Shakespeare

Nick 0208 Ldn

News 24
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Mar 10, 2004
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I went to see The Taming of the Shrew at the Globe a few days ago, it reallty is a unique setting.

The school curriculum doesn't draws the pupil in as it might i don't think, or at least it didn't in my case. Make it more visual and interactive IMO.

I didn't know until a recent documentary just how influential and popular the bard is in India.
 
Nick 0208 Ldn said:
The school curriculum doesn't draws the pupil in as it might i don't think,
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Yeah, it's sometimes a struggle to interest people in his work as it is - despite its brilliance - let alone with lacklustre teaching; the 'olde worlde' language puts some people off. I notice that Hilary Mantel, in her Tudor series of novels, employs a rather modern style of dialogue rather than striving for a more authentic vocabulary; in this way, the books are thoroughly readable & enjoyable to those who might not ordinarily favour Historical Fiction. Granted the Henrician period isn't truly contemporary with Shakespeare's own, but the point holds: sadly, Shakespeare's language often has to be modernised to attract its 'less-natural' audience/readership. And this, of course, leaves aside the whole matter of staging his plays in more modern settings and dress.
 
Nick 0208 Ldn said:
I went to see The Taming of the Shrew at the Globe a few days ago, it reallty is a unique setting.

The school curriculum doesn't draws the pupil in as it might i don't think, or at least it didn't in my case. Make it more visual and interactive IMO.

I didn't know until a recent documentary just how influential and popular the bard is India.
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What documentary is this?
 
I didn't pay attention in English at all, c'ept to the Shakespear stuff, that interested me, then once that module was over it was back to sleep time.
 
For all his brilliance, he's unfortunately and ironically been one of the largest causes of youths turning off from literature. Having his works forced upon high school youths is so wrong, imo. For every two or three at that age who get his genius, they're will be 50 more who will be scarred into loathing real literature forever. So much of our "education" is backasswards in that sense. It's like making a kid predominately practice learning to read music at first instead of teaching him or her basic songs they like to motivate them first, and then lead them gently into theory and practicing scales, etc. The same with something like football. Let them play games and cultivate a love for it instead of grinding them down with too many technical and tactical exercises.

You have to find a natural course into cultivating the arts as opposed to a "master" imposing their will.
 
Nobby style said:
For all his brilliance, he's unfortunately and ironically been one of the largest causes of youths turning off from literature. Having his works forced upon high school youths is so wrong, imo. For every two or three at that age who get his genius, they're will be 50 more who will be scarred into loathing real literature forever. So much of our "education" is backasswards in that sense. It's like making a kid predominately practice learning to read music at first instead of teaching him or her basic songs they like to motivate them first, and then lead them gently into theory and practicing scales, etc. The same with something like football. Let them play games and cultivate a love for it instead of grinding them down with too many technical and tactical exercises.

You have to find a natural course into cultivating the arts as opposed to a "master" imposing their will.
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Great post.
 
SteveJ said:
Yeah, it's sometimes a struggle to interest people in his work as it is - despite its brilliance - let alone with lacklustre teaching; the 'olde worlde' language puts some people off. I notice that Hilary Mantel, in her Tudor series of novels, employs a rather modern style of dialogue rather than striving for a more authentic vocabulary; in this way, the books are thoroughly readable & enjoyable to those who might not ordinarily favour Historical Fiction. Granted the Henrician period isn't truly contemporary with Shakespeare's own, but the point holds: sadly, Shakespeare's language often has to be modernised to attract its 'less-natural' audience/readership. And this, of course, leaves aside the whole matter of staging his plays in more modern settings and dress.
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It's quite a difficult issue really. The genius of Shakespeare is in both the story and the language, and the two combined make him what he is.

The biggest problem is that the language is inaccessible to anyone who just wants to read it fluently. You can buy Shakespeare with a commentary and a 'dictionary' down the side, but it's annoying to have to keep flicking over and working out what everything means. Reading it makes me recall when I used to try and read in a foreign language for the first time. It's mind-numbing.

You'd probably be able to gauge this better than me, but I reckon there are more people who have seen Shakespeare performed on stage than there are who have actually read any of his plays cover to cover for pleasure. The pleasure bit is important; you have to exclude the school children who are forced to go over The Tempest in excruciating detail and are scarred for life.
 
Nobby style said:
For all his brilliance, he's unfortunately and ironically been one of the largest causes of youths turning off from literature. Having his works forced upon high school youths is so wrong, imo. For every two or three at that age who get his genius, they're will be 50 more who will be scarred into loathing real literature forever. So much of our "education" is backasswards in that sense. It's like making a kid predominately practice learning to read music at first instead of teaching him or her basic songs they like to motivate them first, and then lead them gently into theory and practicing scales, etc. The same with something like football. Let them play games and cultivate a love for it instead of grinding them down with too many technical and tactical exercises.

You have to find a natural course into cultivating the arts as opposed to a "master" imposing their will.
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I should have read this post before making my own. Great post.
 
Shakespeare is easy in comparison to say Chaucer, or other 'olde' English texts. If children leaving secondary school could read Shakespeare - obviously one of the easier plays - we'd see a dramatic increase in the quality of written and spoken English.

I feel strongly about this as a Literature graduate and will concede that I look at this from a biased viewpoint, but at GCSE I never considered Macbeth for example particularly hard-reading.

So it is almost certainly the teaching we should be examining.
 
They let us watch movies or plays a lot, the teacher would stop and explain or get us to explain every so often.
 
At the English school I used to study at, you could choose different subjects to focus at for a 4 week period and one time I chose Shakespeare. It was really cool since the teacher had a modern and passionate approach to it, we ended up focusing on Twelfth Night mostly.
 
Adzzz said:
Shakespeare is easy in comparison to say Chaucer, or other 'olde' English texts. If children leaving secondary school could read Shakespeare - obviously one of the easier plays - we'd see a dramatic increase in the quality of written and spoken English.

I feel strongly about this as a Literature graduate and will concede that I look at this from a biased viewpoint, but at GCSE I never considered Macbeth for example particularly hard-reading.

So it is almost certainly the teaching we should be examining.
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There is no way Macbeth is remotely easy-reading to the average kid. I mean, once you look up all the words it's OK, but lets take this extract from Act I as an example.

Doubtful it stood;
As two spent swimmers, that do cling together
And choke their art. The merciless Macdonwald--
Worthy to be a rebel, for to that
The multiplying villanies of nature
Do swarm upon him--from the western isles
Of kerns and gallowglasses is supplied;
And fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling,
Show'd like a rebel's whore: but all's too weak:
For brave Macbeth--well he deserves that name--
Disdaining fortune, with his brandish'd steel,
Which smoked with bloody execution,
Like valour's minion carved out his passage
Till he faced the slave;
Which ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,
Till he unseam'd him from the nave to the chaps,
And fix'd his head upon our battlements.

Give that to a 15 year old and tell him to read it and see how much he genuinely understands. It's a doddle compared to Chaucer, but going through a whole play of that is difficult stuff. And Macbeth is by no means one of his harder plays to get through.
 
Shakespeare's plays (or any play for that matter) were never meant to be read, only to be performed. It's fairly ludicrous to expect anyone, let alone a 13 year old kid, sit down and read them.
 
alastair said:
There is no way Macbeth is remotely easy-reading to the average kid. I mean, once you look up all the words it's OK, but lets take this extract from Act I as an example.

Doubtful it stood;
As two spent swimmers, that do cling together
And choke their art. The merciless Macdonwald--
Worthy to be a rebel, for to that
The multiplying villanies of nature
Do swarm upon him--from the western isles
Of kerns and gallowglasses is supplied;
And fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling,
Show'd like a rebel's whore: but all's too weak:
For brave Macbeth--well he deserves that name--
Disdaining fortune, with his brandish'd steel,
Which smoked with bloody execution,
Like valour's minion carved out his passage
Till he faced the slave;
Which ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,
Till he unseam'd him from the nave to the chaps,
And fix'd his head upon our battlements.

Give that to a 15 year old and tell him to read it and see how much he genuinely understands. It's a doddle compared to Chaucer, but going through a whole play of that is difficult stuff. And Macbeth is by no means one of his harder plays to get through.
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Ah but the problem is we shouldn't expect them to understand every passage, just a good level of understanding for the major passages and general themes of the play.

They should however be able to read any section, regardless of a thorough understanding or not. Whether this is considered papering over the cracks, I couldn't say.

Also, I never said Macbeth was easy, just that it is particularly hard. It is hard, but it's readable.
 
The ideal method for teaching Shakespeare would be to start with a general outline of the characters and story, then watch a performance, with frequent pauses by the teacher to explain important plot points. Only then should they sit down and read the text.
 
Adzzz said:
Ah but the problem is we shouldn't expect them to understand every passage, just a good level of understanding for the major passages and general themes of the play.

They should however be able to read any section, regardless of a thorough understanding or not. Whether this is considered papering over the cracks, I couldn't say.

Also, I never said Macbeth was easy, just that it is particularly hard. It is hard, but it's readable.
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I agree to an extent with the post, and apologies for misconstruing what you said about Macbeth.

It's very difficult to motivate a kid to read a play of which he's understanding about half at most.

The problem with Shakespeare is that you have to concentrate very hard on each individual line to gain even the most basic understanding and consequently it becomes an arduous task to read it, which is the precise opposite of what you want a child to go through when he's being introduced to literature for grown-ups.

I worry about the standard of literacy in schools, and some of the grammar you see employed by otherwise educated people is astonishingly poor. That said, I don't think Shakespeare is really the answer to the problem. Dickens is.
 
alastair said:
I agree to an extent with the post, and apologies for misconstruing what you said about Macbeth.

It's very difficult to motivate a kid to read a play of which he's understanding about half at most.

The problem with Shakespeare is that you have to concentrate very hard on each individual line to gain even the most basic understanding and consequently it becomes an arduous task to read it, which is the precise opposite of what you want a child to go through when he's being introduced to literature for grown-ups.

I worry about the standard of literacy in schools, and some of the grammar you see employed by otherwise educated people is astonishingly poor. That said, I don't think Shakespeare is really the answer to the problem. Dickens is.
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Yeah, likewise I agree with what you're saying, though I do feel with correct teaching Shakespeare can be of particular interest to school-kids because it is simply never dull (well, the best plays anyway) taking Macbeth for example, a man being driven towards bloody violence, madness, some witches - a powerful and deceitful woman. Kids would lap that up presented properly.

Dickens is a good shout, but I fear stuff like Great Expectations and Tale of Two Cities are simply too long for the syllabus and for the students to really engage with.
 
I still think "classics" should be secondary, or just talked about and passages read, or for the couple of exceptional kids who would actually like them. Kids fecking want what's happening in the here and now, nowadays more than ever. Give them an experience they'll enjoy and hopefully ignite some flame for further, more-rewarding lecture, if that's what they're in to. Don't kill them with "classics." There's this idea that education must be painful, wearing the old hairshirt. Fookin' jesuits, man.
 
I can recognise his influence of the English language and English literature, but I find Shakespeare incredibly dull, bar his poetry. 'The Merchant of Venice' is quite good as well. Hate everything else. No idea why teachers force kids to read Early Modern English because it can be a massive pain, and quite frankly really boring if you don't understand the subtle points being made.
 
alastair said:
It's quite a difficult issue really. The genius of Shakespeare is in both the story and the language, and the two combined make him what he is.

The biggest problem is that the language is inaccessible to anyone who just wants to read it fluently. You can buy Shakespeare with a commentary and a 'dictionary' down the side, but it's annoying to have to keep flicking over and working out what everything means. Reading it makes me recall when I used to try and read in a foreign language for the first time. It's mind-numbing.

You'd probably be able to gauge this better than me, but I reckon there are more people who have seen Shakespeare performed on stage than there are who have actually read any of his plays cover to cover for pleasure. The pleasure bit is important; you have to exclude the school children who are forced to go over The Tempest in excruciating detail and are scarred for life.
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Just like he intended then, no?
 
Watching the plays definitely much better. Back in my school our teacher would show movies of the plays and we would talk about them. She would stop them to explain what was going in if any of us got lost. Also, it is much easier to understand when you see the actors, even if you get lost trying to follow the language, you can often figure it out based on the body language and facial expressions of the actors.
 
My main connection with Shakespeare is when I realised I was a victim of bullying by my old English Lit teacher at A-Level. It became pretty obvious she didn't like me much when she kept making me read and act out all of the lines by Iago from Othello. It became pretty well known outside of our class to the point where some people still refer to me as Iago to this day.

In any case my overall experience with Shakespeare is mixed. I remember when I was young really enjoying the stories that were created, it just when it came to the latter study of text where it became rather tedious.
 
Maybe some things are best learnt apart from the original source. For example, I learned to admire Shakespeare's genius, ironically, from Orson Welles' often-imperfect & idiosyncratic filmed versions of the great man's works. Now, to many readers, the Macbeth soliloquies might seem as drab as the more long-winded episodes of (for instance) the Bible...yet in Welles' 1948 Macbeth film, Orson set these monologues against backgrounds of rolling fog, desolate landscapes etc etc, with only the unseen actors' voices as accompaniment. The setting lends these scenes a timeless grandeur...the timeless grandeur which the actual text of the play possesses. In my view, Hilary Mantel pulls-off a similar trick in her Booker Prize-winning Wolf Hall - there are quiet interludes in the novel, aside from the violent drama of Henry VIII's court, in which the splendid language - the inner thoughts of Mantel's hero Thomas Cromwell - 'speaks' loudest to the reader. These are still moments when nothing really dramatic is happening; and yet, the scenes are framed in such a way that these 'quiet words' are the story's most memorable of all, just as in Welles' Macbeth interludes.

Back to my original point: I've read that today's teachers sometimes play Schindler's List to their pupils, in order to best show them how things were for those who suffered under the Nazis; this, it is said, really brings home to the students how awful those times were, far more readily than the reading of dry ol' history textbooks. But even those films which are perhaps less historically accurate might help the young to be more passionate about the past & learn the lessons which inform our present and future; likewise, as crass as some modern adaptations of the Bard's plays might be, such informal works at least have the benefit of being more understandable and immediate (to the young) than the sometimes off-putting and intricate words of Shakespeare's stellar works.
 
eric le roi said:
Shakespeare's plays (or any play for that matter) were never meant to be read, only to be performed. It's fairly ludicrous to expect anyone, let alone a 13 year old kid, sit down and read them.
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Spot on.

It is the equivalent of taking a movie and rather than showing it to a school audience, forcing them to sit down and read the screenplay.
 
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