From: palmerc@abulafia.b21.ingr.com (Christopher M. Palmer)
Subject: Re: Enforced Shakespeare?
Organization: Intergraph
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 14:48:29 GMT

Just thought I would throw my $0.02 worth in.  When we studied
Shakespeare in high school, I thought it was pretty neat and I enjoyed
it more than just about anyone in class, but I hated the way we did
it.  The teacher would assign parts and we would read it aloud in
class.  I think this is a good method, but listening to some kid read
each part haltingly and flat, mispronouncing every other word was
excruciating.  Reading Shakespeare on my own, however, usually results
in a Catch-22 situation.  I have trouble "getting into" a play which I
have never seen performed while watching a play performed without
having read it makes it hard to follow and you miss a lot of lines.
My preferred method of studying Shakespeare is this:

	Watch a popular production of the play (Zefferelli's (sp?) 
		Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet come to mind).
	Reading the play
	Watch a more complete stage production of the play (preferably
		live, but taped performances are good also)
	Re-reading and studying interesting passages.

Popular productions usually trim the play down to its bare essentials
and present it in a very accesible way.  While Mel Gibson's Hamlet is
certainly not the definitive performance, it did introduce more people
to Hamlet and was every entertaining.  In cases where these
productions are not available (i.e., never been done), you can
substitute Cliff Notes or a very knowledgable teacher.

Reading the play after the above makes it flow better and makes it
easier to follow.  You can grasp character motivations better and
understand more of the humor and irony.  Plays are meant to be
performed and we are not all Shakespearian actors who can read
motivation, inflection, and emotion into the written word.

After studying the written play, it is now a good time to watch a more
complete stage performance of it.  Now you know what everyone is
saying and can appreciate the subtleties and nuances of the lines.
You can compare performances with your expectations of the characters
an participate in the performance in a mentally interactive way.

Using your knowledge gained from the preceeding, you can re-read the
play and study famous or interesting passages.

This is how I became a Shakespeare "fan."  I don't follow this for
every play because now I can read and appreciate the plays "cold."  I
understand them more and seek out movies, tapes, and performances
wherever I can find them.

This method may be too time consuming for a classroom, but I would
suggest this:

	Watch a movie version of the play in class.
	Assign the reading of the play as homework, or, if time 
		permits, read it aloud in class.  Assigning of
		parts is fine, because now the readers have a better
		idea of what it sounds like and what is going on.
	Have a field trip to see a performance of the play (requires
		some good scheduling on the teacher's part).
	The day after the play, wrap up the discussion by discussing 
		the performance and re-reading interesting sections.

I didn't mean to write a novel here, but I do think that the study of
Shakespeare in Literature classes is important.  Whoever he was :-),
Shakespeare was one of the most interesting and eloquent writers of
the English language.  Shakespearean English is fun once you get the
hang of it.

Finally, if anyone has _The_Story_of_English_, could you post the
paragraph from the chapter on Elizabethan English which shows all of
the everyday phrases (mostly cliches and homilies) which are still in
use today that have their first printed record in Shakespeare?  It is
very enlightening.

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