Shakespeare Is Great: A Manual for Teachers

By Hugh J. Burns Ph.D.

Dr. Hugh J.Burns has earned many distinguished teacher awards for having taught mostly British Literature for fifty-six years. Many years he asked to be assigned the worst students. They challenged him to find ways to get the most recalcitrant ( and the best) to agree that Shakespeare knew what he was doing and was worthy of respect. And he had a great time doing it! you will too. It's all laid out, step by step, for you as a gift from a retired master teacher to his profession.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 30, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796014921

Book preview

Shakespeare is Great

A Manual for Teachers

Hugh J. Burns, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2019 by Hugh J. Burns, Ph.D.

Library of Congress Control Number:     2019901517

ISBN:                Hardcover                           978-1-7960-1494-5

                          Softcover                              978-1-7960-1493-8

                          eBook                                   978-1-7960-1492-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 04/29/2019

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CONTENTS

Dedication

Macbeth

Act One

Act Two

Act Three

Act Four

Act Five

Hamlet

Act One

Act Two

Act Three

Act Four

Act Five

Romeo And Juliet

Act One

Act Two

Act Three

Act Four

Act Five

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Act One

Act Two

Act Three

Act Four

Act Five

Othello

The Merchant Of Venice

Act One

Act Two

Act Three

Act Four

Act Five

GettyImages-153974900.tif

A manual for teachers with lessons to make kids shout

Shakespeare is Great

Avoid reading the plays word-for-word in class,

learn some of Shakespeare’s techniques as a writer

and lead the kids to enjoy the Bard with you.

by

Hugh J. Burns, Ph.D.

Dedication

To my best friend

my mentor

my judge

my jury

my inspiration

my love

my wife

A Note to Consider:

I have taught classes In Shakespeare and students have been bored to death. (So have I) I was doing what the curriculum demanded but the guys who wrote the curriculum never understood most high school students. Many states require one Shakespearean play be taught in each year of high school. Let’s get realistic. It’s nap time for many kids.

So why not try tested techniques that really work. Approach the plays like detective mysteries. I’ve done the research, all they have to do is get the plot and its’ twists. After asking themselves lots of questions, it’s time to experience the play. But only AFTER they are familiar with the plot and how the times may affect it.

Students tend to be visual and they celebrate and discuss the latest movies. How would they like to sit down and read the script form one of their favorite movies? Reading a script that is meant to be seen is just like reading assigned roles in an English class. In fact, it’s identical. And just as much fun.

So let’s change the procedure. First of all we study the playbook.

Teach them what Shakespeare intended. Get their interest up. Let them really understand the play’s construction before they see it. They have, in my experience, been far more interested when they know what is coming and are able to judge informatively whether or not the director did the script justice. They love to be critics. Teach them how AND how to think.

Will they learn to appreciate the language, the poetry? Sometimes. But maybe they are not yet ready to feel the poetry. But this approach might get them there. Might. No guarantees.

Read the scene-by-scene notes following with the students to appreciate the action. Then find a DVD of the play and try it with the students. But hold off on that. Let them decide whether or not they want to see it. A lot of DVD’s of Shakespeare are ponderous at best. Some are good. But the times they are a-changin. Different directors try different ways of presenting the material.

This current generation of youth are very visual and if we approach Shakespeare’s canon after understanding it, then they get to use their skills as cinema critics to see the play as Shakespeare intended. We are sure there were some really bad, ponderous performances of Shakespeare’s plays in his time. Particularly in neighboring or next-door theaters. But his plays have survived and are still largely celebrated. Some think the plays are so good that the guy we know as Shakespeare couldn’t have written them. That’s high praise indeed.

I have found that when students put their cinema critic hat on, they pay better attention and meet the requirements of the school/state.

I’m not disparaging the language of the Bard. By all means teach and analyze some of the great speeches like the exquisite poetry they are. But keep it to a minimum of some speeches. If they catch fire, lead them to places where their hearts and minds will swell with brilliant joy. It’s hard to bring the whole class on that journey now. Maybe later. Almost certainly in college

GOING FORWARD

William Shakespeare is a conundrum wrapped in a mystery. But he is fascinating to discuss with persons who like to consider opposing interests. Instead of dictating my opinions to them, it’s more fun to let the students do the work. Just don’t let a Shakespearean play be the first lesson you explore. You have to know your students fairly well to know which aspect of the play will interest them and get them to catch fire for Will Shakespeare.

THE BETTER APPROACH

Did you know that Shakespeare’s plays were performed in daylight? If they went inside in the winter it was to court or to the Blackfriar’s Theater and the lights remained on while the actors performed. How different an experience might that have been for the audience, for the actors?

When we go to the theater, we have an illuminated cubicle at the end of the hall so we sit in darkness while the actors perform. However, the actors perform more intimately when the members of the audience are visible. They often feel and like the contact.

Sometimes Shakespeare uses humor even in his tragedies. Consider Hamlet. Hamlet hears the traveling company of players are on their way to the castle. He figures how to use them to get confirmation that Claudius killed his father. He wants to be able to see how well or badly this company is able to perform so he asks for a demonstration of acting from a player but first he instructs the player how he wants the scene delivered. He tells the actor not to saw the air with arms and hand gestures, etc. What Shakespeare is really doing is making fun of the way other acting companies just down the street, act histrionically with outrageously and with confusing gestures. He’s doing a commercial for his acting company as well as getting a few laughs to break the audience’ tension before we move into the discussion of the suspected murder. This guy Shakespeare knew what he was doing and how to work an audience,

In today’s world some actors in Shakespeare’s plays speak ponderously, sort of like a minister pounding the podium while he shouts his message. That’s overacting and it’s boring. Often a character delivers a speech, called a soliloquy, alone on stage, so we know what’s going on in the character’s head. In Shakespeare’s time, some guests were seated along the three edges of the projection stage and the lights were left on. When it comes time for the soliloquy, how much more effective would the speech be if the actor on stage drew the seated attendee into the soliloquy asking him the questions that are in his mind and in the speech. Not seeking for answers but asking for a kind of dialogue. It makes the speech more powerful and the audience gets a stronger sense of involvement.

Teachers must never dictate to students from an above position. Know and believe we are all journeymen on the same quest for knowledge. Look the students in the eye and share this message with them viscerally. They truly have taught e much more than I have taught them. They ask questions that make me think differently.

As a curriculum specialist, I would shudder when I walked into a class unannounced and saw a teacher sitting at a desk sipping from a coffee cup while casually slouched in a seat. That’s so wrong on so many ways. In most schools, students are not allowed to walk around with cups of coffee. If a teacher sits sipping coffee, it tells the student that that teacher thinks students are lesser beings. Better to adopt attitudes and strategies that make us equals on the path of discovery. I mean, after all, they already know we are likely to know more than they do in a specific field. We spent more years in classrooms gathering kernels of information than some of them have been alive. We don’t have to show off what we know, it’s better to encourage them to believe learning is a passion that will stay with you for the rest of your lives.

Here’s some teaching things to do. Don’t do all of them at once. Just keep them in the back of your mind and use them when they fit.

1. Look students directly in the eye at an even level when speaking.

2. Never tell them they are/were wrong. Just keep turning their answer around until you twist it into being correct. That’s the best way to encourage learning. Don’t allow them to start to believe they were/are wrong. Wrong is the way we begin the journey. It’s not the end.

3. The old adage fits best here. Let the students know you care for them as human beings. They don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care They are adolescents trying to figure out some pretty tough issues.They do better with support than with judgment.

4. Share your humanity with them. Tell them stories about the mistakes you’ve made.

5. Get to know your students on a personal level. 6. Use the schema theory. Find out what they already know and help them link prior knowledge to new information.

7. Have them showcase their personal talents.

8. Use storytelling to arouse interest. Tell them I stories. You stories always seem like a lecture from above. I stories allow you to share your humanity with them.

9. Give them many ways to succeed academically. We’re not all the same and each should be encouraged to use his/her personal way to demonstrate learning. For example, have them write a letter to the author asking questions and seeking answers, not writing an analysis of the play.

10. Offer multiple extra-credit activities requiring various levels of scholarship.

11. Beware of Euro-centrism. Include contributions from other cultures and continents. Celebrate differences and heritages. Re-enforce the riches we get from others.

12. Connect home, neighborhood and school experiences.

13. For many students, we must break massive assignments into manageable parts

14. Love your job and show it.

15. Smile.

Having these things floating around in your consciousness, lets us get on with how to get the students interested in learning, of all things, Shakespeare.

Remember that there were no stage directions nor sets in Shakespeare’s time. Modern authors tend to give a lot of directions about costumes, manners, hairstyles, etc. Check out a play by Tennessee Williams for example. It’s filled with stage directions, etc. Shakespeare’s languages gives that same material but he does it in iambic pentameter and through words and phrasing that fit the character. Practice exaggerating the unstressed/stressed syllables and start to get a feel for Shakespeare’s writing stress. The actual words of the play give the actors direction for how to portray a character. But you have to know how to look for it. Go find it.

Shakespeare wrote his plays in a specific historical era. If a student is interested in history, have him look up the year in which we believe the play was written. Then go to the internet and find out what was happening politically or personally in the years surrounding the play’s composition. Most authors find inspiration from their experiences.

Many of Shakespeare’s plays came about from reading something else. For example, Romeo and Juliet came about from a popular poem in Italy. If a student wants to get to know Shakespeare, check the introduction to Romeo and Juliet in this book, find the source poem. Read it. And then do a side-by-side comparison between the action in the poem and characters in Shakespeare’s play. What did he leave out? What did he add? Why? Is this stronger or weaker?You may learn something of play construction, too.

In Merchant of Venice, we deal with prejudice. In the Elizabethan era there was a lot of hatred for Catholics. One of the scenes in the play challenges Shylock to take his pound of flesh but without spilling one drop of Antonio’s blood. With the knowledge of anti-Catholic hatred abounding, what is Shakespeare saying. The Mass had to be done in secret and Catholics believe the priest changes bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. While the priest can sneak about hiding a loaf of bread as he moves from house to house, it is much harder to walk around with the addition of a bottle or more of wine. In the church or the courts, can the body be separated from the blood? Is Shakespeare comforting Catholics that receiving one is also receiving the other? Is he sympathizing with their confusion? Is he telling the world that the debate is foolish? You see how knowing a little of history can lead to a more complex view of the play.

In one of his later plays, King John, a character called Catherine has just lost a young son. Catherine’s lament is so deeply personal a sonnet that it is possibly a lament for one of Shakespeare’s twins, a boy, called Hamnet who died some years earlier. Now read the lament again and it has more punch.

I rarely suggest high school students, when studying Shakespeare, take parts and read them aloud. It’s usually non-productive. Use some of the skills in this book to raise interest in Shakespeare. The language is a little too hard for most high school students. Actors who will be playing in Shakespearean plays usually take one full year to learn how to pronounce the actor’s part. Learn about the plot and setting but only read a few of the main speeches. Teach the exquisite images and feelings, but don’t allow anyone but trained performers to read the lines regularly. Don’t butcher the Bard!

The goal, of course, is to get them interested through another angle different from reading the script. Give them background material and then, hopefully, there will be a good DVD or stage production available for them. At the end of the unit, let them see and hear a production. With what they have just experienced in your class, they will have a lot more to see and criticize. They can feel smarter than the rest of the audience in a theater, smarter than the director who chose to stage the scenes in a modern production. After the truth the students have learned from you, It might be enough for them to want to see another production of a Shakespearean play sometime in the future. And, most importantly, you’ve given them the opportunity to feel smart. It’s always better to feel smart than to feel confused. And it might lead to a desire to make theater a part of their lives in the future.

If you’re into giving students projects, Below is a listing of SHAKESPEAREAN PROJECTS that address the need to guide a particular young person to choose something he/she can actually do and feel proud of accomplishing. The suggestions are varied intellectually and by interest. I have found that when the student chooses (with a little guidance) the subject through which he demonstrates what has been learned, that task is approached with a bit more gusto. They feel a sense of ownership and obligation that is less present when a task is assigned.

POSSIBLE RESEARCH TOPICS FOR THE UNIT ON SHAKESPEARE:

1. In Shakespeare’s day most people couldn’t read. Choose a play and design a flag to fly above the Globe with design elements that would tell people exactly what play would be playing that afternoon

2.Discover and report on the Sumptuary Laws during the early to late Renaissance period. What colors, fabrics, furs were allocated to which social classes?

3. Report on costume design for men or women during the period.

4. Report on hairstyles and hair regulations for women during the period.

5. Report on weaponry of the period.

6. Research the history of the joust and sports

7. Chart social positions from Kings down to the serfs.

8. What is the evidence and your position on Christopher Marlowe as having been Shakespeare?

9. Study and report on one of the most influential persons of the period:

Having read through the above list, you can see that these research topics appeal to a variety of interests and abilities.

Finally, don’t get caught up in the dialogue about who wrote Shakespeare’s plays. That’s a real tempest in a teacup. There are several persons considered as possible authors who used Shakespeare’s name for various reasons. It would be a sort of completion if we could clearly establish the author of the plays. But whoever it is, he or she was unable to use the given name and we can choose to honor that. And settle down to admire the skills of the author who used the name William Shakespeare.. Great scholars disagree in their positions about who actually wrote the plays. This is largely based on a knowledge that Shakespeare’s Stratford could not have been able to produce such a skilled writer and something of a world traveler (e.g. think how many of his plays are accurately set in Italy). Let’s study the plays and forget the arguments about authorship. The skills and knowledge of the great scholars are far past ours. Let them argue that point. When they determine who actually and truly is this guy Shakespeare, give me a magic marker and allow me to cross out the name on the cover of the book and add the new name. That done, Let’s just admire the work. After all, "The play’s