     Is an adaptation from one of the 24 tales in The Canterbury Tales

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
     Based on the poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.  Sir Gawain is King Arthur's nephew. he is courageous and constant in the face of terror and temptation.  He emerges from a series of tests as the model of knighthood.