SHAKSPER 2001: Re: Bard Bade Goodbye

From: Hardy M. Cook (editor@ws.bowiestate.edu)
Date: 03/09/01 

The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 12.0560  Friday, 9 March 2001

[1]     From:   R. A. Cantrell <racan@flash.net>
        Date:   Thursday, 8 Mar 2001 13:26:29 -0600
        Subj:   HK 12.0439 Re: Bard Bade Goodbye

[2]     From:   Melissa D. Aaron <maaron@csupomona.edu>
        Date:   Thursday, 08 Mar 2001 13:25:24 -0800
        Subj:   Re: SHK 12.0551 Re: Bard Bade Goodbye

[3]     From:   Marilyn A. Bonomi <pootersox@bonomi.connix.com>
        Date:   Thursday, 8 Mar 2001 17:59:31 -0500
        Subj:   Re: SHK 12.0551 Re: Bard Bade Goodbye

[4]     From:   Sean Lawrence <seanlawrence@writeme.com>
        Date:   Thursday, 08 Mar 2001 17:20:02 -0800
        Subj:   Re: SHK 12.0551 Re: Bard Bade Goodbye

[5]     From:   Todokoro Hiroyuki <todok@gpwu.ac.jp>
        Date:   Fri, 09 Mar 2001 10:40:26 +0900
        Subj:   Re: SHK 12.0551 Re: Bard Bade Goodbye

[6]     From:   Marti Markus <Markus.Marti@unibas.ch>
        Date:   Friday, 09 Mar 2001 04:38:49 +0100
        Subj:   Re: SHK 12.0551 Re: Bard Bade Goodbye / Shakespeare and the
Bible


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           R. A. Cantrell <racan@flash.net>
Date:           Thursday, 8 Mar 2001 13:26:29 -0600
Subject:        HK 12.0439 Re: Bard Bade Goodbye

Well said Mr. Small.

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Melissa D. Aaron <maaron@csupomona.edu>
Date:           Thursday, 08 Mar 2001 13:25:24 -0800
Subject: 12.0551 Re: Bard Bade Goodbye
Comment:        Re: SHK 12.0551 Re: Bard Bade Goodbye

Sam Small <samsmall@globalnet.co.uk> wrote:

> As an ex-teacher, and more recently, experience as
>a drama teacher, I can say that the absence of Shakespeare from schools
>would be a blessing that most young students would thank us heartily
>for.  Poetic metaphor is the language of mature adults with a
>substantial emotional memory.  Shakespeare, like many other marvellous
>artists, was older and far wiser than his years.  Absorbing poetry is an
>act of reflection; of taking a deep breath to look at the world
>differently than yesterday; of rightly positioning ourselves in this
>terrifying universe.  Children, as with most teenagers, have neither the
>emotional ability nor the inclination to do any of this.  They live for
>the material moment; death is impossible; things and people are either
>right or wrong.
>
>But English teachers will forever arm themselves with a Shakespeare
>playbook in the subconscious Puritan desire to immunize their charges
>against soaps, websites, action movies and all other horrible
>configurations of English words.  In their frantic desire to propagate
>their life's desire they swing from plot studies to analogies to
>re-writes to choreography to stage brawling - even painting and
>drawing.  And all the time the poetry - the simple, staggering poetry -
>goes wanting.
>
>We don't need Shakespeare in schools.  He is in and around us
>everywhere.  He changed western thinking.  Through his poetry we found
>ourselves - the poor, be-trodden individual struggling to make sense of
>this wicked world - as all children will one day become.

Haven't we had this thread before?  Am I experiencing deja vu?  Haven't
we had this thread before?

Of course, having discussed something previously never dismays a
SHAKSPERIAN.

However, I assume we will now have the replies agreeing with Sam Small
and any number of replies saying "I read Shakespeare when I was ______
years old and loved it" or "my ______ year old daughter/son loved seeing
a Shakespeare play" etc.  So I don't need to say any of that.

I do worry about the tone here, which seems to place Shakespeare at the
center of the known universe and--may I say this?  is incredibly
condescending to young people.  Many teenagers know that death is very
possible and horribly, that they may risk death by going to school to
study, among other things, Shakespeare.

On a less somber note, I agree with Jack Heller who has eloquently
argued for the value of other Early Modern dramatists.  There's no need
to deify Shakespeare or use his plays as preventative medicine against
supposedly corrupt modern culture.  But it's a good idea to use some of
the money and time poured into public schooling to plunk Shakespeare
down in front of people who may never have a chance to see or read it
otherwise and might enjoy it.  What they do with it later is up to them;
but many people simply don't know that libraries, museums, etc. are even
open to them or what's in there.  If they aren't told, then we're back
to the days that Dickens and Wilkie Collins complained about, in which
no working person can ever go to a public art place, because they're all
closed on Sundays, and in which art becomes the property of an elite by
default.

Probably I have not expressed this adequately, but I have done my best.

Melissa D. Aaron
California Polytechnic State University at Pomona

[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Marilyn A. Bonomi <pootersox@bonomi.connix.com>
Date:           Thursday, 8 Mar 2001 17:59:31 -0500
Subject: 12.0551 Re: Bard Bade Goodbye
Comment:        Re: SHK 12.0551 Re: Bard Bade Goodbye

In response to S. Small's diatribe against English teachers I have only
one thing to say:

As a high school teacher of 35 years' experience, I DEEPLY resent your
insulting description of my motivation for teaching Shakespeare and the
denigrating implications of what it is I do in my classroom.

Until you have sat in my classroom, and in the classrooms of thousands
of my colleagues in the United States and in Canada and in England and
in Australia and in New Zealand and every other nation that is an
English-speaking nation DON'T  YOU DARE CHARACTERIZE OUR TEACHING IN
THIS MANNER!

I'll keep the explanations of how we make the language come alive and
the students come to love Shakespeare for someone not so close-minded.

Hardy, I counted to 10, and to 100, and edited out most of what I really
wanted to say. What's left can't be left unsaid.

Marilyn A. Bonomi
teacher of literature and composition, 35 years; PTSA Teacher of the
Year

[4]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Sean Lawrence <seanlawrence@writeme.com>
Date:           Thursday, 08 Mar 2001 17:20:02 -0800
Subject: 12.0551 Re: Bard Bade Goodbye
Comment:        Re: SHK 12.0551 Re: Bard Bade Goodbye

Sam Small writes:

>substantial emotional memory.  Shakespeare, like many other marvellous
>artists, was older and far wiser than his years.  Absorbing poetry is an
>act of reflection; of taking a deep breath to look at the world
>differently than yesterday; of rightly positioning ourselves in this
>terrifying universe.  Children, as with most teenagers, have neither the
>emotional ability nor the inclination to do any of this.  They live for
>the material moment; death is impossible; things and people are either
>right or wrong.

On the other hand, lots of people seem to just harden in all their
bigotries as they grow older, and take to complaining full-time about
the government, minority groups, kids these days, or any other available
whipping-post.

To "position oneself in the universe" is, at least to most
existentialists, to act; it might be precisely to "live for the material
moment".

Cheers,
Seán.

[5]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Todokoro Hiroyuki <todok@gpwu.ac.jp>
Date:           Fri, 09 Mar 2001 10:40:26 +0900
Subject: 12.0551 Re: Bard Bade Goodbye
Comment:        Re: SHK 12.0551 Re: Bard Bade Goodbye

Sam's prospect sounds too optimistic, doesn't it? In Japan, the
government drastically lessened the number of characters (kanji) to
learn, just after the world war 2, hoping children would learn more if
they needed, and what's the result?  Now every university suffers
discommunication between teachers and students, (laughably) for lack of
vocabulary! I don't think 'readiness is all' at least so far as the
education is concerned. Is my opinion irrelevant?

Cheers,
Todok

[6]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Marti Markus <Markus.Marti@unibas.ch>
Date:           Friday, 09 Mar 2001 04:38:49 +0100
Subject: 12.0551 Re: Bard Bade Goodbye / Shakespeare and the
Comment:        Re: SHK 12.0551 Re: Bard Bade Goodbye / Shakespeare and the
Bible

And what about the BIBLE? Who would insist to have this dangerous and
badly structured book on any curriculum?

For a long time I thought this rather stupid book indispensable - not
for its intrinsic value (whatever that may be), but just because I
thought it was something basic which you have to have read to be able to
enjoy the jokes and puns in later works which refer to passages in that
abominable work. (I am sorry, folks, but if you are not a catholic you
cannot really understand Joyce, and if you are not a protestant,
American literature will be a book with seven seals to you... ) Even
Marx and Engels quoted and paraphrased the bible and Shakespeare. Not
because they wanted to immortalize either of them.  Just because they
thought they could rely on some common knowledge, the common knowledge
of the bourgeoisie. Many a communist and every atheist probably knows
"his" or "her" bible better than his or her parish priest. But do we
have to read "Mein Kampf" to become and remain democrats?

What will be lost if the bible is no longer read?  From my point of
view, it may be a pity for some puns that can no longer be understood.
It is always a pity if a joke gets lost - but what a gain for humanity
if nobody wants to fight for his or her God any longer!

In my country (Switzerland) the Koran has never been a compulsory
lecture, and the Kamasutra, unfortunately, is largely unknown, but it is
not forbidden to read either of them. Have Shakespeare's works any
intrinsic ideological value - or are they just fun to read and/or play
and/or watch?  Personally, I would be more pleased to connotate
Shakespeare with the Kamasutra than with the Bible.

Why not have wine lists in our literary and ethical Canon instead?

Cheers,
Markus Marti
orthodox epicurean (of the militant hedonist branch)


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