We're STILL Teaching Shakespeare Wrong

     I was approached by a friend for Leader commentary on the upcoming Macbeth movie starring Michael Fassbender, which was shortlisted for this year's Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, asking if I felt that film adaptations of Shakespeare were doing justice to the material, or the concept of translating it to film is inherently wrong. I was surprised to hear that there is controversy brewing over even this from Shakespeare purists and novices alike, before I realized, wait, we're human beings, of course there will be controversy. Duh. My first inclination was, hey, Shakespeare is one of those few miraculous English writers who is somehow simultaneously lauded to infinity due to their place in the 'canon', yet criminally under-appreciated. All of this, I feel, because we are still teaching Shakespeare wrong.

  Lets start with what Shakespeare is seen as: One of the most talented playwrights of the language, placed so high on the literary pedestal that the average person in the US has probably read two or three of his plays, understood none of any, and still parrots the common perception that Shakespeare is the greatest writer ever to have lived, because he writes in fancy Pentameter and makes up words like Zounds!.

   What Shakespeare actually was? It's more complicated. He's a fiendishly talented playwright who ripped and retreaded common narrative plots that had been around since Antiquity and breathed fresh, hilarious, gorgeous, sexy, horrific life into many of his plays. Play at his time were not just performed by all-male casts, but were written for them as well and, more to the point, for entertainment foremost. He has comedy after comedy with the most ridiculous slapstick and sex that could be found in the era, with many of his comedies (Looking at you, Twelfth Night and Comedy of Errors) having almost criminally similar plots revolving around mistaken identities and the guffaws that ensue. He capital-D Definitely Wrote most of his plays, Maybe Wrote some outliers, but was undoubtedly one of the best crafters of performance-pieces at his time.

    I think the critical point to get in teaching Shakespeare is this: Shakespeare is not taught, Shakespeare is experienced. Much like Theatre can not be taught, only experienced. We read his works in class with language so archaic we can barely grasp at what is being said. Sometimes students are asked to read out loud or perform the words in class to better emulate their true power, but even this is a farce. If students do not understand what they're reading (which they should NOT be reading for the first time in high-school, but that could be a completely different post), they certainly will not understand how to speak it. Imagine watching a foreign drama without subtitles; you would likely not grasp the subtleties of the situation, but a powerful, studied, and considerate performer can transcend that barrier and allow you to grasp at the characters heart even if their words could be any arrangement of sound. Shakespeare, arcane as we may joke about it being, is still our beautiful language, and this only further lends itself to performance.

   All of this leads to students encountering Romeo and Juliet just as they are old enough to find the whole situation insane and rushed into, without the maturity to understand the forces at work beneath them. It leads to students being frustrated, and turned off from Shakespeare for the rest of their lives. They may still have a reference for The Bard, parroting a hereditary belief that he is an amazing and enduring artist, but never going to contribute to the artists who give life to his verse, or striving to understand him on anything but a surface level.

   It's for all these reasons, and more, that I am completely for films like Fassbender's Macbeth giving a wider audience an opportunity to get reacquainted with the material. A class on Breaking Bad that involved reading over each individual screenplay with no accompaniment would be about as successful as most introductory education on Shakespeare, but perhaps the video of the material itself would remedy the latter as well as it would the former. Either way, please let me know if you disagree, or want to elucidate a point, or offer any sort of feedback, because I definitely still have learning to do and am open to changing my opinion. How did you first get to know Shakespeare? What would you change? What did you like?