I learned "The quality of mercy is unstrained; it floweth..." and quite a few lines after that, but the first line is the only one that is still vaguely familiar.

I don't remember that I thought I had learned anything of lasting value from it. If I read it today, I'm sure I would.

I do remember being swept away by West Side Story, but I don't know if I would have felt the same about Romeo and Juliet.

An interesting sidelight: My older brother loved Shakespeare, even though my brother was not the literary type. (He was scientifically oriented and once told me that he thought literature was a "junk subject.") He went to high school at a British preparatory school in South Africa (we left when I was in the equivalent of seventh grade, so I didn't go that far in the prep school). It was an all boys' school, and they acted out th plays in class, with (as in Shakespeare's time) boys doing the women's parts in falsetto voices and with towels wrapped around their heads. They apparently had a ball, but, despite all the fooling around, he genuinely appreciated Shakespeare and, in later years, would not miss an opportunity to see a Shakespearean play performed.

Nevertheless, I question the value of including Shakespeare in the high school curriculum. Most students that age aren't ready for it, and it takes an exceptionally gifted teacher to guide students through the Elizabethan language. Indeed, when a reasonably high percentage of high school students are scoring poorly in reading comprehension for modern English, how can we expect them to understand Shakespeare, let alone appreciate his works?
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Rich Turner (The Curmudgeon Himself)

I have always believed Shakespeare should be taught, at the earliest, to college seniors majoring in English - as a bonus! I could be wrong about that.

I read -- with a lot of help (it was a mixed-grade "advanced" class for 4th-6th graders) -- my very first Shakespeare play in grade 4. It was The Taming of the Shrew, and while I certainly didn't get all of it, I got enough of it (it is after all a rollicking, physical comedy) to enjoy it a lot and to develop a soft spot for ol' Will that I have kept into adulthood.

In my public school system, even non-advanced students generally read at least one Shakespearean play in junior high -- both I and my sister who is only 18 months younger than me had Julius Caesar. We may have had Romeo and Juliet, too, a play that I didn't like (and still don't like) nearly as well as The Taming of the Shrew and Julius Caesar.

Then in high school, I know for sure I had Macbeth (which remains one of my favorites), and I also had at least one of the comedies, The Tempest, I think, or maybe Much Ado About Nothing (my favorite comedy), and perhaps The Merchant of Venice (which I also never have liked that much). And I am nearly sure that I had Richard III as well.

On the other hand, my husband, who went to public school in halfway across the country from me, never had to read a single Shakespearean play. That doesn't seem right to me.

As to how I benefited...golly, I don't know that I can say, except that I know I did. In the first place, it is great to try something that's supposed to be "hard" and find out that with some help, it's not beyond you. That's true whether it's Shakespeare or trigonometry or skiing. In the second place...well, what kid who's in love with words wouldn't benefit from being exposed to the Bard himself?

The Mudge: >>Nevertheless, I question the value of including Shakespeare in the high school curriculum. Most students that age aren't ready for it, and it takes an exceptionally gifted teacher to guide students through the Elizabethan language. Indeed, when a reasonably high percentage of high school students are scoring poorly in reading comprehension for modern English, how can we expect them to understand Shakespeare, let alone appreciate his works?<<

I understand what you mean, but I also fear that college may be a bit too late. Would people who haven't acquired a love of language by age 18 suddenly be able to acquire it at 19 or 20? Some would, of course, but most of them? I don't know. There are, or so I've read, ideal times for the human brain to acquire certain skills. For example, age 4-6 is the best time to learn reading for most people, and when it comes to learning a second language, it's pretty much the younger the better. When is the best time to discover that worthwhile books aren't always easy books? I don't know, but I do believe that you need to do that prior to college.

In college, it's fairly simple to take the easy way out regarding subjects you have no interest in, and how will all but the rarest student even suspect that he might have an interest in Shakespeare or biology or another language or something else that's difficult to master if he hasn't had some exposure earlier in his academic career?

Surely the answer to improving reading comprehension is to find ways to improve reading comprehension (easier said than done, I know) rather than decrease the quality of what it is they are supposed to comprehend? Sure, Shakespeare is hard. So is just about all literature that is worthwhile. So is just about any discipline that is worthwhile.

Kathleen

And -- I just remembered this -- my sister, the one I mentioned earlier, actually had some reading difficulties through school. She had to have extra tutoring in reading in elementary school. But she still managed to slog her way through Julius Caesar and Macbeth by the time she got out of high school.

I wonder very much if reading comprehension isn't the only problem here?

Kathleen

It must be very frustrating to Mudge trying to teach college level material to students who are simply not prepared for college, but more difficult instruction earlier is the answer.

We, in America, are so determined to offer college to everyone, that we have thrown out our expectations of appitude and adequate preparation for entry into college. College as we have known it in the past was never intended to be accessible to all. While I am in favor of lowering economic barriers to college, if we make college into something that anyone can do regardless of intelligence or preparation, it will cease to be anything of value.

My wife surprised me when she told me some of the concepts she was teaching her second graders. She was covering topics I was not exposed to until the seventh grade, yet she assured me that her second graders had no trouble mastering them.

Just as we know that foreign languages are easier to acquire at a younger age, Elizabethan English is better learned when young. At church and at home I was read to from and taught to read the King James Version of The Bible. I believe that this gave me a tremendous advantage over my peers in college who may not have had this exposure when little.

It is not just the words, but the convoluted sentence structures and the long, run-on sentences, artifacts of being translated originally from Hebrew (in the case of The Old Testament), that prepare the mind to tackle Shakespeare.

After 20 or more readings of Hamlet, I still am struggling to fully comprehend it, yet I enjoyed it on the first read. This ability to enjoy it on first exposure and learn something everytime we return to it is part of what makes Shakespeare so wonderful.

The problem is getting a student to the point of being able to move through it with any comprehension. I think this is best accomplished with much earlier exposure to Elizabethan langauge.

Probably, to have a truly educated society, we should not encourage everyone to go to college. Yet the reality is that we do encourage almost everyone to get a college degree, and we stress the economic and vocational disadvantages that not having a degree represents. In reality, more people are going to college every year, and many are unprepared. Read Shakespeare and comprehend him? Many can't read the newspaper and comprehend it. To understand what they're reading, they need more "footnotes" than there are in the Kittredge edition of Shakespeare's works.

So, we should teach them to handle – and appreciate – the hard stuff earlier. That's a commendable ideal, but how realistic is it? How many teachers are capable of teaching the "hard stuff" at all, let alone with insight? Let's not forget that some of the undergraduates who have me wringing my hands because they can't understand simple prose, much less write it, intend to become teachers.

I agree that there's much more to Shakespeare than comprehending the words. He was, for instance, a master in his insights into human psychology, all the more remarkable because psychology wasn't even an established discipline in the 1600s. However, if the reader can't comprehend the words – and a reader who can't comprehend a modern newspaper is going to be stumped by more than just the Elizabethan idioms – how can that reader fathom the thoughts or the artistry with which the words are used?

If I sound cynical, it is because I am. I've spent part of the past five decades meeting students where I find them – and that is with little knowledge of, skill with, or appreciation of their native English language. They're graduating from high school and going to college with none of these things. When every eighth grader (or, say, 90% of them) can read a modern newspaper and comprehend it, I would approve of including Shakespeare in every high school curriculum. Until then, most students are likely to believe that Shakespeare is a lot of "sound and fury . . . signifying nothing," some sort of ritualistic torture that they must endure in English class so that they can get a diploma.
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Rich Turner (The Curmudgeon Himself)

If it is getting worse, why do you think it is? I know that you mentioned the decline of public education, but why, in your opinion, is public education declining? What can we do to reverse this trend?
Coley

I think I am being realistic. And the reason is that I think it's unrealistic to expect someone who's been led to believe his whole life that Shakespeare (or whatever hard subject you want to name) is really hard and who has never been given a chance to see otherwise to suddenly see the light in college. Which means we may as well give up teaching Shakespeare in college, too. Why bother? Hardly any of them will get it, so they won't benefit from it. We'd better just switch to something easier.

If we give up on teaching Shakespeare (or whatever -- see above) in high school, we may just as well give up teaching Shakespeare (or whatever -- see above) period, except to a tiny elite. We may as well just decide that only the elite few can handle this subject (deserve to learn this subject?) and give up entirely on everybody else. Anything else is unrealistic. And, again, I am not being sarcastic. I am being absolutely sincere.

An argument could be made that teaching it only to a tiny elite might not be too bad -- after all, only the elite few are taught calculus.

Except that Shakespeare is different. He is. A world in which only a few snobs reads him or watches his plays and enjoys them will be a colder, drier and more impoverished place.

We need Shakespeare. I really believe that. We need that addition to our general culture. We need other writers as well, but on the short list of writers who we need, Shakespeare is WAY up there.

So if it's important, it needs to be taught. And you really, really can't wait until college. I honestly believe that is completely unrealistic.

If the problem is reading comprehension, then let's deal with that problem of reading comprehension. Because if we jettison what are among the most important writings in English because they are too hard, where do we draw the line? When do we say, "I'm sorry it's hard. You need to read it anyway. You will not be considered an educated person until you learn to manage this. We'll help you, but it's important that you learn to do this even if it is hard"?

Kathleen

P.S. If Shakespeare is so inaccessible, how do we explain the popularity of Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing a few years ago? LOTS of people who aren't Shakespearean nuts saw that and enjoyed it. Heck, my husband, who has never read a Shakespearean play and in fact has reading difficulties, watched and enjoyed Henry V. How did Branagh and his cast make those plays accessible if they are so inaccessible?

I look forward to your discussion on the causes of the decline in public education in American and hope you have a great time while in Maine.

Kathleen,
I strongly agree with everything that you said, but Mudge says that his students who are planning to be teachers are not prepared to read Shakespeare, much less teach it. How do you teach Shakespeare when the teachers do not understand what they are supposed to teach?

Do not get me wrong. I think we should teach Shakespeare and teach it early. While there are some fantastic public school teachers, we have allowed our educational system to slip so much that I do not see it as an easy task to get to where the teaching of Shakespeare throughout most levels of public school can be done on a widespread basis.
Coley

Much as I love Shakespeare, even I have to concede that the problem there is a symptom of an even bigger problem. Rather than looking at Shakespeare and saying, "How can we make Shakespeare more accessible?" what we really need to be asking is, "In our civilization, what body of knowledge needs to be passed down to the next generation? And the one after that? What constitutes an 'educated person'?"

And if the answer to that is a person who has some grounding in the classics, including Shakespeare, of course, then the question is, "What do we need to do to ensure that kids are getting the proper grounding in reading the classics so that whenever it is that they are introduced to Shakespeare or Milton or ______ (fill in the name of the difficult yet rewarding author of your choice), they don't start out with the assumption that 'This is too hard.'"

The plain fact is that if a student (or teacher) is convinced that it will be too hard...he will almost certainly be right. That is a self-fulfilling prophesy.

And I'm sorry, but it isn't really that hard. It's much easier for an English speaker than, say, Spanish or French, and lots of schools teach those languages and don't talk about how hard they are. (Millions of people still manage to read and find value in the KJV, as you pointed out, Coley.) So the problem with Shakespeare or Milton or Jane Austen isn't that they are hard; it's that too many people don't think old books have value. That's what has to change.

How to do it? Heck, I don't know. It seems to me that if you could just get past the initial barrier...get that difficult student to see that one "hard" author isn't nearly as hard as he's been led to believe...well, maybe the rest will come easier. Maybe that student will gain some confidence that just because it's hard, that doesn't mean it isn't doable.

And maybe Shakespeare is a good place to start. At least you can still see Shakespeare performed, and there are lots of good and highly accessible productions that you can choose from -- movies and filmed versions of the plays. That's still the best way to experience dear Will, whether you are a Shakespearean scholar, an amateur enthusiast, or a reluctant newcomer.

And I still think it's best to get to 'em early -- like a foreign language, teach it to them before they know that it's supposed to be too "hard" for them.

By all means give them the "hard" stuff that constitutes a core part of our cultural heritage, the literature that in the past was common knowledge among educated men and women, as early as possible – and build on that. However, the reality is that, in our educational system today, kids are passed on from grade to grade simply for warming a seat in the classroom most days that school is in session. Throw 'em in the deep end, I say, and force them to swim. I'm all for it, but our educational establishment will tell you that doing this frightens them and damages their self-esteem. They must be floated about gently in shallow water, even if this means that they never learn to swim. I don't think you have any idea, Kathleen, of how abysmal students' reading skills are.

God knows, I try. I'm not indulging in the self-defeating proposition that I won't try to teach anything "hard." Far from it. My students think that the simple, contemporary prose that I assign is too hard, though I feel that anyone with as much as an eighth-grade education should be able to grasp the ideas. After paddling around for twelve years in the shallow end of the pool, these young people are worse swimmers than you realize.

Yes, you can get people to appreciate Shakespeare by showing them, say, Branagh's production of Henry V. That film enhanced even my already considerable appreciation of the play; I've shown the DVD to friends who are not "literary" types, and they love it. However, seeing a Shakespearean drama magnificently performed does not necessarily motivate people to read more Shakespeare (or any other literary classics), especially if they have problems reading.

Yes, we have a vast cultural heritage of literary classics that students should learn to appreciate so much that they are motivated to read more in later life. That's part of being a truly educated person. It isn't happening.

Consider this. We have a huge body of classical music that, for generations, nearly every educated person was at least familiar with. I was fortunate enough to get exposed to it in high school, and, even though music is not my field, it's an important part of my life. Increasingly, I find young adults (even people in their 30s and 40s) who have never even heard one of the great "war horses" of the classical repertoire – except maybe the 1812 Overture at a July 4 fireworks display. Few can name even one or two of the great composers, except perhaps if they overheard some geezer like me talking about them. Younger people haven't even heard the name Tschaikovsky and probably think when they hear the name that he's some Communist politician. Run up and down the radio FM dial and see how many stations you can find playing classical music. It's a cultural cesspool.

In high school? Shakespeare was mentioned in 9th grade; another student and I put on the balcony scene in the classroom (with me balancing on a chair and looking over a divider). Sophomore year, Julius Caesar, with random cuts; I did my required memorizing out of Mother's old book and the teacher didn't say a word about the two lines that were not in our book. Junior year was American lit, so none. Senior year, Macbeth (six weeks) and Hamlet (two weeks) -- isn't that backward?

"Merchant of Venice" was in ninth grade English class. I'd already read it.

More, generally seen as a man of great integrity, also drew his portrait of Richard to fit in with the powers-that-were.

While his play may not perfectly reflect historical truth (the jury is still out on this, btw), it does not make Shakespeare's work any less the great drama that it is.