Idiot’s guide to Shakespeare or stick to the original script?
That is the question English teachers are grappling with as they confront the problem of teaching the canonical playwright’s greatest works to the current crop of high school students who increasingly spend less time reading for pleasure and more time on screens.
St Clare’s College Waverley head English teacher Mary Prince with year 11 English students Suki Waddel, Emily Cleary and Helena Phoon.Credit: James Brickwood
Cutting corners when it comes to Shakespeare is easier than ever thanks to titles like the No Fear Shakespeare series, where a modern English version accompanies the original verse, and websites that convert Shakespeare’s tricky Elizabethan metre into plain language.
“In the past 10 years I have seen a shift in how Shakespeare is taught in schools that came with the No Fear Shakespeare and other publications that simplify the language,” head of English at St Clare’s College Waverley Mary Prince said.
“Some schools started using them as an access point, but they kind of became the only thing schools were using.”
Price said her school still used the original plays.
“We’re studying Shakespeare for the richness of language, how you can express the human experience, how to create a character who is interesting through beautiful metaphor and symbolism,” she said.
The advent of plain-English translations means fewer students are reading the original language, say some English teachers.Credit: Steven Siewert
University of Canberra Shakespeare scholar Dr Duncan Driver, who co-authored a book on Teaching Shakespeare in Australian Schools, said while some might believe that appreciating his works required an encyclopaedic knowledge of Jacobean and Elizabethan vernacular, Shakespeare’s language was best enjoyed with a bit of intuition.
“You can tune your ear to Shakespeare to allow you to follow what’s going on relatively quickly,” Driver said. “A comparison could be made to rap or hip-hop. If you put on a track, it might be incomprehensible at first ... but it is the same as Shakespeare, if you understand the rhythm, it is more intuitive, you start to understand.”
A NSW curriculum requirement stipulating students must study a Shakespeare play in years 7 and 8 was axed in 2012, but the mandate remains that one of his works must be studied in years 9 or 10.
Driver said he did not believe that students – or teachers – should be forced to study Shakespeare as part of the curriculum as a kind of “cultural medicine”. However, he said he believed there were benefits for those who read his plays.
“It is an opportunity to reflect on the fact that things which are difficult can be worth pursuing,” he said. “The language can be difficult, but so can algebra, computer coding or Mandarin.”
At John Colet School in Belrose, on Sydney’s northern beaches, primary school pupils learn and perform Shakespeare’s works – a feat that was not insurmountable for young children, principal Julian Wilcock said.
“The language is an opportunity for the students to delve into higher order English,” he said.
“Once you dumb it down you lose the humour. A lot of the great phrases in there are so rich. Shakespeare is great – there is everything from comedies to tragedies and in between.”
The head of the state’s English Teachers’ Association, Eva Gold, said teachers had changed their approach to teaching Shakespeare in the classroom.
“We no longer go painfully line by line through a Shakespeare play to the younger students,” Gold said.
“We often teach Shakespeare through performance, taking shorter sections for dramatisation, teaching Shakespeare as a play text, and linking these scenes with different ways to fill in the plot, posing questions about the characters and situations they find themselves in or comparing these with current dilemmas that face us.”
Head of education at Bell Shakespeare Joanna Erskine runs workshops aimed at helping English teachers to deliver the subject to students and said they were sometimes hesitant to perform the play rather than simply read it aloud.
Shakespeare can undoubtedly be challenging, but experienced Shakespeare educators say it is a challenge that students are up for.Credit: Eddie Jim
“There is so much fear. It is emotional work. We say you have to stand up, you have to feel silly; if you’re going to teach it, you have to be able to do it ... A lot of English teachers say to us ... ‘We don’t do that’,” she said.
Erskine said some schools were limiting the amount of Shakespeare students studied because it was perceived as too hard.
“I am a former teacher – some teachers do just make an assessment of their students and think they can’t do it because they’ve got low literacy skills. We’re in classroom, we’re in juvenile justice centres – they can do Shakespeare. Once they conquer that, their confidence goes through the roof.
“There are a lot of teenage characters in Shakespeare. I think what surprises students is the way Shakespeare represents characters – they could have said this, they feel these same things.”
St Mary’s Cathedral College English teacher Moshoula Mavrakis said fewer students were reading for pleasure. Easier options could be useful to spark interest in texts studied in class if they ultimately engaged them with the original language of his plays.
“There is a place for the modified version, the graphic novel, the abridged – you have to be selective,” Mavrakis said. “I use it as an example of how Shakespeare’s language might not be as prevalent, but his ideas are. It is making it relevant, and to get a sense of the plot and the characters.”
St Clare’s Waverley year 11 student Lily Renford said she enjoyed Shakespeare because her peers read it together as a class. “When your friend is speaking the lines, you’re more interested in the script,” she said.
Helena Phoon said she liked the historical references in the play. “It’s interesting to see how language has evolved from how it was to how it is now.”
Suki Waddel said Shakespeare came alive when they discussed what was going on as a class.
“Talking about it, rather than just reading it on a page – that’s how you learn,” she said.
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