Shakespeare: What on earth's the point? Sue Shearman I have huge problems with Shakespeare. You see, people don't like the stuff. They think he's boring. They find the plays and poetry really hard to understand. 'Shakespeare is rubbish' is something I heard from an adult two days ago and I'm used to hearing it from pupils. Teachers don't like teaching Shakespeare - just look at the staffroom if you don't believe me. Why? 1. He's boring.
All those l-o-n-g speeches- in poetry, for goodness' sake. No-one talks in poetry! Of course, a lot of people in Shakespeare don't speak poetry, either. Even Hamlet sometimes abandons it. Iago does it all the time.
2. And the plays are too long.
Actually, they aren't. No Shakespeare play runs for more than 2 ½ hours (without an interval). This two hours' traffic of our stage' is not dramatic licence; it's Shakespeare telling his audience how long they were going to be there. And don't say 'What about Hamlet?. There is no copy of Shakespeare's Hamlet as performed by The Chamberlain's Men in existence. 3. The language.
Thou, thy, hast - oh, sorry if you come from Yorkshire. And I'm not sure where we'd be without words like assassination, puke, moonbeam, generous and the other 1700 or so words Shakespeare gave to the language: then there's 'dead as a doornail', 'in one fell swoop', bloody minded', 'fair play'. It's OK, I've stopped now. 4. He's irrelevant.
It's the 21st century. We don't want stuff that was written 400 years ago. Unless you're East Enders, of course - and lift the story of Romeo and Juliet practically wholesale for Leo and Demi's plot line. (Warring families, secret meetings, suicide through misunderstanding.) Or in real life, you are Saddam Hussein or one of his ministers and refuse to believe that Americans are in charge of your main airport: 'I look'd toward Birnam, and anon, methought,
The wood began to move. MACBETH
Liar and slave! and you think that the best way to dispose of those who don't support you is to kill them:
'Hang them that talk of fear!' Anyone seen 10 Things I Hate About You? It's Taming of the Shrew and kids love it. 5. Anyway, the comedies aren't funny.
Well, there you have me - except that they aren't meant to be funny. They are just meant to be plays with a happy ending. Merchant of Venice is a comedy after all. Oh, yes it is! All the plays have comedy in them and I can't think of one without a 'clown' at the moment.
Romeo and Juliet is very funny. Especially the balcony scene.
Sure, some of the jokes don't work any more. The very beginning of Romeo and Juliet is singularly unfunny, but half a dozen lines in and Samson and Gregory's puns on 'heads' and 'maidens' is as fresh as it was when it was written and try 'my naked weapon is out' on any adolescent boy! The satire which would have been immediately clear to Shakespeare's audiences is lost on us without a bit of research. Richard III is a hunchback, not because there is any historical evidence, (there isn't), but because the character is a satire on Robert Cecil and Achilles in 'Troilus and Cressida' is a very unflattering portrait of the Earl of Essex. 6. So, why don't we like Shakespeare?
Ask Hamlet - he's got the answer. The trouble is that we don't listen to him - or, rather, we don't listen to Shakespeare's words in his mouth:
'Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as some of your players do, I'd as lief the town crier spoke my lines.'
Most productions, nearly all teachers and all examining bodies ignore Shakespeare's advice. Shakespeare wrote his plays to be performed 'trippingly on the tongue', not to be studied, anaysed or 'mouthed' - it means to 'pronounce all the words very, very carefully and s-l-o-w-l-y'. We look at them - and teach them - as 'Literature'. They aren't. But that's a whole other debate!
