Shakespeare

SHAKESPEARE SURVEY

By Stephen Wilson

 

            

"What use is Shakespeare to us? Knowing him won't help me get a job!  We need to be taught something more practical?" say many frustrated pupils who resent having to study what they often consider incomprehensible and irrelevant works. For a recent survey carried out by the Royal Shakespeare Company and Digital company Adobe, of 2000 British school students aged between 11 to 18, between September 6th to the 10th , found that 42% of them complained that knowledge of Shakespeare would not help them get a job. Approximately 20% stated that digital technology might help them understand the poet. Many British pupils have never even heard of Shakespeare. But the survey does not just indicate a negative attitude to the poet, but how some pupils hold a misconception of the role of school education. For schools are not just intended to prepare people for work, but to at least inspire a minimal interest in the culture and Classics around them so they can enrich their leisure time.

For instance, knowing the Classics not only encourages a better understanding of plays performed in the theater, but can encourage pleasant conversation. It might just make a dull and drab party more interesting and even help you make a friend. Who knows where a knowledge of Shakespeare can take you? The knowledge of the poet can lead to imperceptible and unanticipated results!

             

An American teacher once told me, "If they teach it at school, it sucks." When you feel forced to learn the classics and have to sit exams in it then the memory of the plays can conjure up all kinds of bad memories. But Shakespeare himself never envisaged his plays being part of the school program or a set exam. He may not have attached  importance to being published. He wanted his works not to be read, but seen and heard. The best place to go is the theater itself. At first many people don't like the idea of going to the theater in Britain because they think its a place where only affluent or posh people go. But when they see his play by accident it often has a profound and deep influence on their psyche. This is because the plays such as 'The Tempest' and 'King Henry the Fifth ' have a lot to say about grief, and the horrors of war. 

             

Jacqui O Hanlon of the Royal Shakespeare Company states : "Having access to the arts and cultural learning improves empathy, critical and creative thinking in young people. " One of my 17 year old pupils of English Natasha told me, "A person at school should  know Classics. I mean it would terrible if we did not learn Pushkin. Yes, knowing Shakespeare won't get you a job but his works are so wonderful it can really have a profound influence on people." 

             

But how justified is the claim that knowledge of Shakespeare can't help you get a job? Such a statement seems a misleading and over simplistic  generalization. It largely depends on which job you are seeking. For knowledge of the Classics can help you get a job. For example, I recall being interviewed for a job in a Bakery in Dublin and being asked "Why have you come to live in Dublin ?" When I told the manager I had come to the city to learn more about the culture and the classics because Dublin was the city where Yeats, Joyce and Beckett hailed from " the manager took this as a compliment and I got the job. I also find that knowledge of the classics helps you get work as an English teacher of foreign languages in Russia . For many Russians, knowledge of the classics is not just a hobby or pastime but a necessity. If a Russian student discovers that an English teacher is not interested in his own culture, then why should he be interested in Russian culture? The main point is not to have mass knowledge of the Classics, but to be actively interested in them. So I have found I have managed to keep some students because of the knowledge of Shakespeare as well as Bulgakov.

A teacher of English as a foreign language is often expected not just to teach students to speak or grammar but the culture he comes from. And Shakespeare is an essential part of this culture. Furthermore, the playwright 's works convey a boundless and inexorable positive energy that infects students. For example, if you looks at his play 'The Tempest' , you hear a young woman called Miranda marvel how there is still beauty in some of the worst characters in the play when she says;

  

'O Wonder ! How many goodly creatures are there here ! How beauteous mankind is! O Brave New World that has such people in it.'

             

The plays can even teach people how to love people and express their love  in a more poetic way. There is the simple line of Miranda's lover which goes : 'I do love, price, honour you.'

             

And if you want to obtain work as an actor you can find help in Shakespeare's play Hamlet , where Hamlet offers advice on how an actor should perform by not over acting , over gesturing and speaking too loudly or out of tune. Just go to act three, scene two.

             

So yes, Shakespeare can help you obtain some kinds of jobs. You certainly can't eat his works . But you can read his plays as a stepping stone to the dining room. What is crucial is not  only knowledge of Shakespeare but how to use it in a doable practical way. So we have to go beyond the academic.