... to think that Shakespeare should be taught in schools?

[LorelaiVictoriaGilmore]

Just that really. I had a massive argument with my sister this afternoon about a number of things to do with the education system in the UK but this is one of the key points we disagreed on. I think it is good that Shakespeare is taught in schools because there lots of kids who do get something out of it and there are kids who may go on to university to study drama or English literature and it would be a shame if they got to 18 and had never been taught Shakespeare. My sister thinks it shouldn't be taught in schools because lots of kids will never 'get' it and never use it. She thinks that those kids who do want to go to uni to read English literature or drama will discover it on their own. I can sort of see what she's saying, especially given the number of kids who leave school without good literacy skills... but I still think I'm right! AIBU?

Just because I am bored and irritated by the crapness of that poster linked to (and the fact the Globe have the nerve to charge a tenner for a pack of lies they didn't even bother to proofread!):

• The phrase 'Greek to me' may have come into English via Shakespeare, but it's unlikely he did more than translate it or put a common concept into words. www.npr.org/2015/07/05/420335188/is-it-all-greek-to-you-thank-lazy-monks-and-the-bard-for-the-phrase

• 'tongue in [his] head' appears in Raleigh's translation of the Book of the Courtier from 1561.

• 'short shrift' appears in many medieval texts, for obvious reasons (think: is it likely Shakespeare originated a phrase that refers to the habits of a religion that was, officially, no longer practised in his country?!). Try Harding's Chronicle.

• 'lie low' is also medieval; it appears, for example, in Ashmole 189 in the Bodleian, which is a manuscript miscellany.

Those, plus the other ones that were obvious to me, are clearly pre-Shakespeare. I'd imagine quite a few of the others are too, but I'm just casually googling and I'm not really a Shakespeare specialist.

So, let's put to bed this idea that Shakespeare is special because he gave us half the English language, right?

Taught? Yeah maybe. But not flogged to death every year through secondary school. You'd think there were no other notable playwrights, poets or authors. Just dry, boring, dull shakespeare.

Lorelai don't understand your example re using Shakespeare. So you andyour sister went to am dram and performed Shakespeare that's cool. But that still doesn't make it relevant to all 15 year olds nor has it ever been relevant to me.

The point I was trying to make was that we didn't 'use' it, exactly but we enjoyed it. And the secondary point was that so did lots of other people from all different backgrounds and walks of life.

I had to learn algebra, French verbs, the parts of the flower, the periodic table and how to play hockey when I was at school (quite a long time ago) - can't say I've had all that much use for any of them since.

I have however, enjoyed watching West Side Story, Kiss Me Kate and The Lion King; and been gripped by the Royal Ballet's Romeo and Juliet and Olivier's Henry V. The orchestral works by Prokofiev and Mendelssohn wouldn't been written without the inspiration of Shakespeare's plays (and we would be without traditional wedding music and the theme tune from The Apprentice). And that's just for starters.

Shakespeare wrote his plays to be performed and enjoyed, NOT studied and analysed in a dry, boring way in a classroom. That is what puts so many people off for life.

BobbiBabbler - I'd be mildly gutted if I'd taught you Shakespeare at school & you'd taken away 'dry, boring, dull'.

Challenging I'd accept! But on no planet is Shakespeare dull ffs, unless someone's actually gone out of their way to suck the joy out of it. It's verbal fireworks. It fizzes with life.

Shakespeare didn’t write novels to be read, he created plays to be watched.

I feel passionately about this as someone with a first in English Literature who now teaches it in a college. I don’t enjoy reading Shakespeare whatsoever and never have. The humour is very much lost in translation and by translation I mean Elizabethan English vs modern English so I spend most of my lessons trying to explain to my students what half of the words even mean AND the context behind them. None of them ever laugh out loud reading through the comedic plays however this year one of the A level/access modules consisted of comparing the play to a film adaptation and that went down much easier. I did have a few chuckles from students watching the film even though it didn’t attempt to modernise Elizabethan English.

That is the beauty of Shakespeare, I don’t believe he would have wanted students to be forced to sit and read and analyse his plays. He wanted them to be viewed and enjoyed. So no, I don’t think Shakespeare needs to be taught in English literature but in drama or media studies, by all means please.

So I was sat next to a boy with severe learning difficulties who struggled with even basic English watching him being forced to try and read out a Shakespeare scene to the class.

This is immaterial to the question of whether Shakespeare should be taught in schools. There are many modern texts that a child with learning difficulties would struggle with as well. No school or teacher should be forcing a child with severe learning difficulties to engage in an exercise like this.

I remember DD being taught to find Shakespeare boring at primary school.They 'did 'Macbeth,anyone who says that children get this play at that age has either not be nderstiod it themselves or it had been so abridged as to make it not Shakespeare.
She is studying it again for GCSE.I am trying to find a theatre doing it as I believe it all works on stage not as a dry text.Warltchng bits on TV doesn't work in the same way either.
I find the GCSE literature books almost the same as I did for o level overview 30 years ago as if nothing good has been written since the war poets and modern is something written in the 50s.

I did drama at GCSE level and we did a Shakespeare play. I found it far more amusing and interesting studying it in drama than in English. That says it all really because that is how Shakespeare designed his PLAYS.

People who say that they like Shakespeare only say it to sound intellectual.

There are plenty of other texts available.

What, & they've been keeping that up for 400 years, appropriately named poster?

Seems a lot of bother to go to.

I don't think liking Shakespeare gets you too many 'intellectual' points in circles where that would matter. You'd need to come up with something slightly more obscure to actually play Clever Trousers Literary Top Trumps.

People who say that they like Shakespeare only say it to sound intellectual.

I like Shakespeare. Pretty much all of it, well, except for Titus Andronicus.

I don’t believe anyone who says they enjoy it.

Lonicera Japonica thou art the mistress of the sweeping statement.

For GCSE we had to do... King Lear, but also a modern one called Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones.

Other than that, I don't think we did that much Shakespeare analysis in secondary school. We did analyse Romeo & Juliet (but we also got to watch the Leo DiCaprio film version). We did Hamlet one year - we put on a play.

I think we did some scenes from Macbeth in Drama once.

Start of AS-Level was The Yellow Wallpaper, Pride & Prejudice, Dr Faustus, and The Merchant of Venice.

Honestly I don't think it's very Shakespeare heavy.

Challenging I'd accept! But on no planet is Shakespeare dull

Dull is subjective. I hate the way Shakespeare's stuff is written, I hate the old language, I hate the verse structure. It puts me to sleep, I do very much find reading Shakespeare to be a dull and arduous experience.

On the other hand, the other play we studied for GCSE was 'Kindertransport' by Diane Samuels - didn't find that dull at all. Really liked that one.

Never studied shakespeare and don’t think I missed out on anything

But how would you know?

Shakespeare is THE reason I did Eng Lit at uni. The man was a genius.

I wish schools didn't focus so much on Macbeth though. I know it's short, easy to follow and has some cracking quotes - but there are others! DS2 did it in KS3. Then again for GCSE. And ..... again for A' Level. 🙄

Shakespeare is important to those studying language development, but it's irrelevant to modern literature. I agree with the posters who think others pretend to enjoy Shakespeare in order to appear intellectual, and here lies the great paradox in that (apart from the history plays) the storylines are largely racist and mysoginist nonsense. Take the anti-Semitism of Merchant of Venice as a good example, coupled with the 'hilarious' tomfoolery of the woman for whom our hero became indebted dressing as a man (no-one can tell, despite her famed beauty) and tricking that evil old jew out of his pound of flesh. Oh, ha ha ha! Tricked by a woman! A woman!!!

And Romeo and Juliet great for teenagers? 14 year old girl told to stay away from troublesome family. But no, Romeo and Juliet are in love doncha know. Romeo kills Juliet's cousin. Juliet shags him anyway. Let's pretend to kill ourselves, they decide, that'll show our stupid parents. Plan goes tits up, and Romeo and Juliet both kill themselves. What a fantastic story for teenagers? Seriously people?

Are you familiar with the fable of the Emperor's New Clothes? Spoiler alert......the emperor is naked.

I love reading, literature and English. They were my favourite subjects at school, and I maintained straight As for them throughout school. But I can't even begin to describe how much I loathe Shakespeare. Dry, boring dross.

I do think a large part of that hatred is due to the way it was taught in that year level, but that still doesn't change the fact that it has/had zero appeal in any form, whether that be written or performed.

I memorised what I had to for exams (learnt to the test, so to speak), and haven't used it since.

There's far too little modern texts IMO.... But there's a view that traditional = better and I don't think that's a great way to engage teenagers, nor is it remotely true

I agree. I studied a lot of the classics at school. I understood them, could easily dissect them as per subject requirements, got excellent marks for the work, etc, but got very little, if any, enjoyment out of them.

OTOH, the books that inspired me the most, engaged/excited me, and set me on pathways to finding out more about the subject matter (mainly in my own time), were primarily little known books written in the 20th century.

I am trying to find a theatre doing it [Macbeth]

How hard have you looked? It's on at both the National Theatre and the RSC itself, and both productions have been/are being broadcast live in cinemas!

I agree with the posters who think others pretend to enjoy Shakespeare in order to appear intellectual

For the first time ever, I actually need the crying with laughter emoji on this laptop. The weird arrogance which allows people to delude themselves into thinking that because they don't perceive something to have value, it therefore has no value to anyone else is bizarre. Just because some people aren't capable of understanding Shakespeare doesn't mean everyone isn't. I'd love to see you go head to head with Judi Dench and Ian McKellen on the value of Shakespeare - and tell them that they're only pretending to enjoy it in order to appear intellectual.

I'm older, went to grammar school and this is the list of plays we `did', Romeo and Juliet, Midsummer night's dream, Antony and Cleopatra, Mcbeth, Much ado about nothing( it was), Julius Caesar, ,All's well that end well, the Merchant of Venice. I loved reading and should have enjoyed it but I dreaded English. I did get a decent A level but it was such a slog, I read Thomas Hardy with a huge amount of pleasure despite it being full of tragedy and still do love his work but I haven't touched Shakespeare since then, not even a play or fail. I feel it's one of those things we have to like or else, no ifs no buts.Resistance is futile!

“Dull is subjective. I hate the way Shakespeare's stuff is written, I hate the old language, and I hate the verse structure. It puts me to sleep; I do very much find reading Shakespeare to be a dull and arduous experience.”

I agree with Uyulala . This ^^ is exactly why I dislike Shakespeare. The writing style is so indigestible. Having to work out what is written completely takes the joy out of reading or watching it – for me anyway. That is why I dislike poetry. I just find it too pretentious. Then having to analyse what I have read further removes any pleasure I get from reading. This is why I was so bad at English literature at school that I failed my mock O level so badly that I didn’t take it at O level.

blueskypink Shakespeare is the reason I hated English literature so much – and poetry, and having to pull everything to bits. It just turned into a joyless experience. What is wrong with just enjoying a good read at face value? I love reading. I have read trashy novels as well as most of the classics. I love Jane Austen, anything by the Bronte sisters, Wilkie Collins, a good crime drama, all the Game of Thrones series and Tolkein because I become completely absorbed into a good story. I also read a lot of non-fiction, but I still can’t get to grips with Shakespeare in any form.

I’m just a philistine I guess

The whole of my time st secondary school seemed to me Shakespeare. Macbeth for at least two but maybe three years. Then Romeo and Juliet for GCSE for two years

It's important only for understanding the development of the English language during the Elizabethan era and since, but I agree with others that it holds little relevance outside of that.

I took four units of English in high school (Australia - the maximum you can take, three English classes), and I still resent the time wasted on studying Shakespeare from Year 7 to 12. The only one I enjoyed was Hamlet, and I'm thankful it was Hamlet we studied in my final year and not the utter the bore that was Othello or Macbeth.

One of my favourite periods of history is the Tudors to the Stuarts, and I wholly appreciate Shakespeare and his contribution in that context, but I don't appreciate it in the context of 21st century English classes. It is too far removed from everything else taught; the language used presents an insurmountable challenge for most students; and it was never intended to be overanalysed by pain in the arse English teachers in classrooms in 2018.