Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

On the occasion of an excellent post on how Shakespeare is taught versus how he should be taught by Andrew Cory, I have to make an embarrassing admission (two in one day, ick):

I have never seen a Shakespeare play performed on stage.

There, I said it.

I know, those of you who live in such cultural wastelands as a city whose last five letters are "polis" might not see the problem here, but I'm from Buffalo. You know, the cultural hub of Eastern Lake Erie. Home of Shakespeare In Delaware Park, an annual summer festival where the Bard's plays are performed in Buffalo's Delaware Park for people who pay no admission to lay on the lawn and take in the greatest dramatist (and, well, writer of any type) to ever labor in the English language.

Horrible, just horrible. I've seen a lot of Shakespeare in the movies, and I've read probably half of the plays (though not in quite a while -- I gotta get back into that, one of these days), but I've never seen one of the plays in its original, and intended, medium. But that brings me to my point of agreement with Andrew: Just why are we teaching these plays in English classes as reading exercises?

My first brush with Shakespeare came in ninth grade, with Romeo and Juliet. The first lesson consisted of a couple of handouts about Shakespeare's life, the way things were done at the Globe Theater, some general lecturing on his staggering influence, and then we were sent home to read Act One and answer the discussion questions at the end of it, on a nice sheet of notebook paper because it was to be handed in. And the questions, of course, were the standard stuff: A few easy ones, just to make sure that we understood who did what, and then a few "Here's a definition of a literary term, find some examples of this in Act One" type questions. Ho, hum.

Next morning, the discussions in English Class before the bell rang sounded roughly like this:

"My God! Did you understand any of that?"

"Not really. Why did he go on for line after line just to have two characters say 'hello'?"

"Yeah! And why did they fight, anyway? 'Did you bite your thumb, sir?' What the hell is thumb-biting about? Stupid!"

"Totally. And those stage directions: 'They fight'. Yeah, that conveys it!"

And so on.

It got worse, though. The teacher, sensing correctly that not one student in the class had gone home and spontaneously grokked the Bard, decided that we'd all read Act One aloud. She assigned some parts, thinking that the cutest boy in class (not me) would just love being Romeo, and so on. Did this properly convey to us Shakespeare's genius? Take a wild guess, folks. And it went on like that, each year after that when we reached our token "Shakespeare of the Year" in English -- it got a bit better, but not much. Some of us actually liked Macbeth when we got to it, in eleventh grade, but for the most part, Shakespeare was still a moderate annoyance to be suffered at the English teacher's whim.

But in my school, one of the perks allowed the senior class each year was an optional field trip to Stratford, Ontario to attend the fine Shakespeare theatre there. (I didn't get to go, for some reason I don't recall.) And to a person, every one of my classmates who went came back thrilled at the experience. Testimonials like this:

"It was amazing! When they're on stage acting it out, instead of reading it, you understand it! All those lines make sense!"

"You mean, all that iambic pentameter sounds cool?"

"It sounds awesome! They should have taken us there three years ago!"

Exactly.

I know that teachers are probably loath to rely on the television any more than they absolutely have to, but the thing is: In the case of teaching Shakespeare, I think they absolutely have to (unless the schools just happen to be located near a place where a lot of live Shakespeare performance is going on). I don't know if ninth graders are really equipped to handle Shakespeare, really -- and even if they are, they probably should go with something good and bloody and fantastic, like Macbeth; appealing to our wish for sopping romance with Romeo and Juliet didn't work out so well, I'm afraid. But even so, I suspect that teachers should make the students watch Shakespeare first. That's the only way you get the sense of drama.

I mean, just try this experiment sometime. Try reading the great "St. Crispin's Day" speech from King Henry V, silently. You'll find that it just kind of sits there on the page, and you'll likely come away saying, "Hmmm, that's nice." Then try reading it aloud. If you have any soul at all, and if you're at all responsive to the sounds and phrases shaped by the Bard's words, you'll find your voice falling into a kind of royal cadence without even being aware that you're doing it. No, you won't inspire those in earshot to go with you onto the fields of Agincourt, but that's fine. You're not Olivier or Branagh, after all; you're only you. But you'll feel it.

I guess that's what my teacher was trying to do, with her "Let's read it aloud" bit, but the damage had already been done. Our expectations of Shakespeare had already been shaped by having it reduced to just one more thing to read at night, in between geometry proofs and French verb conjugations. I have no problem with lit classes teaching Shakespeare -- but let's at least return our initial encounter with him to his own home turf. Yes, it may strike some as unthinkable that we have to help Shakespeare out by giving him some home-field advantage, but there it is.

(Andrew also mentions in his post that his realization that Shakespeare should be seen, and not read, via a movie called Looking for Richard. Likewise, I realized the same from a movie: The Man Without a Face.)