Shakespeare Tag

I would like to take this opportunity to welcome you back to the beginning of Term 3. My wish is that you have relaxed, recharged, and feel ready to start the new school term. Campus bounced back this week with students returning from their vacation and new students joining the BIS family. Our students are indeed grateful to see their friends again as they prepare for their collaborative learning and captivating lessons.

We have been looking forward to what Term 3 has in store, including  yesterday’s IES Sports Day, Year 10 camp, and our Macbeth production at the Baxter Theatre on August 10th.

I appreciate your positive energy and I look forward to working with you in the new term. All signs point to another incredible and productive school term.

I know each of us wants to make a difference in the lives of our students.

Parents, here is how you can support us and help your child become independent and “own” their learning:

• Be sure to check in with your child daily, about the learning tasks, activities, and assessments they are working on.
• Demonstrate a positive attitude about education to your children. What we say and do in our daily lives can help them to develop positive attitudes toward school and learning and to build confidence in themselves as learners. Showing our children that we value education and use it in our daily lives provides them with powerful models and contributes greatly to their success in school.
• In addition, by showing interest in your children’s education, parents and families can spark enthusiasm in them and lead them to a very important understanding that learning can be enjoyable as well as rewarding and is well worth the effort required.
• Encourage them to complete work to the best of their ability

In closing, I would like to share this interesting post from the “parenting team”, and I would like to add teachers to that team as well – because we are all in this together.

Challenge: Back to School
Been There, Been Through That…9 Tips for Parents of High Schoolers
https://community.today.com/parentingteam/post/been-there-been-through-that9-tips-for-parents-of-high-schoolers

We thank you once again for the consistent and unwavering support you have always shown.

Carmen de Villiers
High School Coordinator

Young, intense, fickle love; arranged marriages; civil and parental disobedience; gangster warfare; silly jokes, nasty insults and suicide… these are all themes and issues the Year 7 and 8 students will be exploring in English this term.  Sounds like some of the hot topics in the “no-good” music our youth listen to these days.  Shocking?  Nay, Shakespeare!  The tragedy of Romeo and Juliet to be specific.  Throw in a convoluted love square, a plot to kidnap a kid, some fairies and a magical flower and you have the comedic A Midsummer Night’s Dream too.

Oftentimes Shakespeare’s plays are viewed as stuffy, filled with “fancy” language and are considered unrelatable for modern audiences.  When one realises that the language Shakespeare used was true to how everyday man spoke at the time and that he mixed formal and informal diction and structure to represent social status (and thus level of education), with colloquial language, slang and all of the drama that continues to plague mankind to this day, it becomes clear that the only barrier that truly sets Shakespeare’s work apart from us is our translation of Old English.  Overcome this and we can appreciate the brilliance of Shakespeare’s plays in our world today and perhaps also develop an understanding of how language evolves.

When questions of modernity come to the fare, I enjoy emphasising that with rhyme, wit and themes that criticise and mimic society and mankind at large, drawing out every manner of emotions in the audience, Shakespeare’s poetry and plays are comparable to modern day “gangster rap”, gut-wrenching love songs or stories and creations of fantastical worlds in which we love to lose ourselves.  Let’s not forget the thousands of words and phrases that first appeared in Shakespearean writings and are still made use of today.

Is Shakespeare irrelevant?  Never!  Shakespeare not only gives us a view into Elizabethan era society but forces into focus how much humanity has progressed in some ways and remained unchanged in others.  The human condition seems to be eternal.  When I asked students if they would allow their parents to choose their love interests, for example, they were in strong opposition to the idea and would rather choose to respectfully decline or flee – as epitomised in the characters of Juliet and Hermia. They seemed relieved at the fact that the patriarchy of the 16^th and 17^th century no longer holds as much weight in their world as it still does in many countries across the globe.  They were also shocked and amused by how grungy Shakespeare can be in his diction chosen for many a comedic character.  They expect that kind of language from their rap musician interests and controversial comedians or a movie their parents might be opposed to them watching.  But from “Mr Fancy Pants” himself?  Lo, how we misinterpret thee and thou for anything other than a casual ‘you’.

Considering topics of woe and misfortune, murder and the use of mind-altering magic as well as lingo one’s grandmother would threaten with soap, perhaps we should take Shakespeare out of the curriculum?  How dare we putrefy young minds with 400-year-old madness?  Surely however, if art imitates life, everything portrayed in Shakespearean plays is out there anyway and we cannot shelter our youth from what is thrown at them during a news report, in the lyrics of popular songs and a favoured game, television show or film?  Indeed, man has not progressed far beyond many of these scourges since the bubonic plague hit London in the 15-1600’s.  Shakespeare is thus certainly still relevant.  Why else do we learn about history?  Why else to we try to change governmental policies that seem to have been implemented in the stone ages and fight for our ever-changing human rights?  Why do we learn to communicate with all manner of man, to explore and to grow in knowledge towards changed minds and hearts?  In my opinion, what we can learn about ourselves from the works of a long-dead playwright, is far more beneficial than the darkness of humanity he reveals is scarring.

I asked my students about their opinions of Shakespeare this week and whether or not they think it should be kept in the yearly curriculum.  There was definitely some strong opposition, with Year 8 students describing Shakespeare as dramatic, tedious, but entertaining, and acknowledgement that when one doesn’t understand the original text it is like reading Arabic.  However, one student in Year 7B stated, with a chorus of agreement from his classmates, “I thought it was going to be boring, but now I am entertained,” and another chimed in, “The more I read, the more I want to read.”  A few in 7A are intrigued and feel that Romeo and Juliet contains some of the best pick-up lines they have heard and are keeping note so that they might use them in future.  Some of the Year 9 students who have studied a few of Shakespeare’s plays describe Shakespeare’s work as hallucinogenic, dark, tragic and, “Hectic! PG!”

Whatever one’s personal opinion on the matter of Shakespeare in the curriculum, along with his “low-down”, dark talk and tales, Shakespeare offers us gripping storylines, undeniably beautiful poetry, truer words than anyone else knows how to express, laughs and advice we would do well to heed.

“These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder
Which, as they kiss, consume.”

“Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.”

Warnings by Friar Lawrence in Romeo and Juliet

“Do not swear by the moon, for she changes constantly. Then your love would also change.” 

Juliet to Romeo – hints at the fickle nature of a young man’s love, epitomised by Romeo’s instantaneous switch from obsession over Roseline to Juliet.

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”

Juliet, pondering the relevance of Romeo’s surname and standing as a Montague, her family’s (the Capulets’) sworn enemy.

“O serpent heart hid with a flowering face!
Did ever a dragon keep so fair a cave?
Beautiful tyrant, fiend angelical, dove feather raven, wolvish-ravening lamb! Despised substance of devinest show, just opposite to what thou justly seemest – A dammed saint, an honourable villain!”

Juliet describing Romeo after she finds out he has killed her cousin in a murderous, vengeful rage.  A commentary on how appearances and behaviour can stand in contrast to one another and how despair can lead one to act out of character.  This also displays Shakespeare’s love of oxymorons – contrast through contradiction.

A few special quotes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream:

“The course of true love never did run smooth.”

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”

“Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

“And yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays.”

A few great TEDx talks for those who love Shakespeare but not Hip Hop or visa-versa:

What do we English teachers do when times are tough? We look to the Bard of course! Who better to guide us through the online educational space than a writer who has been dead for over 400 years! Now before you scoff “nonsense” over the rim of your coffee mug and scroll to the next page, let’s consider this in a little more depth. The transition to online learning has been challenging for students and teachers alike and we have all been plagued by fears and doubts. First Language English is a subject which you may consider one of the easier subjects to study online and perhaps you have a point. I can email you a poem- you can read it- you can write me an essay about it. Bob’s your uncle, done and dusted. Bring on the next one… Well, not quite.

Why does an author write a book? Obviously they want people to read it, but more than that, they want people to talk about it; it’s the hushed conversation in smoky cafes, the heated discussions over a plate of Thai chicken niblets at an annual Book Club meeting and the dog-eared, coffee stained pages of a favourite book passed from parent to child. Literature provokes dialogue and debate and as I always say to my students “It’s okay to hate the story you’ve just read, but you must be able to tell me why”. Stories, poems, plays- they are meant to be read and shared and isn’t it a truism that it is just as satisfying to discuss something you love as something you hate?

This is why I want to be back in my classroom! Not just for my view of the mountain, but for the interaction; the back and forth across the classroom, the heated opinions and different perspectives which mingle and lap the edges of the room like a gentle wave on a summer’s day.

Simply put, it’s a lot more difficult to discuss a work of literature isolated from each other as we currently are. You can read the play yourself, sure, but where’s the fun in that? A play isn’t meant to be performed by one person, now is it? My belabored point is that teaching First Language English online is a challenge and no Zoom meeting or Google Hangout Meet can replicate the wonderful disorder of a good class discussion.
Back to my original point. So, what do we do when we feel the pressure, the stalking fear and self-doubt that comes with being chucked in the deep end of the pool and having to paddle like a crazed duck to stay afloat? To whom do we turn when the challenges of online learning become all too real? Why, to Shakespeare of course! As usual, our dear Bard has a few life lessons up his sleeve to help us cope.

Take the Bard’s words to heart. Enjoy a good book and don’t try and argue with me that Shakespeare is no longer relevant! Stay safe everyone.

Alice Pryor
High School English Language and Literature Teacher