This essay is about teaching Shakespeare, based on my experience of exploring "King Lear" with a Year 7 class. The evidence I use is drawn from one lesson, in which I offered students the opportunity to reject Shakespeare's version of the story. In this, I hope to demonstrate that the act of offering students a choice is a simple but powerful one -- positioning students as experts and empowering them to feel a sense of ownership over Shakespeare. The question of how to teach Shakespeare is not a new one, but it is one which we need to continue asking. Just as the works of Shakespeare "work" in the classroom because of their capacity for reinterpretation, so must we, as English teachers, be capable of reinterpreting what Shakespeare-teaching looks like: revising our pedagogy; repositioning our students; and making space for students to reinvent Shakespeare, for themselves, in each and every lesson.