Mar 2, 2021

Shakespeare >>>>> The Most Relevant Literature a Teacher Ever Presents >>>>> How to Guide Students Away from Mean Streets and Prison, Toward Life Satisfaction

The works of Shakespeare are astonishing for their psychological insight and soaring literary beauty.  They are nonpareil works in the field not only of literature but of psychology.

 

I first utilized the works of Shakespeare while teaching psychology at a Dakota county alternative high school in the 1990s.  When I told the English teachers that I was going to teach King Lear, they asked me what contemporary adaptation I was going to use.  When I told them that I was going to use the original text 9and never abominations such as No Fear Shakespeare), they looked at me like I was hopelessly naïve.  I could see in their eyes that they were saying to themselves something like, “What a fool---  doesn’t he know that these are whipped up on kids, castaways, burdened by family struggles, drugs, and community environment?  Good luck, dude---  check back with us when the students bring you to your senses."

 

I proceeded to present every word of King Lear, having the students read, line by line.  We took it slowly.   I let no word go without definition, no opportunity to promote discussion pass, which meant an opportunity in almost every psychologically profound stanza.  The 20 or so putative ruffians I had in these classes loved the play.  After we had finished reading the classic, I took them to a performance at the Guthrie---   a major reason why I had selected Lear to read in class.  Many of the students had become attached to certain parts that they had often taken in class.  They came to the Guthrie staging with fiery curiosity  >>>>>

 

>>>>>    How would Lear lay into his loving daughter Cordelia for not mustering the fawning words that he sought at the division of his property among her and her sisters?

 

>>>>>    How would the Fool (jester) handle her remarks to Kent (confined in stocks for telling the truth to King Lear about the probable consequences of his rash actions) when the latter asked her where she had  learned a witticism, to which the Fool replied, consonant with her knowing who the real fools were:  “Not in the stocks, fool.”

 

>>>>>    How would the sensitive scene be handled in which ruffians gouge out Glouchester’s eyes at the behest of his wayward son, Edmund?

 

My students were on the edge of their seats, listening to everyone.  I reveled in seeing this sight while others at this special staging for high school students, some from highly touted suburban Minnetonka High School, were inattentive and acting the fools themselves---   while my supposedly whipped up on, life-burdened, can’t succeed students could not have been more attentive if they had been graduate students in Elizabethan literature.  This was one of my best moments as a teacher.

 

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The question should never be,

 

“How do you get students interested in Shakespeare?”

 

The question should instead be,

 

“How would a teacher present the Bard without mesmerizing students?” 

 

I have continued to teach Shakespeare into my students in the New Salem Educational Initiative, reading the plays in full, then compressing them for presentation at our annual banquet.  Thus far I have compressed for presentation the plays King Lear, Hamlet, Othello, Julius Caesar, Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, and Comedy of Errors.  Every summer I take those with major roles to see the same play we have performed at the banquet (having selected the play to be performed accordingly) at the Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona.

 

In considering the intense relevance of Shakespeare to the lives of these young people, examine again the sentiments of the hired assassins of Macbeth, guys who have been kicked around by life much as have my students and their families  >>>>>

 

>>>>>  

 

Second Murderer:          

I am one, my liege,

Whom the vile blows and buffets of the world

Have so incensed that I am reckless what

I do to spite the world.

 

First Murderer:                

 

And I another,

So weary with disasters, tugg’d with fortune,

That I would set my life on any chance,

To mend it, or be rid on’t.

 

And for students who have known or known of people who have been caught up in circumstances in which they have committed grave criminal offenses, imagine the power of this guilt-ridden soliloquy of Claudius in Hamlet >>>>>

 

>>>>> 

 

King (Claudius)                

 

O, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven;

It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t,

A brother’s murder.  Pray can I not,

Though inclination be as sharp as will; 

My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent;                                       

And, like a man to double business bound,        

I stand in pause where I shall first begin,

And both neglect. 

 

What if this cursed hand

Were thicker than itself with brother’s blood,

Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens

To wash it white as snow?  Whereto serves mercy

But to confront the visage of offense?

And what’s in prayer but this two-fold force,

To be forestalled ere we come to fall,

Or pardoned being down?  Then I’ll look up;

My fault is past. 

 

But, O, what force of prayer

Can serve my turn?  Forgive me my foul murder?

That cannot be;  since I am still possess’d

Of those effects for which I did the murder,

My crown, mine own ambition and my queen.

May one be pardon’d and retain the offense?

In the corrupted currents of this world

Offense’s gilded hand may shove by justice,

And oft ‘tis seen the wicked prize itself

Buys out the law:  but ‘tis not so above;

 

There is no shuffling, there the action lies

In his true nature; and we ourselves compell’d

Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,

To give evidence. 

 

What then?  what rests?

Try what repentance can;  what can it not?

Yet what can it when one can not repent?

O wretched state!  O bosom black as death!

O limed soul, that, struggling to be free,

Art more engaged!  Help, angels!  Make assay!

Bow, stubborn knees;  and, heart with strings of steel,

Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe!!

All may be well.

 

[Kneels]

 

Rising

 

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:

Words without thoughts never to heaven go.              

 

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Teaching Shakespeare sends powerful messages to students about the impact of one’s social environment as a generator of human behavior, encouraging them to examine their actions before proceeding with deeds for which they would forever pay.

 

I do this, then I show them a better way via the power of knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education, the path to a life not leading to mean streets or to incarceration but to cultural fulfillment, civic engagement, and professional satisfaction.

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