To think that Shakespeare is a little intense for Yr 7 English?

[mids2019]

My daughter is studying Romeo and Juliet for Yr 7 English. Am I being unreasonable that this play may have more impact at A level when pupils have greater critical analysis techniques and possibly a greater appreciation for English literature?

I think Shakepeare is a genius of English literature but the language is so dense and tied to contemporary Elizabethian society that I think a Yr 7 pupil could struggle and in some cases actually put pupils off a more gradual approach to literature appreciation.

I also find it difficult explaining to a 12 year old daughter how Juliet (13) is capable of making so such life changing choices such as marriage and ultimately suicide and with the perspective of 21st century society the play does seem remote in experience.

Is the bard best taught at a slightly older age?

@thelobsterquadrille

Good point. It is interesting that we have suggested appropriate age with visual media but not written?

I agree that they'd probably get MORE out of it at 14 or whatever, but that doesn't make it not worth doing at 10 or 12. But like others have said, it's meant to be watched, not dissected - that's what fosters the enjoyment and the excitement.

I think my first exposure to Shakespeare was in year 6, when I went to see plays. I saw the Winter's Tale and Taming of the Shrew and Antony and Cleopatra within a few months in year 6, and got varying amounts of enjoyment out of them. Did I fully understand everything? Of course not! Did I get more out of them when I saw them again and read them in my teens? Yes of course. But does that mean I shouldn't have had that experience previously? In my opinion, no! I have vivid memories of the Winter's Tale and A&C (can't remember much about TotS to be honest) from those productions, even though they were 40 years ago, and I'm so glad I had that experience.

You’re probably overthinking it a bit because you seem to think the whole play would be taught in close detail at a level which is far too difficult for their age, but a good teacher would know how to adapt it.

You don’t teach the entire play, line for line and word for word, to pupils in year 6 and 7. You just want to get them familiar with Shakespeare, his language, his ideas and show them that the plots are really exciting and still relevant today. So, no need to go into gory detail about suicide or spend ages micro-analysing thorny language of long soliloquies with eleven-year olds.

I’ve done some teaching workshops at the Globe and a lot of the focus was on ways to highlight how his plays are still relevant to modern pupils. Eg gangs hating each other, territory battles on the streets, falling in love with someone your parents won’t approve of, forced marriages etc. I would focus on getting them excited about Shakespeare by introducing them to the plot and then to key scenes - ones which are exciting. For example, Mercutio’s Queen Mab speech or the scene before the ball of Capulet getting the servants ready would be pretty pointless, but the main fight scene with Tybalt and Mercutio would be great, as would the argument with Juliet and her father. I’d then look at those scenes in detail and examine the language, the structure and how the audience might react then and now. So, I might teach the class to look at how Benvolio tries his best to stop the argument and get them to look at ways he does this. I might also ask them to colour code words to do with peace / love in the scene and words to do with fighting / hate in order to show the contrast. It’s going to be simpler stuff than you seem to think. If it’s not and the teacher is genuinely just reading page after page aloud with a class that has no idea what’s going on then the problem is the level it’s pitched at, not the choice of play.

Re suicide and other ‘adult’ themes. No need to go into huge detail about suicide - not many lines are devoted to it after all; I’d guess around 30 in total) but obviously the teacher needs to explain that Juliet’s death is tragic and finally shows her parents how destructive the feud is. In the script, she presses a dagger to herself but I’ve never seen a version with blood - usually there’s some theatrical falling on the floor which makes the pupils laugh more than anything. Certainly no worse than any deaths you see in soap operas etc etc. I can’t imagine it traumatising most 11 year olds unless suicide is an unusually sensitive topic for them.

What literary texts would you find appropriate for this age group? I think the whole point of a literature class is to learn to spot and analyse these themes. There are few texts which would be challenging and educational while also having no themes that could be raise questions.

There is of course the other viewpoint to the 'high art, grand master' viewpoint of Shakespeare's words OP, and that is of course that Shakespeare was writing for entertainment. He was writing to get bums on seats and, in the case of the groundlings, not even bums, just feet on the ground!

He was writing for the masses, his plays were essentially the Eastenders of the day. With that in mind perhaps they aren't as inaccessible and untouchable as people think they are. The plays were primarily to tell a bloody good story and wouldn't have been as popular and enduring if they didn't manage to do so because their language was too impenetrable and high falutin' to get that tale across.

Admittedly the deification of Shakespeare so that people are put off accessing him is one of my bugbears but I really don't see any reason why children shouldn't access him, guided by teachers who know their stuff. And R&J is a great place to start because there have been so many contemporary versions to compare with, the Dicaprio film, the CBeebies versions, the recent West End musical etc etc. It has some great comedy moments for a tragedy as well and the themes of teenage romance are easy to turn on their heads-'you're the same age as Juliet, would you go so far as to marry this man you've just met? Why? Why do you think it was different then?'

Done right it's a great introduction to more of his plays and sonnets as they go further up the school imo.

@mids2019

My kids both did a Christmas Carol at junior school, year 5 - that's dickens. By year 7 my eldest was obsessed with Jane Austen, and we had introduced the Brontë's as well as hg wells, John Steinbeck and Agatha Christie. Children are like sponges. I sense some here don't like Shakespeare themselves, so assume their children can't understand when actually there's no such thing as too young if you approach it correctly

It is fascinating. To think of him chewing on his quill thinking I don’t have the faintest clue how a 16 yo girl acts or thinks as my eldest daughter is only 13, how am I a middle aged man going to imagine a believable teen girl character?

Hang on….I know exactly how a 13 yo girl would act, the things she’d say, what she thinks is stupid or cool or funny. Right, Juliet is 13..and all I need to do is think how would my daughter react to this to write the lines…

Actually I think in school often these books can be ideal because they can encourage discussion about the issues and linking them to the modern world.

I remember doing To Kill a Mockingbird in year 10 and it being a real eye opener to me about the culture and deeper race issues. It’s a book I have re read many times since then because it has such an impact on me.

Oh, his elder daughter, the one the same age as Juliet when he was writing the play. Her name was Judith.

@LimeTwists

Thank you for that.

I agree performance brings a while new level to Shakespeare and production brings its own interpretation thorough emphasis on wording and body language. The themes are of course eternal but may in my opinion resonate in different ways to different ages.

I live near Stratford and tickets for the RSC are a little pricy?

Do you not think that children should be stretching themselves? We were doing Shakespeare in the first year of grammar school. I had already read a great number of books by the Brontes, Jane Austen, Dickens etc. If we don't stretch ourselves then what?

They should have a student discount. You could suggest it to the school too. My DCs state secondary took the whole year to see the plays they were studying and got group rates so it was literally £6 a ticket.

There's way too much Shakespeare to leave it until A level. They've been starting them off with Macbeth in late primary and Romeo and Juliet in early secondary for donkey's years. I agree that you can go into way more depth the more their understanding matures but I guess it's best to start somewhere so the style isn't a shock.

I love the row between Juliet and her dad. Clearly written by a man who knew what it was to be vexed by a teen.

Romeo and Juliet has a very simple core story and one that is relatable to the age group. It’s an excellent first play. It’s not hard to explain that times have changed and we do things at different ages. You can also point out that young teens still have intense feelings today even though society rightfully tells them not to act upon those feelings in any meaningful, long lasting way.

They do Shakespeare throughout secondary school. In some schools they start in year six. Mine did tempest in year six. We used to do A Midsummer’s nights dream in year seven and Romeo and Juliet in year 8. Macbeth is usually the GCSE text.

I think it's really interesting that Shakepeare was originally written for the masses? Was this rally the case of was it aimed at Elizabethean middle classes (isn't it the case that Shakespearean characters speak differently if they are working class in that society)?

a general point about classic literature is whether we need to be very careful to contextualize the work as societal views have changed so much? For instance women were held in a very different position in centuries gone by so how do we get children now to relate to for instance Jane Austen? Another Shakepeare example is Richard the third where disability is associated with a malign character which obviously is completely alien to our modern perceptions?

We did a Shakespeare a year from Yr 7.

11 year olds can indeed appreciate poetry and complex language, we used to focus on a few set piece speeches to look at the language, e.g Mercutio’s Queen Mab speech. I can still remember great chunks of it from Yr 8. Ditto speeches from the Dream from Yr 7, and can recite almost the whole of Macbeth from Yr 10.

The more familiar you get with it the more you appreciate it.

Good teaching is important.

Oh, the RSC has got ridiculously expensive over the last 5 years or so, and the last few years' productions have been massively mediocre and disappointing. They do have some £10 Rush tickets which makes it more doable, but there are several things I've seen there in recent years which I'm very relieved I only paid a tenner for, as they were not particularly good. I really hope that once Doran and Whyman have gone next year that it will improve.

My DD took part in the schools Shakespeare festival for a few years. There were primary schools doing Macbeth.

Agree, just because kids are likely not to be able to overcome the barriers of unfamiliar vocab/format and find it boring rather than engaging. When they're older, they can appreciate the work more. I didn't appreciate Shakespeare/Chaucer until A level.

Yes Shakespeare wrote for a representative demography. Have you not heard of groundlings?

Do you assume that only the middle class today can appreciate Shakespeare? If that is your assumption of the C16th?

You put something on AIBU, @mids2019, you're going to get AIBU-type responses.

But when taught in schools things can be contextualised and similarities and differences to modern day can be debated and discussed.

understanding how things used to be and how they have changed is vitally important to keep things moving forward in society. We can’t ignore how things were but we can learn from it.