My On Record Introduction to the Shakespeare Institute

I live and teach in a working- and white collar district. I've been teaching for twelve years (ten in the public schools, two as a teaching assistant), although the last few years have been a bit hairy, what with revamped curriculum, new preps and the like. I do journalism and the school newspaper as well.

The only play I've taught consistently is "Macbeth," although I sneak in what I can when I can. Usually, this means reading or doing a film of "Hamlet," the film version of "Henry V" to my seniors, and maybe parts of "Richard III." But it's tough to get away with this these days.

I have all the usual hobbies and interests of an English teacher (reading, writing, etc.) See you all next week.

My Off The Record Introduction to the Shakespeare Institute

I teach in a complete hellhole, where skill and brilliance does take place, but staggering mediocrity and incompetence tend to have their way as well. I've been saddled with new classes almost every year lately and am just about at the end of my rope. Either my students or myself are getting more and more complacent every year that passes, and "teaching Shakespeare" is regarded by administration as an inane luxury these days. If you all don't inspire me and help me start getting the circle of gifts going again, I'm packing it all in next year and taking a job as a Starbucks barrista. I just met one last week who regularly travels the world and looks twenty years younger than he is, which makes me think this whole "professional education" stuff is for the birds.

Bardcast has podcasts on multiple topics. I'm going through them to see if there's anything I want to steal for the seminar next month.

A Rushed Review of Me and Shakespeare, a memoir by Herman Gollob

A lot of what Gollob has to say in this admittedly riveting memoir makes me want to punch him in his erudite, enthusiastic mouth. Basically, the book takes us into his golden years of retirement and his blossoming interest in All Things Shakespeare: reading the plays, studying the plays, teaching them, watching them and interpreting them. His interest becomes your own, if it isn't already, but for me, it's a bit too hard to stop being jealous/resentful of him long enough to roll around in his commentary and life story.

Gollob edited books for forty years, consorting with authors the likes of which I shall not see any time soon. He retired comfortably, and picked up a passion for Shakespeare after a staging of Hamlet. He dove into the texts, learned everything you could expect an autodidact to learn, and dove into teaching Shakespeare to an adult education class. He took trips to the Folgers Shakespeare Library in D.C. and got a day's pass to the Reading Room, where he uncovered a Whitman essay and incorporated it into a paper. He traveled to Oxford to study the Bard for three or four weeks. He put together a damn good argument concerning Shakespeare and Judaism. He talked to celebrities and professional playwrights, developing his sense of drama and waxing enthusiastic over what Shakespearian gems he's unearthed over the years. And he ends his memoir with plans to get an M.A. and teach as an adjunct, while still developing his own curriculum for the adult ed course and maybe even teaching how to perform the plays, a la Shakespeare Set Free from the Folgers. Nifty, Herman! How do you find the energy?

Oh how I envy this guy. (His memoir is full of tragedy, loss and striving, I should point out, but I will overlook all of this at the moment.) He fights (and wins) his school for a two-hour course over a three-week period with no bathroom breaks, and determines to limit discussion, arguing (rightly) that extended classroom banter does not yield material for those seeking to learn explicitly. He turns down a chance to teach Freshman Comp, arguing (idiotically) that forty years of book editing is just as painful as grading all those essays (oh really?). He downs pints of ale in London and wallows in history and literature every chance he gets. And every other sentence begins with a literary allusion. "As I stood there on the bridge, I found myself thinking of Psalm 43..." "As I watched Frank Sinatra chat up my wife, I found myself reflecting on what Feste had to say about youth in Twelfth Night." Go fly a kite, Gollob. And guess what? My Reading Room pass this summer will last me a month, not ust a day. Suck on it, Herr Professor.

Still, I have to give credit where credit is due. Gollob is passionate, informed and witty. His zest for Shakespeare is contagious--I'm not one to go in for Bardoloatry myself, but some of it does wind up rubbing off, even in spite of hardhearted jealousy over someone reveling in that elusive second act of American life, Fitzgerald notwithstanding. His 300+ book will get even the most devout Philistine running for a Shakespeare fest, or at the very least chasing down some of his gobbets and observations (I'm starting with his oft-quoted Shakespeare and the Jews myself--he cites the book at least two dozen times and it looks pretty interesting). If I can just get through the next thirty-five years of work without losing my sanity, maybe I can pull off what he manages...provided books haven't been replaced by mind-texts or something.

Summer Employment Emerges

The Shakespearian powers that be in Washington, D.C. have bestowed a stipend upon yours truly to study four Shakespeare plays this summer and ways to integrate them into the high school curriculum. So, for a month, I'll be living in downtown D.C. boning up on Macbeth, Henry IV Part One, Measure for Measure and Twelfth Night (I think) and cooking up lesson plans for today's beleaguered high school teachers. Nifty.

I have to strut a bit here. Sorry, but this is just further evidence of the quality you get when I'm in the picture. My position on the arts and literature in today's public school curriculum is hardly news (I've written and spoken about it extensively in circles where, in all honesty, people would prefer to be speaking about the Chicago Bears or their own cutie-pie kids instead), but now I've got the full power of the NEH and the Mellon Foundation writing me a check to carry out my crusade to Save the Humanities. From now on, when you envision me, envision me with a cape. Because I think it's more accurate to envision me as a caped crusader.

Oh yeah, and my "wife" said I could go. So, you know, I'm unstoppable.

For posterity, here's the essay that got me in:

Take me into your program, goddammit!

An Application Essay

In Alan Bennett’s Tony Award-winning play History Boys, seven Oxford and Cambridge candidates conduct mock interviews in front of a triumvirate of teachers, filtering out personal interests and passions that might potentially be obstacles to admission. One of the students professes an interest in the theater and acting, to which the more utilitarian teacher warns him not to “play it up too much. Most dons think acting is a waste of time.” To this, Hector, the defender of the humanities, responds wearily, “So much for Shakespeare.”

“So much for Shakespeare” is practically a trope in certain pedagogic circles today. The artists and literature that inspire educators and make us wish to pass along knowledge, perspective, language and feeling to our students are being swallowed up by naysayers and test prep seminars. Forget acting: reading Shakespeare in the classroom has suddenly become almost an embarrassment. “You can’t expect them to ‘get’ Shakespeare, “a colleague of mine recently scoffed. “I didn’t get it at their age, and I wound up being an English teacher!”

It seems to me this is no time for those who would be full-throated defenders of the humanities to toil away alone in their classrooms, locking the door against progress and standardized exams. Networking is necessary. Collaboration is of the utmost advantage. And these are the main reasons I am applying to the Folgers Shakespeare Library Teaching Shakespeare Institute. I need help. And I wish to do my part as well.

The idea of studying the plays the Institute plans to address this summer is reason enough for me to apply, but the idea of studying them in an attempt to reintegrate them into the curriculum in the wake of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top is the real reason. I want to look into ways to use Shakespeare more interactively with the students, as well as finding ways to force them to wallow in his work on their own. I want students to have Shakespearian allusions and references at their disposal. I want them to know the vocabulary. I want them to be able to connect the characters and situations to today’s world, and discover a nuance previously unknown. If, as Marjorie Garber argues, Shakespeare reflects, anticipates and shapes both his own and our culture, I want today’s students to take a part in that. It seems to me that the Institute is a perfect opportunity to approach Shakespeare with the old school passion that drove me into the classroom in the first place, but also an opportunity to tackle the plays with 21st century technology and pedagogical theory in mind as well.

In all honesty, I didn’t develop a passion for William Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets until relatively recently. I devoured the standard fare in high school, college and graduate school, of course: in my Family Systems Therapy seminar, for example, we spent a wonderful three hours dissecting King Lear’s behavior towards his daughter in the light of familial power grids. But one year into my current job teaching English, I was showing the film Henry V, which I had never read, to my Honors Sophomore English class, in order to assign them an analytic essay. I read the play, and then reread it. I found more of the lines familiar to me than I thought. I spent some time wallowing in the historical analogies (this was right smack in the middle of President Bush’s foray into the Iraq war, and the Prince Hal/Dubya comparisons were all over the pages of the New York Times). I cracked open Henry IV, then Richard III, and pretty soon, I was haunting the web for news about any of these plays going on stage anywhere near me. The rest, as they say, is history.

I’m often told the best way to inspire students is to inspire yourself. After a summer studying the Henry plays and Richard III, I managed to cook up a week-long unit on the Evil Guy Speech in Shakespeare for my sophomores. The idea was to get them to memorize a speech of their choice in which an antagonist, be it Aaron the Moor, Richard III or Iago, would spill his plans, and then find a contemporary scenario in which this villain would thrive. I assigned a compare and contrast essay, and to me, the idea was simplicity itself: “Tell why Shylock would have thrived at Enron! Or how about Lady Macbeth in the world of fashion? Go to it, people. This essay will write itself.”

And it would have, if I had spent more time going over current events with them. Or if I had made the choice of characters wider (famous lovers, for example? or military advisers?) and given them more options to explore. The idea was sound enough, but in my private lesson plans, under “Explore Play,” I’d simply noted that the language would draw them in. I’d not made any effort to “sell” the material, whether out of intellectual arrogance or naiveté. As a result, I got about fifty essays basically saying that Lady Macbeth would have excelled in fashion. Because, you know, she’s ruthless. Like Meryl Streep in that Prada movie.

The following year, the lesson was much more successful: students were asked to find correlations between a modern-day icon of their choice and a corresponding character of their choice from Hamlet, Henry V or Macbeth. Some students glommed on to an interest I was taking in President Nixon at the time and cooked up arguments concerning Macbeth, Watergate and the notion of Abuse of Power; many students found moody grunge and pop rock stars to tie to Hamlet’s weariness with a corrupt and “phony” world. A few took the high road and argued that guys like Bardolph and Nym were just like Oliver North, John Dean and former NSA analyst Russell Tice, since their own base natures were consistent when their superior threw the book at them, making the superior the hypocrite and them the “tragic” heroes. What the essays lacked in historical perspective, they more than made up for in tone and enthusiasm. I have rarely enjoyed reading such dubious arguments as much as I did then.

Those lessons are currently ancient history. My high school did not make AYP for three years in a row, and as a result, we rewrote the course into a World Literature and Communication class, with an emphasis on incremental English and Reading skills. This is necessary in many ways: the complaint that too many teachers approach the arts as if they were literature professors is a justified one. But I firmly believe that, in teaching content, one teaches skills as well. My three-play unit on Shakespeare has been truncated to one (Macbeth), while Romeo and Juliet has disappeared from the freshman curriculum altogether. That makes the time remaining spent on Shakespeare that much more valuable, and I feel the Institute would be a good way to make the most of this time.

I have a voracious appetite for the works of William Shakespeare. I’m relatively tech savvy, with interpersonal skills and the discipline and focus necessary to embark on a long-term project such as this. I want to contribute ideas and hear the ideas of others. I absolutely love the idea of collaborating with a diverse group of teachers, all with a common goal, and I think I would be of considerable use. Please accept my application for the summer institute, and feel free to contact me with any questions. William Shakespeare is not done with my students yet, nor they with him. If indeed “The weight of this sad time we must obey,” that’s not to also mean we can’t speak “what we ought to say.”

Dry Shakespeare

JACKSON, MI--Going to a play by the Bard cold. It's been a while.

Normally, before partaking of the culture that is the Michigan Shakespeare festival, I read the plays beforehand. That is, if I'm not familiar with them/teach them/seen movie versions of them/ bored others to death with my renditions of them. Once, I saw Pericles dry, and had no earthly clue what was going on. Ditto Cymbeline, to a point.

Last night, it was As You Like It. I think I did okay. (It's about two guys in love, right? ...Just kidding.)

The true treat of these plays is in their performance, sure enough. Unless it's something like Hamlet, which, I'm sorry, is impossible to enjoy for a casual theatergoer without an intimate familiarity. Otherwise, why would you care about a single word he says? You'd be shouting from the seats, "Kill the jerk already! My babysitter has to get home at nine!" A fair criticism, to be sure--the comedies, however, in my opinion, are tedious to read. You need a performance to liven things up, to interject feeling and timing into the humor, nuance, facial expressions, physical violence, pratfalls, the scatological, etc. And last night's crew did this to decided success.

The true test of the performance: Do I want to go back and read the play? I do. The Citizen Patriot had a point about the staging and early scenes and music, much though I hate to admit it. But I can forgive such techniques in the face of, off the top of my head, Rosalind's (Jennifer Drew) sheer strength of performance. Watching her snap, "Woo me!" in male guise to the bemused Orlando was worth the price of admission alone.

Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (1996)

A half an hour a day for the past two weeks or so and I finally made it through the only complete version of Hamlet on screen. It now occurs to me, after umpteen years, that I've seen three or four film versions of the masterpiece, and of course read it a dozen times or so, but I've never actually seen a dramatical performance. I can hear chants of "Philistine!" "Wannabe!" and "Go back to Stephen King, you hack!" filling cyberspace as I make my confession. "Make thy insults bloody, or nothing worth."

No matter. I'll just wait until the Hanover Park community theater breaks out the performance. Or, barring that, I'm sure the YMCA will have a stunning adaptation in their summer youth group theater performance.

(Sarcasm, people. You ever hear of it? "How absolute the knave is...")

In the meantime, I've got Branagh's adaptation to chew over. What can I say? It's got as many pluses as minuses, and when you're dealing with both a Shakespearian actor (I hate to be snotty, but when you tour with the RSC, your experience is self evident) and Shakespeare himself, not to mention an all-star cast, the finished product is bound to be worth the four hours of your life you spend watching it. Besides, I'm just enough of a DWM worshipper to believe that any minus you come across in a Hamlet production is minimal, compared to the crap you find in contemporary film. ("Speak the speech, I pray you.")

Branagh plays the Olivier Hamlet: brooding, slight in frame, not a little bit whiny. But it works. Not all the lines are as how I would envision them: when Branagh confronts Gertrude (Julie Christie) over her dalliance with his uncle, he looks more like he's going to stomp on the floor and hold his breath than attack her. But then he does attack her, and, bereft of all the psychological luggage Ziffereli dumped on Mel Gibson in the corresponding scene in his 1990 production, we are free to experience Hamlet's justified rage instead of wondering whether he's working out an Oedipal fixation.

Kate Winslet (Ophelia) works well, too. When she needs to be smitten, she's smitten. When she needs to be sexy, she's sexy. And when she needs to be crazy, she looks crazy, demented, physically ill and even conniving. In short, she's great. Ditto Jacobi (Claudius), Michael Maloney (Laertes), Nicholas Farrell(Horatio), and Brian Blessed (the ghost). The bit parts are hard for me to appreciate, mostly because I'm getting too much of a kick out of American actors putting in their two cents on the Bard (Jack Lemmon, Robin Williams and Billy Crystal, especially), but overall I sucked up their performances like a Danish prince sucks up self-pity.

I can't necessarily say I was overawed with the filmic representations, but then, they were original. Branagh delivers his "to be or not to be" in front of a series of mirrors, casting infinite reflections as he ruminates on the death he wishes for. The swordfight at the end is more believable than any other I've seen--you almost expect them to break out lightsabers and jump ten feet in the air. And the tensions between the characters work as smooth as an oil slick. Gertrude looks like she wants to wash her eyes when she sees Claudius in the last two acts, and Polonius, so often played as a doddering do-gooder, comes off as the crafty manipulator many critics have defined him as.

So, while I'm no Shakespeare critic (just a humble Shakespeare teacher and reader), I know what I hate in a Shakespeare film. I hate it when what I see jars with what I've read. This version does anything but. Mr. Branagh, a divinity has indeed shaped your end: genius.

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--Some Misc. Links

Hamlet to come out on DVD in 2006. Now I have to watch it again. This likes me well.

A Hamlet cheat sheet. I have no other reason to link this page except the fact that I stole their picture above. But if thou ever held literature in thy heart, absent thee from assholery a while and write thine own term paper, thou rump-fed runyon.