Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Shakespeare Author Cards

Jones, Keith. Shakespeare Author Cards. © 2009
If you grew up playing the classic "Authors" card game, you'll love this modernized, Shakespearean version! And it's offered free, courtesy of Bardfilm in honor of our first anniversary (appropriately, the paper anniversary).

Here's how to get the cards ready:
  1. Click on each image below (to enlarge them), then save them to your computer.
  2. Print them out (ideally, on card stock). I've even included an image to place on the reverse side of the cards.

  3. Cut the printed sheets into a set of fifty-two Shakespeare-related cards! [See below for instructions on how to play the game.]

Now you're ready to start playing the game! Here are the game instructions. Ideally, you should have more than two players, but you can get by with just two—especially if you're using this as a parent-child bonding game.
  1. Deal seven cards to each player. Place the remaining cards face down in the middle of the table.

  2. The player to the left of the dealer may ask any other player for a card that matches one that she holds in her hands. For example, if she has the Queen of Hearts (Henry the Fourth, Part Two), she may say, "Do you have Richard the Second, a play from Shakespeare's Second Tetralogy?"

  3. If that player has the card, he must give it to her, and she may ask any player (including the one who had Richard II) for another card. If that payer does not have the card, she must draw from the pile.

  4. Play passes to the next player, who may ask any player for a card matching one in his hand.

  5. When a player gets all four works in a given category, she places them face up on the table in front of her, saying, for example, "The Second Tetralogy is complete!"

  6. The player with the most sets at the end of the game wins! He or she then gets to choose which Shakespeare film to watch that night.
We hope you enjoy this game enormously. Good luck!

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Bardfilm is normally written as one word, though it can also be found under a search for "Bard Film Blog." Bardfilm is a Shakespeare blog (admittedly, one of many Shakespeare blogs), and it is dedicated to commentary on films (Shakespeare movies, The Shakespeare Movie, Shakespeare on television, Shakespeare at the cinema), plays, and other matter related to Shakespeare (allusions to Shakespeare in pop culture, quotes from Shakespeare in popular culture, quotations that come from Shakespeare, et cetera).

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
All material original to this blog is copyrighted: Copyright 2008-2039 (and into perpetuity thereafter) by Keith Jones.

The very instant that I saw you did / My heart fly to your service; there resides, / To make me slave to it; and, for your sake, / Am I this patient [b]log-man.

—The Tempest