s/o why do we do so much Shakespeare?

[SKL]

Or has this changed?

I think it's great for young people to read Shakespeare, but why was I required to read more Shakespeare than anything else in high school?  My kids are heading into their 2nd Shakespeare book in 10th, and I don't know if they still do a lot of it in the upper grades.  Is it really valuable for all youth to read Shakespeare to death?  Enlighten me!

[maize]

We only did two in my highschool career--Romeo and Juliet and The Scottish Play (my theatre-geek daughter told me this week that to name it is unlucky, so...)

[maize]

As for why, there are certainly plenty of other things to read so I don't think Shakespeare needs to be a focus, but it does hold a unique position in the English speaking world because there are So Many references to it in other literature and in the broader culture. No other native English literature has been so influential.

[SKL]

IIRC I read in public school:

• Romeo & Juliet
• The Merchant of Venice
• Macbeth
• Julius Caesar
• Hamlet
• King Lear
• The Taming of the Shrew

[happi duck]

I assume that it's cultural literacy.  (Do kids still learn Bible stories and Greek mythology?  When I was in school we learned those in order to catch references in other things)

[fairfarmhand]

15 minutes ago, SKL said:

IIRC I read in public school:

• Romeo & Juliet
• The Merchant of Venice
• Macbeth
• Julius Caesar
• Hamlet
• King Lear
• The Taming of the Shrew

Wow!

We read Romeo and Juliette and MacBeth. We read the famous speeches from Hamlet and Julius Caesar. I got into Taming and Much Ado because I was in drama and we did those my Freshman and Senior years.

[SKL]

16 minutes ago, fairfarmhand said:

Wow!

We read Romeo and Juliette and MacBeth. We read the famous speeches from Hamlet and Julius Caesar. I got into Taming and Much Ado because I was in drama and we did those my Freshman and Senior years.

I memorized Hamlet's soliloquy.  😛  I wonder if I could still recite it now ....

[Jean in Newcastle]

I had an elective Shakespeare class in high school. I still read Animal Farm and Catcher in the Rye and Oedipus Rex and The Grapes of Wrath and ….. in other classes. 

[vonfirmath]

59 minutes ago, SKL said:

Or has this changed?

I think it's great for young people to read Shakespeare, but why was I required to read more Shakespeare than anything else in high school?  My kids are heading into their 2nd Shakespeare book in 10th, and I don't know if they still do a lot of it in the upper grades.  Is it really valuable for all youth to read Shakespeare to death?  Enlighten me!

I didn't read more Shakespear than anything else. So far it does appear we did more classical literature reading in high school than they require of current students.

[Jenny in Florida]

We read one play per year when I was in high school, and that seems to still be pretty standard in our area. 

As for why? I'm a Shakespeare nerd (and theatre nerd in general), and I think it's hard to over-state the influence his plays have had on theatre and literature in the western, English-speaking world. When I taught a Shakespeare camp at the library, one of the things I handed out was a flyer with a bunch of the words and phrases that are still in common usage that good old Will seems to have coined or at least recorded for the first time. 

The plays -- if you dig into them thoroughly -- are also a gateway to lots of other things. For example, many are loosely based on historical events (and I believe there is great value in learning about the real events and people that inspired the fictional version). For people who crave story as a "peg" on which to hang factual information, familiarity with the plays can lead to a much richer understanding. And, of course, they were written during an interesting and important era, so learning about the historical context of the actual plays is intriguing and, again, can be a jumping off point for lots of other learning.

There's also a fascinating history of Shakespeare in the United States that is worth exploring. 

And learning to read and interpret the archaic language also works your brain. 

With all of that said, I do not believe that reading Shakespeare should crowd out everything else. There are plenty of other wonderful and worthwhile things to read, including a good number of playwrights and poets from the same era. 

And, truth be told, I believe pretty strongly that Shakespeare should be watched before being read, since I have yet to meet many high schoolers who have no previous experience with the language who can make heads or tails of the material when they are handed a book and told to have at it.

[Jenny in Florida]

1 hour ago, SKL said:

Or has this changed?

I think it's great for young people to read Shakespeare, but why was I required to read more Shakespeare than anything else in high school?  My kids are heading into their 2nd Shakespeare book in 10th, and I don't know if they still do a lot of it in the upper grades.  Is it really valuable for all youth to read Shakespeare to death?  Enlighten me!

I guess a question I would have, too, is what the theme or structure of this class is? 

When my kids were homeschooling, we did have a couple of years when we read a lot more Shakespeare than we did in others, just because certain plays fit well within the context of the curriculum for some reason. If your kids' classes are moving through themed units or following any kind of historical model (American lit one year, British the next, world lit, etc.), it might make sense that one class would be especially heavy on Shakespeare plays.

[Jenny in Florida]

1 hour ago, maize said:

We only did two in my highschool career--Romeo and Juliet and The Scottish Play (my theatre-geek daughter told me this week that to name it is unlucky, so...)

Only if you're actually in a theatre when you say the name.

[prairiewindmomma]

Shakespeare is a frequent topic of discussion on AP English exams. People keep stats on how often certain pieces of lit hit the exams and he is always a heavy hitter. 
 

The non-AP tracks here don’t rely heavily on Shakespeare. The AP classes track the most heavily cited pieces.

[Farrar]

I think we did 5 or so Shakespeares in school? R&J, Dream, Hamlet, Macbeth, and Julius Caesar. But I went to a school that had a looong reading list in general. So I didn't feel like we were doing Shakespeare to the exclusion of other works so much. We also read a pretty diverse list overall.

I also took an all Shakespeare course in college.

I think most students end up with 1-2 Shakespeare titles in their high school education these days. We do overemphasize him. But also, he's important and bawdy and fun.

My own kids did a TON of Shakespeare in their elementary and middle school years just because we would take them to professional productions pretty routinely. And I ran a program where they performed in several deeply shortened versions. We did Macbeth, Dream, and Much Ado. My theater kid additionally ASM'ed a couple of Shakespeare shows. In high school, the only play we studied was Othello, just because it was one they had no other exposure to. This year, my theater kid, who does not think of himself as very bright, had to do Julius Caesar for his AP Lang class. This is a play he first saw at STC at age 5. He was FLOORED at how no one seemed to get the play in his class. On the discussion board, apparently a lot of the kids were like, "Caesar is the hero" and he was like, "Are they just... messing with me? Are they that dumb?!? AM I SMARTER THAN THEM?!?!" It was a funny moment. But I was like, well, your Shakespeare education was pretty solid.

[Lady Florida.]

We did very little Shakespeare when I was in high school. I believe we did Romeo and Juliet and highlights of Hamlet and Macbeth. If there was more I've forgotten it. I didn't have any Shakespeare in college classes. Because I learned so little Shakespeare and because there are so many references in literature, I've been on a multi-year self styled plan to read all of his works. 

 

1 hour ago, maize said:

We only did two in my highschool career--Romeo and Juliet and The Scottish Play (my theatre-geek daughter told me this week that to name it is unlucky, so...)

I believe it's only bad luck to say it in a theater.

1 hour ago, Jean in Newcastle said:

I still read Animal Farm and Catcher in the Rye and Oedipus Rex and The Grapes of Wrath and ….. in other classes. 

We read Animal Farm, The Grapes of Wrath. Les Miserables, and All Quiet on the Western Front. Non Shakespeare plays we did that I still remember were Our Town and Death of a Salesman. 

[Jenny in Florida]

3 minutes ago, Farrar said:

My own kids did a TON of Shakespeare in their elementary and middle school years just because we would take them to professional productions pretty routinely. And I ran a program where they performed in several deeply shortened versions. We did Macbeth, Dream, and Much Ado. My theater kid additionally ASM'ed a couple of Shakespeare shows. In high school, the only play we studied was Othello, just because it was one they had no other exposure to. This year, my theater kid, who does not think of himself as very bright, had to do Julius Caesar for his AP Lang class. This is a play he first saw at STC at age 5. He was FLOORED at how no one seemed to get the play in his class. On the discussion board, apparently a lot of the kids were like, "Caesar is the hero" and he was like, "Are they just... messing with me? Are they that dumb?!? AM I SMARTER THAN THEM?!?!" It was a funny moment. But I was like, well, your Shakespeare education was pretty solid.

Each of my kiddos got their own season ticket to the local professional Shakespeare company when they were about 8. (Nowadays, although they have kept the name, the theatre does a lot fewer actual Shakespeare plays each year, which is a bummer.) So, yeah, Shakespeare was kind of in the air in our house for a lot of years. Neither of mine could ever understand why so many other people found the plays hard to read or understand.

I kind of came to WS early on my own. I watched the Zeffirelli film of R&J on a double bill at a revival theatre and just fell in love. I immediately read the play. (Remember, this was before the days when you could just watch something over and over by streaming -- we're talking pre-VHS for home use, even -- so the only way to revisit a movie you liked was to read about it.) I memorized Juliet's balcony speech and obnoxiously recited it for anyone who would listen. Then, one summer during middle school, one of my besties and I spent days sunbathing by the pool in her apartment complex and reading plays aloud together. So, by the time  I hit high school, I was already a fan and was utterly mystified and frustrated at how much other students hated and struggled with the material.

Thanks for sharing your son's experience. It made me smile!

[WildflowerMom]

We only read 2 Shakespeare works that I recall: R&J and Julius Caesar.  If there was more, I tuned them out.    I don't know why your school did so much, but wow!   That's a lot!     

[DreamerGirl]

I did not grow up here, but we did a lot of Shakespeare in school. 

We did mostly comedies.

Midsummer's night Dream, Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing, Twelfth Night, Merchant of Venice (it is a comedy I think), As you like it.

Tragedies I remember Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet.

I even remember memorizing the Quality of Mercy speech for a competition and parts have stuck apparently because I can still quote some of it while writing this.

Shakespeare is like few in literature. He is one of the very few whose work has been translated in almost every language in every part of the world. He is a world literary figure, not just in the  English speaking world.

Few writers transcend time like him I think. When you think of literature in general and English literature in particular few hold a place like him.

The only other person I think who I can think of who is even in the reckoning to a lesser extent is Jane Austen. She is also someone whose works we read in school. 

[Lady Florida.]

1 hour ago, Jenny in Florida said:

Each of my kiddos got their own season ticket to the local professional Shakespeare company when they were about 8. (Nowadays, although they have kept the name, the theatre does a lot fewer actual Shakespeare plays each year, which is a bummer.) So, yeah, Shakespeare was kind of in the air in our house for a lot of years. Neither of mine could ever understand why so many other people found the plays hard to read or understand.

 

Are you talking about Orlando Shakes? When ds was homeschooling we went to all the Shakespeare plays there each year starting when he was about 10. We always went with our homeschool group on education days. I saw more Shakespeare plays as a homeschool teacher than I did at any other time in my life. IIRC they did 2 or 3 a year and the rest were non-Shakespeare plays. We also saw a number of other plays there including Spamalot, West Side Story, The Importance of being Earnest, Sense and Sensibility, and more. I considered part of ds' English class. I'm sad to hear they don't do many Shakespeare plays anymore. 

Edited November 18, 2021 by Lady Florida.

[kirstenhill]

I read two Shakespeare plays in high school classes, and my DD read two as well - one in 10th grade honors English and one in AP English.  She said that usually they do 2 in AP English, but the instructor had to cut a few books from AP English last year as they were in distance learning for 3/4 of the year and weren't able to move as quickly through the typical class material.  Reading 2-4 plays seems reasonable to me, given how important Shakespeare is for cultural literacy.  It would seem excessive that was "most" of what was being read, unless it was a Shakespeare-specific class. 

Edited November 18, 2021 by kirstenhill
grammar

[marbel]

High school was a long time ago for me, but I don't recall reading much, maybe not even an entire play.

In college as an English major I did have to take one class in Shakespeare. 

I think as others have said, his writings are really important within our culture. I know there are some who say that is irrelevant (I don't mean on this thread, I mean in general). I have no kids in school now, but the impression I get from family and friends with kids is that cultural literacy is not being addressed enough in school. 

Plus Shakespeare can be fun if taught well. 

I don't think 2 plays in a school year is reading Shakespeare to death, really, though I don't know the percentage of that to other material. But then I was an English major and really enjoyed all that, so it would not have seemed burdensome to me. 

[PaxEtLux]

 

How long are you taking to cover each play?  Most of them aren't very long. I was lucky enough to take a semester long Shakespeare elective in high school, and we covered one play a week + sonnets, so probably about a dozen plays, taking about one eighth of my high school English career. The lack of such classes in my current zoned school district may very well have played a part in my choice not to send my kids there.

[Jenny in Florida]

56 minutes ago, Lady Florida. said:

Are you talking about Orlando Shakes? When ds was homeschooling we went to all the Shakespeare plays there each year starting when he was about 10. We always went with our homeschool group on education days. I saw more Shakespeare plays as a homeschool teacher than I did at any other time in my life. IIRC they did 2 or 3 a year and the rest were non-Shakespeare plays. We also saw a number of other plays there including Spamalot, West Side Story, The Importance of being Earnest, Sense and Sensibility, and more. I considered part of ds' English class. I'm sad to hear they don't do many Shakespeare plays anymore. 

We are talking about Orlando Shakes, yes. 

Yeah, they used to do at least two or three per year, and most of the balance were things like the ones you mentioned, not Shakespeare, necessarily, but "classics." (Well, leaving out Spamalot.) We saw Cyrano and plays by Moliere and a bunch of things based on classic novels . . . This season, by contrast, offers two Shakespearean selections, yet another rendition of A Christmas Carol, The Fantasticks and three modern plays that do not seem to have any connection to classic literature or drama that I can discern. 

We gave up on season tickets a few years ago but do try to see the Shakespearean stuff most years.

[bookbard]

We did one Shakespeare a year, so I guess 6 all up. Apparently they don't do that anymore though, I believe you can get through high school in Australia without doing Shakespeare at all. It's tricky - I love Shakespeare, but I didn't really enjoy it at all until I left school and got into Shakespeare in my university days. On the other hand, I feel like if it isn't introduced in high school, kids are missing the only opportunity most would have to spend any time at all looking at what is really the greatest literature in English. 

[Faith-manor]

One play per year here unless it is an AP class that requires more. They do maybe one or two novels, and a few poems. The schools here do not challenge the students at all, and spend most of their time teaching whatever they think will make for a reasonable SAT score. The classes are kind of pathetic actually.

My sophomore level English class back in the most snow time required the reading and discussion of Hamlet, Midsummer Night's Dream, and one of the kings but I can't remember exactly which one. We parsed the symbolism of a couple of sonnets. But we read Dante's Inferno, some excerpts of Canterbury Tales, a Jane Austen Novel but which one escaped me at the moment, Scarlet Letter, Uncle Tom's Cabin, and For Whole the Bell Tolls. I hate Hemingway! We did a bunch of essay writing and also wrote character sketches. We had a field trip to a local university to see their production of MacBeth, and watched a couple of movies based on novels.

When I tell current students that we studied this much in tenth grade, they flip out.

It served me well because I took DE English Lit the following and DE History of Western Civ among other things. That literature was helpful. My junior year was my senior year and was only a semester long because of all of my DE credits. I had started part time college at 14.

I do think that learning to parse out Shakespearean language is good critical thinking skill training for the brain, and it does expand vocabulary in a way that modern and early modern literature doesn't. The difference in challenge from Shakespeare to Dickens is pretty big!

[Terabith]

When I was in high school, we did Romeo and Juliet in 9th, Taming of the Shrew and Julius Caesar in 10th, and I took a Shakespeare semester class in 11th (had moved to a different state where all English classes were one semester).  I took a semester British Lit class in 12th that might have done one, but I don't actually remember.  

My oldest did Romeo and Juliet in both 8th grade (at Catholic school) and 9th grade (at public).  They're taking a semester long Shakespeare class this year as a senior (and absolutely hating it, but there is some serious generational divide between the teachers and the kids going on.  The teachers are FURIOUS that the kids found the section of King Lear where he tries to throw himself off the cliffs of Dover and just kinda falls over to be hilarious.  There was also a major disagreement about whether Catriona in Taming of the Shrew was abused; teachers said no, which I'm like WTF).  

Youngest kid did Midsummer Night's Dream in 9th grade virtual high school last year.  Not sure yet what they'll do in 10th grade in public.  

Shakespeare is important because he is so foundational to culture.

[PaxEtLux]

2 hours ago, Jenny in Florida said:

And, truth be told, I believe pretty strongly that Shakespeare should be watched before being read, since I have yet to meet many high schoolers who have no previous experience with the language who can make heads or tails of the material when they are handed a book and told to have at it.

I agree with you that the plays are much, much better seen (and seen live) than read.  However, I find that when we go to a performance, if I read outloud the first few scenes (stopping to explain some vocab), we all "warm up" our Elizabethan ears, and we can get into the play from the get go.

[katilac]

59 minutes ago, PaxEtLux said:

 

How long are you taking to cover each play?   

Her kids are in public school. 

17 minutes ago, PaxEtLux said:

I agree with you that the plays are much, much better seen (and seen live) than read.  However, I find that when we go to a performance, if I read outloud the first few scenes (stopping to explain some vocab), we all "warm up" our Elizabethan ears, and we can get into the play from the get go.

Yes. We generally at least read a summary, which usually gave some context, reviewed the characters, and read any particularly famous lines or speeches. 

[historically accurate]

Way back when I was in school, we did 1 Shakespeare play a year starting in 8th grade in public school.

8th: Romeo & Juliet

9th: Othello

Switched schools to a boarding school for 10th-12th

10th: Hamlet

11th: Othello

Summer school Shakespeare course: Othello (yet again!), MacBeth, The Tempest, and Midsummer Night's Dream

12th: None as we took specialized courses. I took Russian Lit and Images of Horror

[Melissa Louise]

Because Shakespeare is jam packed with universal themes, and because he was a genius with the English language - in a way that no other English language writer comes close to approaching?

Because the plays teach a LOT about English literature, the subject in which Shakespeare is usually studied.

Basically, you can learn anything you need to learn through Shakespeare. 

It's often taught poorly, and late.

Teach it well and early, and it provides a wellspring of thought, language, and allusion that enriches the inner and the communicative life. 

 

 

[Melissa Louise]

Seriously, high school is too late. In homeschool, I taught Shakespeare from Kindy and in classes, I teach him from 3rd grade. 

Yep, will die on this hill. 

[Clarita]

I did just one in PS high school Romeo and Juliet (my least favorite). Shakespeare is a really good story teller and I think because they are plays with clearly marked acts and things it's easy to connect how to write a good story from his stuff vs. other stuff.

So I definately did not do too much Shakespeare. 

The plays are much better watched. I think with good actors the language doesn't really "get in the way".

[Junie]

We did one Shakespeare play each year 9th though 12th grade: R&J, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Macbeth.

[Dmmetler]

I was on the academic competition team for English, so I don't know which were for class and which were for that, except that I remember acting out scenes from Julius Caesar and face planting as Portia 🙂. 

 

We were fortunate in that for many years, we had a Homeschool mom on the board of the Shakespeare company here. As a result, our group got invitations to the special school productions, which were a performance followed by a Q &A. Usually it was a bunch of pricey private high schools, and our rag tag group of homeschooled kids and moms, ranging from preschoolers through high school. We also usually had at least one class session with an actor specific to each play. 

 

L also did the two Online G3 Shakespeare courses for fun in about 6th grade or so. 

 

 

[happi duck]

We did live plays when we could and then movies.  For reading we often did graphic novels which gave reading it a play feel.