Amleth Legend Hamlet Introductory Activity

This resource will kick off your Hamlet unit by introducing students to the Danish folktale that inspired Shakespeare's play: the legend of Amleth.

Reading Amleth is an ideal way to start off your students' study of Hamlet. This resource makes use of Oliver Elton's 1905 translation of Saxo Grammaticus' version of the tale, which gives students a chance to ease into the more challenging language of Shakespeare's text. Amleth allows students to preview the plot and some of the themes of the play without spoilers, because Shakespeare made plenty of changes to the legend in his own version!

The resource includes:

• A full eleven-page version, and an abridged four-page version, for you to choose between based on the time you have available.
• SIX different versions depending on whether you want the full text or an abridged one; whether you want a digital or a printable version; and whether you prefer to use PDFs or PowerPoint slides (which can also be uploaded to Google Slides).
• Vocabulary support on every page, with a focus on words that also appear in Shakespeare's text.
• Questions on every page to check for understanding, scaffold writing skills, and get students analyzing the text.

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Teaching Hamlet this year? I also offer Scene by Scene Writing Tasks to wrap writing instruction into your unit, and Essential Question Discussion Questions for this play.

Provide more context for your Shakespeare unit with my Run-on sentence correction activities about Renaissance literature.

Looking for other literature resources? Check out my Miss Brill Digital Close Reading, Cask of Amontillado Digital Close Reading and my FREE Short Story Analysis Template!

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