The Debate RAGES!

Crack winds, Blow your cheeks!

Andrew doesn't like Shakespeare - his language that is. So we had a discussion last night that almost ended with a fight. (Theatre people, we're so dramatic!)

Here's what it boils down to, for me:

It's not Shakespeare if you're not using his language. You can follow the plot of his plays through summaries, synopses, or the like - but unless you're using his language - IT'S NOT SHAKESPEARE.

HOWEVER, the language isn't the most important thing - it's the enduring truth his work provides us with. Themes of social injustice, equality, love and death and suicide - his work THINKS. It ponders, it debates itself. Shakespeare understood PEOPLE and put THEM onstage.

And being onstage - presented - that's how it's best understood. You can read Hamlet's soliloquies about suicide, or you can say them aloud and let your voice carry the weight of a truly unbearable question TO BE OR NOT TO BE?

Shakespeare is the centerpiece on the table of Theatrical and English language history - before him came the Greek playwrights and Marlowe for Theatre, came Holinshed, Ovid and Chaucer for stories; and using all of them he created works that were forgotten and experienced new life in the Restoration.

If you want a rounded ACADEMIC understanding of his work - please do make sure you read all of those sources, highlighting their similarities of plot and picking out morals that match.

If you want to understand his PLAYS, however, get up - say it - feel spit run down your chin as you cackle BE BLOODY BOLD AND RESOLUTE, let your eyes well up with tears as you cry DRUNK ALL AND LEFT NO FRIENDLY DROP TO HELP ME AFTER, skip with joy as you halloo PRAISE BE GOD AND NOT OUR STRENGTH FOR IT!

These plays shouldn't be tossed onto your middle school desk with the assignment to "go home and read act one" they should be brought into your elementary school classrooms without pretense of a potentially hard road. Younger children understand languages better - let them speak his words - then in middle school, introduce them to novels and movies (if they've not already seen them) and the very EXTENSIVE body of work his plays inspired.

That's what my future theatre company is all about. Not students who LOVE and WORSHIP and want to know SHakespeare the writer - but people who need to be taught that he is not on a pedestal of greatness for his words, but for his truths.

Get over it, America, and teach him well - with joy and life, not reverence and supplication!