Shakespeare and Education
For a long time, Shakespeare’s plays have taken a starring
role in our education system, perhaps rightly so, but for many their tussle
with the bard is remembered as one of the most boring or terrifying of their
school career. There is a movement in education today that aims to change this
sorry state of affairs and to make children’s schoolroom experiences of
Shakespeare exciting, fun, and memorable for all the right reasons. Dr Paul
Prescott is an academic associate on the Teaching Shakespeare project, which is
a joint enterprise between the RSC and Warwick University that provides
teachers with the tools to make their own teaching of Shakespeare interactive
and dynamic. I recently interviewed Dr Prescott for Figure/Ground (the article
is co-authored by Alexandra Campbell) and during the session, he cited his school
experiences as one of the chief inspirations for his career. Hearing him speak like
this really struck a chord with me, as I too had a brilliant experience of
Shakespeare at school, in the classroom, in school plays, and on the theatre
trips organised by my teachers. I hope that the Teaching Shakespeare, and similar qualifications will mean that future
students have an equally rich experience.
When Shakespeare writes of school, he certainly does not
make it sound exciting or fun. In the seven ages of man Jaques describes “the
whining schoolboy, with his satchel / And shining morning face, creeping like a
snail / Unwilling to school” (As You Like It, Act II Scene VII). Despite this, it looks as if
the education Shakespeare received at the Stratford-Upon-Avon grammar school was impressive in its extent. In
his book, The Soul of the Age, Jonathan
Bate outlines the education a boy like Shakespeare would have received at his
grammar school. The sheer scale of this Classical education is impressive for
the short space of time in which it took place. Undoubtedly the curriculum was
less varied for the boys of the early modern grammar school than it is today,
but importantly they were also taught Latin in the target language.
The University of Warwick is also conducting a project to
produce an edition of the complete works of James Shirley (1596-1666) including
the Latin Grammar text books. As part of this project I have been transcribing
one of these grammar books, which is entirely in Latin. I’m sure, that in the
time it has taken to transcribe, I have learnt more Latin than I managed to in
the whole of my time at school and university. Why? Because I am totally
immersed in the language. In the same way, the schoolboys of Shakespeare’s age
would have been saturated with the language, and I am sure that this was how
they were able to learn so much.
So, in the great debate about to what extent Modern Foreign
Languages ought to be taught in the target language, I’m pretty sure that
Shakespeare would have been on the side of the total immersion argument.
Although, considering the “creeping like a snail” comment, I think we can also
surmise that he would have greatly appreciated a touch of the interactive
approach to which Dr Prescott and company subscribe.
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Bate, Jonathan. The
Soul of the Age: The Life, Mind and World of William Shakespeare. pp.
79-160. London: Penguin Books, 2009.
I have been debating the authorship question on Amazon for about 4 years...one of the Oxfordians main weapons is that Sh. did not attend a University, only grammar school...that is correct, only seven years in a school that taught only Latin, poetry, drama, rhetoric, translating plays of Plautus, Terence, the poetry of Virgil and Ovid...Shakespeare had a more than adequate education when he left for London...and when he got there, Oxies think he was kept in a closet to write plays....his learning continued when he got to London...he seems to have been an avid reader, with a sponge-like memory, who read only what he needed or wanted to read (plots for plays were always needed)...seeing other plays, talking to foreigners in London that he could not meet in Stratford...
ReplyDeleteOh...I do not think the boy in As You Like It was a portrait of him...to my way of thinking he began to love school, the plays and poetry......
Exactly! I did appreciate "Oxies think he was kept in a closet to write plays..." - a very funny line! Did you see 'Anonymous'? It was depicted in just such a way in that film. Edward de Vere writes and stockpiles the plays for Shakespeare to release at intervals. There is no use asking how contemporary references appeared if this was the case: it's too absurd!
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