Why Do We Teach Shakespeare?

Today my department (all 6 of us, which almost never happens) went to Firehook as a morning trip. When we got back, instead of going to our desks, we sat at the communal table in the office and started a discussion. I, being the youngest and least experienced,
Often have a lot of questions about teaching Shakespeare.

Why do we do it? What is it about Shakespeare that we MUST teach? I did a presentation on Teaching Shakespeare using contemporary films and tie-ins to emphasize the universality and staying power of Shakespeare – and was brutally ripped a new one by my professor who wanted me to answer why inner city school kids need to know this stuff. She wouldn’t accept my stumbled answer of his “human truth” or “universal relevance.” Maybe I have some more articulate answers now.
Conversation with Robert Young, Deidra Starnes, Carol Kelly, Mike LoMonico, and Niki Torres:

Shakespeare not only wrote violence and action, but he wrote the consequences of those actions – which is not something you get all the time in movies or in other plays. This sort of makes you step back and think about the choices these characters have made, what led them to this, how do I make choices…

A culture has broken down if their language becomes a language of lies (example of this in Shakespeare: IAGO). When a society no longer reveres the uses and the colors and the nuances of a language – which is what Shakespeare’s words celebrate. It’s important for kids to know that language – GOOD use of GOOD language is vital to being a functioning modern society. I mean, look at Obama, that man is a brilliant speaker and he writes his own speeches. He knows how to use good language. Our former president, on the other hand, he was barely literate, “I read some Shakespeares,” he said. The best thing to come out of his presidency is the Book Festival his wife founded. It’s a celebration of education and literacy, and our culture needs that sort of encouragement – we’re fast becoming an almost illiterate society.

The truth is, his work encompasses a range of human positions, emotions, and situations. By asking students how they feel about a character’s situation, they can learn more about themselves because they relate to the characters. Example in today’s media: you can ask a bunch of teenage girls how they feel about Othello, then ask them how they feel about Chris Brown (the abusive boyfriend of Rhianna). How do those experiences relate? If they recognize an abusive relationship in Shakespeare, they can ask themselves harder questions about their own lives with that buffer of fiction. True, these subjects are often addressed in modern plays and books, but Shakespeare adds this extra element of safety and disassociation that lends itself to a more comfortable discussion.

This also answers the question a friend and I touched on recently: there are so many adaptations of plays being done all over town where the language has been updated but the spirit is the same. Why, my friend asked, can’t the same be done to Shakespeare? You can still hear Lope de Vega’s voice in Dog in the Manger but the audience is actually getting it. My feeling, and that of apparently the entire Education Department and the Head of Research here, is that Shakespeare’s language is what is important in his work. It is important to see and enjoy the plays, but if you update his language all you’re left with is the plot and some jokes. The plots are unoriginal, and are adaptations themselves – and who’s to say that Shakespeare isn’t adapted ALL THE TIME! It’s done – but what is important about preserving his plays is to hear that language in use, and to understand what a true understanding of language and human existence is.

My experience recently with a woman (I think in her late 30s, early 40s) who… well, let me tell this story:
I was picking up my mail from the front desk of my building and the woman was talking at the desk attendant. She saw my hat and noticed my pin that says “I Flamed Amazement.” She asked what it meant. I said, “Oh, it’s from the Tempest, I work at the Folger.” I was greeted with a blank stare, “I don’t know those words ‘tempest?’ ‘folger?’ that means nothing to me.” I regained my airy smile after faltering and said “the Folger Shakespeare Library. Shakespeare.” More blankness. This was getting uncomfortable. To buy time she asked me where it was – and I told her – and she said, “oh! I work down at Judiciary Square for the court system.” “That’s great,” I said, no longer smiling, “you should come by, there’s nothing on in the theatre, yet, but –“ “OH,” she cut in, “so it’s like a PLAY!” “Yes…” I said, signing for my Netflix, “just like that.”
I feel greatly disturbed by this encounter (and with a similar experience Ed Maudlin told me about where someone asked him if ‘The Tempest’ was a band). Nothing says that these encounters are isolated experiences with people who slept through English class all their life, or only read magazines about hair. But they’re probably not. People in OUR OWN GENERATION do not know who Shakespeare is/was. Nor do they care. But they still get through life – they still have jobs and see movies – and who am I (or we) to judge that their lives mean less because they haven’t expressed themselves, ever, with a quote like “’tis but they name that is my enemy…”?
My feeling is that it should be that anyone speaking English should know at least one quote by Shakespeare, something that they can relate to, even if they found it in a quote book, even if it’s out of context. More importantly, Shakespeare should never be on this pedestal of “high culture,” that kids and adults alike are afraid to approach as novices. Mike threw out there today as a reminder from yesterday’s discussion about teaching Shakespeare in ESL, that kids want to know this. They appreciate being treated like they can – and that’s what will make them able to understand is if we treat them like they will understand. It increases their confidence to be able to read a passage and know what it means.

My goal is to someday be influential enough in this niche that I can ensure that Shakespeare is being taught in elementary classrooms, that there will never again be a person I run into that has never heard of him or his plays, that the Shakespeare Theatres of the world will be way more publicly accessible and need not be so opulent. Bring Shakespeare to the masses and the masses will come to Shakespeare.

Why is he important to you?