Play the Knave* combines a karaoke-style interface with mixed reality to help students perform dramatic scenes.

* Knave, n.
1. A dishonest, unprincipled man (often associated with acting troupes in the 16th and 17th centuries)
​2. A male servant or page; of low rank or status
Our award-winning digital game provides a new way for students to learn Shakespeare. It prioritizes getting students up on their feet and engaging with the text from new angles. For more information on how Play the Knave can be implemented in classrooms, please see our Education page.

Free. The game is free to download. For teachers who do not have the required hardware, we offer an equipment loan program. We waive shipping fees for participants in our research study. Learn more at our Education page and Equipment Loan Program page.

Customizable. Design your virtual production of a scene, selecting your avatars, music, stage, and script. Select one from among hundreds of preloaded Shakespeare scripts or upload your own script for up to four characters. The platform is designed to be quickly modifiable to serve the needs of different learning contexts.

Active participation. As you and fellow players perform, your avatars move around the virtual stage with help from a Kinect motion-sensing camera. Your voices and avatars are recorded to create an animated film that can later be viewed, edited, or shared.
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Learning Outcomes. In addition to access to our equipment, we offer teachers lesson plans and assignments designed to meet Common Core learning standards.

The concept, content, and design for Play the Knave are the product of an established collaboration between faculty members and students from the University of California, Davis. Our team includes literary critics, theater artists, designers, and computer scientists.

Awards and Recognition

BBC News

Jane O’Brien from BBC News visited us at the University of California, Davis, to learn more about Play the Knave and how we are using gaming technology to bring Shakespeare to 21st century audiences.

​Watch video to the left, or you can read the full story on BBC.com.

Exhibitions

Play the Knave was one of the projects featured at a series of international events commemorating the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death. Included among these was the Folger Shakespeare Library’s national tour “The First Folio: The Book that Gave us Shakespeare.” We were honored to be included in two First Folio Exhibitions: at Gallaudet University’s “Shakespeare in American Deaf History” and at the University of Iowa (video on right).

Check out some of the places we’ve exhibited Play the Knave on our Gallery page.

Learn more

For a deep dive into how and why we created Play the Knave, read our
born-digital, open access book.
Gina Bloom, Evan Buswell, Colin Milburn, and Nick Toothman, Experimenting with Shakespeare: Games and Play in the Laboratory ​(EMC Imprint, University of California Santa Barbara, 2024).

Download for free

Play the Knave is available to download at no cost. For more information on borrowing a kit with all the necessary equipment and integrating the game into classrooms with our lesson plans, check out our Education page.