SHAKSPER 2000: Re: Teaching King Lear vs. Hamlet

From: Hardy M. Cook (editor@ws.bowiestate.edu)
Date: 01/19/00 

The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 11.0110  Wednesday, 19 January 2000.

[1]     From:   Jack Heller <quomodo@edistoelectric.net>
        Date:   Monday, 17 Jan 2000 11:21:50 -0500
        Subj:   Re: SHK 11.0096 Teaching King Lear vs. Hamlet

[2]     From:   C. David Frankel <frankel@arts.usf.edu>
        Date:   Monday, 17 Jan 2000 12:12:58 -0500
        Subj:   RE: SHK 11.0096 Teaching King Lear vs. Hamlet

[3]     From:   Seán Lawrence <seanlawrence@writeme.com>
        Date:   Monday, 17 Jan 2000 09:35:39 -0800
        Subj:   Re: SHK 11.0096 Teaching King Lear vs. Hamlet

[4]     From:   Stacy Mulder <00ssmulder@bsuvc.bsu.edu>
        Date:   Monday, 17 Jan 2000 16:54:04 -0500 (EST)
        Subj:   Re: SHK 11.0096 Teaching King Lear vs. Hamlet

[5]     From:   Edward Pixley <pixleyee@snyoneva.cc.oneonta.edu>
        Date:   Tuesday, 18 Jan 2000 16:48:10 -0500
        Subj:   Re: SHK 11.0096 Teaching King Lear vs. Hamlet


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Jack Heller <quomodo@edistoelectric.net>
Date:           Monday, 17 Jan 2000 11:21:50 -0500
Subject: 11.0096 Teaching King Lear vs. Hamlet
Comment:        Re: SHK 11.0096 Teaching King Lear vs. Hamlet

Laura Blankenship inquired:

>I think I'm going to teach Lear instead of Hamlet this semester for a
>composition class (writing about literature).  I've found two problems
>with Hamlet in the past: 1) many students read it in high school and/or
>2) students don't respond well to it.  I was think students might react
>better to Lear and possibly might not have read it yet.  Any tips on
>teaching it? Or arguments for teaching Hamlet or something else?  I only
>get to teach one Shakespeare/Renaissance play.

I hope your idea won't result in falling out of the frying pan and into
the fire. I am not altogether persuaded that writing about Shakespeare
in a first-year composition class is a great use of time. I say this
having tried it with The Tempest and Macbeth. The problem is that we
forget the challenge of the language, one cause for why "students don't
respond well to" Hamlet and other plays. Is there not enough for a
composition student to do than simultaneously to engage the literature
and to come up with something engaging to say about it?

If I were to try again with using Shakespeare in a first-year
composition course, I would choose a text that can serve as a source for
comment on a contemporary controversy. I am writing this from South
Carolina; today you are likely to see this state on the news because of
its confederate flag controversy. In this context, Othello may give
students something to think about.

Jack Heller

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           C. David Frankel <frankel@arts.usf.edu>
Date:           Monday, 17 Jan 2000 12:12:58 -0500
Subject: 11.0096 Teaching King Lear vs. Hamlet
Comment:        RE: SHK 11.0096 Teaching King Lear vs. Hamlet

Of course, it depends on the general nature of your students, but I've
found that _Lear_, especially if it is to be read in a short period,
does not work well with students who have little or no experience
reading Shakespeare. I'd suggest Henry V, Julius Caesar, even Othello
before Lear.

cdf

[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Seán Lawrence <seanlawrence@writeme.com>
Date:           Monday, 17 Jan 2000 09:35:39 -0800
Subject: 11.0096 Teaching King Lear vs. Hamlet
Comment:        Re: SHK 11.0096 Teaching King Lear vs. Hamlet

Laura Blankenship hypothesizes:

>I was think students might react
>better to Lear and possibly might not have read it yet.  Any tips on
>teaching it?

If you want to teach something really different neither Lear nor Hamlet
would really be that unusual.  You might want to try Titus
Andronicus-there's a film coming out, nobody will have heard of it, and
it's certainly different than whatever they were taught about great
tragedy.  Alternatively, you might want to try Marlowe's Faustus.  It's
been reworked so often that students should be vaguely familiar with the
plot, without any real risk of having read it before, and they'll get to
read some Marlowe to complement whatever earlier exposure they had to
Shakespeare.

Cheers,
Seán.

[4]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Stacy Mulder <00ssmulder@bsuvc.bsu.edu>
Date:           Monday, 17 Jan 2000 16:54:04 -0500 (EST)
Subject: 11.0096 Teaching King Lear vs. Hamlet
Comment:        Re: SHK 11.0096 Teaching King Lear vs. Hamlet

To Laura Blankenship:

I applaud your decision to use Lear in your comp class. My experience
has been similar to yours: students already "did" Hamlet (and aren't
ABOUT to read it AGAIN), and students have little in common (or so they
think, at this age), with Hamlet.

Not that composition students respond effusively to any of the
tragedies, of course. My best responses have come from teaching MND to
non-English majors.  But there are good responses to Lear, too, if we
stress themes to which the students can relate, i.e.: "good brother/bad
brother," (or "sister," as it were); marital fidelity; views on aging
and the treatment of the aged; the "generation gap" (which of course
lets you tie in with a bit of sixties history). My students just last
term wrote provocatively about all of these topics as we "did" Lear.

Stacy Mulder
Department of English
Ball State University

[5]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Edward Pixley <pixleyee@snyoneva.cc.oneonta.edu>
Date:           Tuesday, 18 Jan 2000 16:48:10 -0500
Subject: 11.0096 Teaching King Lear vs. Hamlet
Comment:        Re: SHK 11.0096 Teaching King Lear vs. Hamlet

I have had great fun dealing with the fact that from Act III until the
end of the play, the main dramatic conflict of the play is pure
melodrama-the "good guys" versus the "bad guys."  -- All of them
fighting for the rights of Lear and Gloucester, both of whom are almost
unconscious of and unconcerned about the fight, while they, in their
blindness and madness, philosophize about the great truths of the
world.  Likewise, the principals in the fighting are unconscious of what
is going on in the minds of Lear and Gloucester.  Even Edgar, privy to
some of it, can't really fathom it.  Moreover, in that "good guy vs. bad
guy" fight, all the bad guys, one by one, first Cornwall, then Oswald,
then, in rotation, Edmund, Goneril, and Regan get picked off, until only
the good guys remain.  Only then does Shakespeare throw everybody the
curve, with the arrival of Lear carrying Cordelia's body.    Still,
Albany wants to end the melodrama, meting out appropriate poetic
justice, and return the crown (the proof that the "good guys" won) to
Lear, who, of course, doesn't even notice.  And all the good guys who
are left, stand around with "their heads up their butts," not having the
foggiest idea of what to make of what just happened.  And nobody seems
to want the damned crown.

I think it's the expectation of simple justice set up by the melodrama
that makes the ending of the play so horrific.

Of course, if I were to come out of retirement to teach it again, I
might see what I could do with Jane Smiley's take on the story as a
fresh perspective.

Good luck,
Ed Pixley


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