In this weekend’s By the Book interview in The New York Times Book Review, author Geraldine Brooks wrote, “I taught writing at Harvard last year and half my students had never read a Shakespeare play. That set my hair on fire.”
Mine too.
How are we now letting high school students get by without any exposure to the Bard? Of course, I didn’t feel this way in high school when I groaned at the thought of reading musty old plays for school.
My exposure to Shakespeare at SLRHS included “The Merchant of Venice”, “Macbeth”, “Romeo and Juliet”, and “King Lear”. I ended up reading “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “The Tempest” thanks to the Reader’s Digest copies that my Mom had on the small bookcase near the front door.
Sure there were ghosts, witches, faeries, magic, and things that go bump in the night in some of his works and I found that wonderfully exciting as a high school student. It appealed to my comic book reading, Elric of Melniboné, and D&D sensibilities. Heck, there are “Star Trek” episodes based on works by Shakespeare. However, more importantly, there is a depth to his characters who experience, fall prey to, succumb to, rise above, and embrace deeply emotions that we all see, hear, and feel throughout our lives.
Most helpful to me were the discussions of these characters and their feelings among my peers which led me to a greater understanding of the length and breadth of human emotion. We can all love someone and have that love accepted or rejected. We can hate, be jealous, envious, vainglorious, ambitious, sage, and reckless. We can all feel what Shakespeare’s characters felt and our perceptions of these characters were shaped by our circumstances and empathy. Through these classes, I learned that I wasn’t an island unto myself with the feelings that surged and raged inside of me.
To me, his words are of the utmost importance. Shakespeare is humanity writ large but written close and essential to understanding the human condition.
“When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors, Landor replies, “Yet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life.”
―Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), Letters and Social Aims.
What works of Shakespeare (good or bad) stuck with you? Should Shakespeare be required learning?
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