Shakespeare and Education in the Lambs' Poetry for Children and Tales from Shakespeare
Year: 2019

This essay discusses the role of Shakespeare in Mary and Charles Lamb's Poetry for Children (1809; Lamb and Lamb 1970) and Tales from Shakespeare (1807; Lamb and Lamb 1993) arguing that the Lambs use sibling education to help in the understanding of Shakespeare. Drawing on Romantic era notions of family instruction, the Lambs invoke a model of brother sister tutelage to show that fraternal supervision aids in a sister's intellectual development and understanding of Shakespeare. The Lambs, however, also rework this traditional, hierarchical model to illustrate that brother sister education can encourage a cooperative and reciprocal learning of Shakespeare. Two years after William Godwin published Mary and Charles Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare for the Juvenile Library (1807) the Lambs coauthored a verse book for young girls and boys. Poetry for Children (1809) was first printed in two miniature volumes and "ornamented with two beautiful frontispieces" (Lamb and Lamb 1970, xv) In a letter to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charles refers to the composition of these elegantly packaged poems as "task work" "Letter," in Lamb 1963, 772) More than menial labor, however, Poetry for Children exemplifies a theory of childhood education that Mary had previously outlined in the Preface to Tales from Shakespeare: "Instead of recommending these Tales to the perusal of young gentlemen who can read them so much better in the originals, their kind assistance is rather requested in explaining to their sisters such parts as are hardest for them to understand" (Lamb and Lamb 1993, xiv) Using this method of instruction, brothers facilitate an understanding of Shakespeare by explicating scenes from the tales and by selecting ethical and prudent passages to read aloud to siblings: "what is proper for a young sister's ear" (xiv) The Lambs' Poetry for Children shares with Tales from Shakespeare an emphasis on brother sister tutelage. Both texts endorse the didactic role of brothers as educators. 2 Borrowers and Lenders Although Poetry for Children situates the teaching of Shakespeare in the context of popular early nineteenth century models of male tutorship and training, it also offers an alternative model of fraternal guidance and supervision in female educational development: brother sister education is revised to include a representation of cooperation and reciprocity in book learning. Sharing the experience of reading Shakespeare not only strengthens the familial bond of siblings, but it also allows the sister greater autonomy both as learner and teacher. In doing so, Poetry for Children challenges the idea of a young boy's mastery over his sister and his supremacy in book learning and Shakespeare. The Lambs and Romantic Educational Theory Before analyzing the poems that specifically address the study of Shakespeare, it will be useful to discuss briefly the educational theories that the Lambs promote and adapt in their texts. The Lambs' model of family education parallels the approach popularized in Henrietta Maria and Thomas Bowdler's The Family Shakespeare, initially published the same year as the Lambs' Tales from Shakespeare (1807; Bowdler and Bowdler 1863) Just as the Lamb siblings collaborated on retelling Shakespeare's plays, so too did the brother sister pair, Harriet and Thomas, compile an edition of Shakespeare. The Bowdlers' Family Shakespeare provides a stratagem for introducing Shakespeare to youth. In the Preface to the first edition of the volume, Thomas Bowdler asserts the necessity for supervision in the reading of Shakespeare: "I can hardly imagine a more pleasing occupation for a winter's evening in the country, than for a father to read one of Shakespeare's plays to his family circle" (Bowdler and Bowdler 1863, viii) Although knowledge of Shakespeare is mediated here through the father, not a brother, Bowdler's approach also suggests the need for a male relative's censorial mediation. Ostensibly, the purpose of The Family Shakespeare was to eradicate improper language from Shakespeare's plays. By using an expurgated text, fathers avoid the chagrin of exposing their families unintentionally to indecent passages or "falling unawares among words and expressions which are of such a nature as to raise a blush on the cheek of modesty" (viii) The importance of reading Shakespeare to the family is not in question. As a symbol of English cultural achievement, Shakespeare occupies a critical position in childhood pedagogy. The question, however, of Shakespeare's readership who should or could read the plays brings into sharp focus theories on family education, especially for children. Efforts by the Lambs and the Bowdlers to excise and abridge Shakespeare, or at least to frame him properly for a female audience, stem from Romantic era principles of education. The growth of a mass reading public in the early nineteenth century caused great concern and debate over what constituted the best use of books for childhood education. As Alan Richardson Borrowers and Lenders 3 points out, "it increasingly became the role of educational institutions to monitor and facilitate the proper ideological functions of literary texts" (Richardson 1994, 31) Furthermore, the monitoring and censoring of texts, ones that were increasingly accessible to even the lower classes, became a prime concern for educational tracts on private instruction. Thus, while religious authors and Enlightenment theorists disagreed considerably, many agreed on the danger of unsupervised reading of imaginative texts. For example, Anna Barbauld and Sarah Trimmer, due to their religious emphasis, shunned imaginative texts in favor of non fiction works. Such calculated censorship of children's reading sparked Charles Lamb's famous letter to Coleridge about the negative effects of this trend: Mrs. Barbauld's stuff has banished all the old classics of the nursery. Mrs. Barbauld's and Mrs. Trimmer's nonsense lay in piles about. Is there no possibility of averting this sore evil? Think what you would have been now, if, instead of being fed with Tales and old wives' fables in childhood you have been crammed with geography and natural history! Hang them! I mean the cursed Barbauld crew, those blights blasts of all that is human in man and child. "Letter," in Lamb 1963, 727) While Charles may have approved of less overt censorship in the form of fraternal discipline and supervision, he rejects the extremist agenda that replaces creative pieces with "geography and natural history." This disapproval of efforts to prohibit young children access to the repertoire of standard nursery rhymes and tales arguably applies to other educational authors. Influenced by the rationalism of John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau, Maria Edgeworth, and Mary Wollstonecraft likewise were, as we shall see, skeptical of the benefit of imaginative writings for young readers. As Gillian Avery points out, both rational and religious proponents "persuaded the public that works of imagination could only stunt the growth of the child's mind" (Avery 1975, 14) Warning of the perils of unsavory books, texts that fostered fantasy and escape, emerged as a primary concern for Romantic era theorists. Despite this atmosphere of censorship, Shakespeare was not entirely absent from the early nineteenth century canon of children's literature. Indeed, the second part of John Newberry's Mother Goose's Melody; or Sonnets for the Cradle consisted of songs from Shakespeare, "that sweet Songster and Nurse of Wit and Humour" (Newberry 1975, title page) Even though the "sweet Songster" is reduced here to lullabies and bedtime ditties, Shakespeare's presence in a verse anthology gains significance in light of Romantic era efforts to stamp out fanciful writing. As M. F. Thwaite points out, the playwright's inclusion was "a notable innovation, for rarely for some time to come were such pearls to be set before young readers in anthologies of verse 4 Borrowers and Lenders or any other form" (Thwaite 1963, 45) Similarly, in her anthology, The Female Reader (1789; Wollstonecraft 1989a) Wollstonecraft provides selections from Shakespeare, but she carefully frames these passages to emphasize aesthetic and moral values, and her objective lies in fortifying and sharpening a young woman's reason and judgment: "The main object of this work is to imprint some useful lessons on the mind, and cultivate the taste at the same time to infuse a relish for pure and simple style, by presenting natural and touching scenes from the Scriptures, Shakespeare, etc." (Wollstonecraft 1989a, iv) In essence, even though Shakespeare in the late eighteenth century was presented in anthologies, he was contained: the anthology itself acted as a censor. For many authors, exposure to the Bard was especially risky for young women. Censoring Shakespeare thus develops into a crucial issue. For example, in her Personal Recollections, Charlotte Elizabeth, a devout Evangelical, recalls the thrill of drinking from the exhilarating Shakespeare: "I drank a cup of intoxication under which my brain reeled for many a year" (Elizabeth 1840 1849, 29) She writes, "My mind became unnerved, my judgment perverted, my estimate of people and things wholly falsified, and my soul wrapped in the vain solace of unsubstantial enjoyments" (30) The notion that Shakespeare could render a young woman senseless points to the playwright's subversive potential. Moreover, Elizabeth's words describe the vulnerability of a young female who is debilitated by and overcome with the Bard. As Avery writes, "This view of the dangers that lurked in Shakespeare and in poetry was fairly general, and responsible parents were very careful in the supervision of their daughter's reading" (Avery 1975, 34) An implicit seduction awaits the unchaperoned female reader, and strict parental surveillance becomes necessary to protect daughters from unsavory delirium. The impor