Cancel Shakespeare? FIE!

 

I've read about this now and then—about the "canceling" of Shakespeare. Not entirely, of course, but certain plays for certain reasons (say, The Merchant of Venice or Othello), and the other day this article popped up in my email: "The Case Against Shakespeare," a piece by a teacher and a huge fan of the Bard.  (Link to article.)

The writer is suggesting that we should put off teaching any Shakespeare until, oh, senior year in high school—teach some sonnets earlier but not a full-length play.

I disagree with that strongly (as many of my former students will recall). I taught plays to 8th-12th graders and had a lot of fun doing so—having more fun the more I learned myself about the Bard and his times.

I taught The Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, and Othello (this last, to college freshmen). And as the years went on, I began to expand how I approached each play.

I should back up and say that my own high school (and early college) experiences were not especially good. Caesar and Macbeth in high school, Macbeth again my freshman year in college. In none of those classes did the teachers make much of an effort to introduce us to the Bard or his times. Basically, we were on our own with the footnotes (and, okay, Cliffsnotes). As a result I got no true "feel" for the plays—or the writer—at all.

So when I began teaching Shrew to my 8th graders (1985-86) I was pretty ignorant myself about all of it. But teaching, as I wrote here the other day, I'd always seen as a chance to educate myself as well as the kids.

And so I did.

Before starting I would tell them that if Shakespeare were to somehow appear at their lunch table, he wouldn't understand a thing of what they were talking about or doing. In order to communicate with us, he would have to learn about us and our world.

So we have to do the same with his language and his world.

Soon, my 8th graders and I were devoting an entire 9-week marking period to the enterprise—learning about Elizabethan music, games (we played some), religion, history, schooling, dress, family life, etc. By the time we started the play, we were pretty much imbedded in the era—a couple of years I even required them to use forms of thee and thou when they spoke in class.

Then we read the play aloud, together, pausing for discussion and explanation, before we saw the film. And every year—every single year—I caught things I’d missed on previous readings—and kids would say things I’d never thought of. I found it exciting.

With Hamlet, in my final years, I stopped when we finished Act IV, saw the movie (Mel Gibson!), before going through Act V. I didn't want to spoil the end for them before they saw it.

Oh, and I loved beginning to read the play with them. The first line is “Who’s there?” And I would stop the reading and say, “Man, this is a hard play!”

The other thing we did regularly was memorize lines. I  asked my 8th graders to memorize one of two sonnets—“Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day” and “My Mistress’ Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun.” And, also, a passage from the play we were reading.

My eighth graders also had to recite that sonnet in front of the class. One year I had a young man who refused to do it—willing to take an F. I decided to bribe him. I offered him a dollar. No. Five dollars. No—and by now his classmates were calling out, “Come ON, man.” I took a look in my wallet. “Ten dollars.” By now there was near-chaos in the class. So he stood and walked to the front of the room while the other kids cheered.

He stumbled through it—but completed it all right. I had the ten waiting for him.

He refused it. “Nah,” he said. “It’s Shakespeare.”

Indeed it is.