Shakespearean English, or "Why is misunderstanding easier than learning?"

[Grey_Wolf_c]

If that takes arbitrary course work that is fine, it is the struggle that leads to mental flexibility.

There are infinite other ways to stretch minds that do not depend on arbitrary coursework, though. For example, you could use the time to teach them a foreign language. I honestly do not understand what it is about Shakespeare that justifies the amount of time spent learning to appreciate him, other than circular arguments of "everyone was taught it is necessary, therefore he must be taught, or else there might be a generation that doesn't think that".

Grey Wolf

[Tvtyrant]

There are infinite other ways to stretch minds that do not depend on arbitrary coursework, though. For example, you could use the time to teach them a foreign language. I honestly do not understand what it is about Shakespeare that justifies the amount of time spent learning to appreciate him, other than circular arguments of "everyone was taught it is necessary, therefore he must be taught, or else there might be a generation that doesn't think that".

Grey Wolf

We all take foreign languages, they aren't mutually exclusive.

Having a canon gives society cultural touchstones. Public education originates from religious learning in New England and homogenizing the multi-ethnic Prussian society under the Fritz'. Shakespeare is useful because it is hard to learn, English, a-political and a-religious. Latin used to take that position but it was abandoned as schools became more universal and the need for national instead of class identity came to the front, and Milton got removed from the canon due to its religious content. The US has deep chasms in its society that any writing from its own history tends to exacerbate, but Shakespeare is sufficiently old timey to not trigger parental outrage.

Cervantes is another example of that kind of story, or Don Quixote. Different parts of the US ban The Scarlet Letter, Clockwork Orange, etc. Shakespeare is totally safe, no one bans Othello. So it fills two niches; the need for arbitrary difficult work for kids, and having a safe cultural touchstone.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

We all take foreign languages,

My understanding of both the US and the UK education is that it does not reliable produce speakers in any language other than English, except for a few that also learn their local languages such as Welsh or Gaelic.

they aren't mutually exclusive.

Yes, yes they are. There is only so many hours in a day. Every hour spent teaching how to read Shakespeare is an hour not spent doing something else.

Having a canon gives society cultural touchstones.

A canon does not require the story to be untranslated. Oedipus Tyrannus still gives insights into Ancient Greek culture even when not read in Ancient Greek.

Shakespeare is useful because it is hard to learn

No, it is not. If "hard to learn" is actually desired, it is useful to learn advanced maths, not 400 year old poetry. And if 400 year old poetry is important, you'd think you'd learn from someone other than this one guy. I hear there were other authors back then? And yet this is the only one that somehow threads the needle to be taught? No, I think it is quite clear the reason is not to teach some random hard thing, it is specifically Shakespeare, and therefore this "make it hard for hardness sake" is not the actual reason.

a-political

What on earth are you talking about. How is Shakespeare, the guy who wrote about how the previous kings where hunchbacked evil murderers, a-political?

Cervantes is another example of that kind of story, or Don Quixote.

As I have already said, no, it is not. When I studied it, it wasn't to provide "a-political society cultural touchstones". It was to examine the political, cultural and societal realities of Spain in the time it was written. There was no pretence that it was anything other than an important product of its time. And yet it is still a better story in its own right than anything I've read from Shakespeare.

Grey Wolf

[Peelee]

As a translator and person who does Old English, translations are not the originals. They're always an interpretation of the original.

And history is littered with examples of ancient texts translated after centuries where the original intent may have been significantly different, making for a poor translation (the ones I can think of offhand are not suitable for discussion here). Updating works to more modern translations on a fairly constant basis, while not perfect, would certainly help alleviate issues like that for future generations, with the addition of being easier to teach for the current generations, while still preserving the original texts which could (and should) still be taught at more appropriate levels. Which, I should note before anyone rebuts, is markedly different than adaptations.

Seamus Heaney's Beowulf is a version of Beowulf, and I love it greatly. But by translating it into his particular brand of Hibernian English, Heaney is also doing interesting things with his language that are not present in the original poem but which potentially bring out something that is latently reflective of the politics of its day. Heaney is appropriating a poem that had been mobilised in the context of nationalism. By putting it in an Irish English he plays off words that survive in that English but are gone from standard English, he gives a one-fingered salute to colonialism, and he activates some of the potential subtext about how the early English may have felt about their ancestors and the then-current situation of Danish rule in the Danelaw (at least around the time the manuscript was written). Meghan Purvis's translation is less word-for-word equivalent than Heaney's (which isn't really anyway) and breaks the idea of a unified narrator over her knee in favor of giving voice to various points of view within the poem. Ray Liuzza's translation aims for a precision of lexical equivalence and provides the clearest example of what the words literally mean (or his best guess, on the words that are very difficult to sort out), but he lacks the poetic verve of a Heaney or Purvis. Loads of prose translations aim for clarity of narrative and smoothing out the language so it's straightforward to understand, but they lose everything of the rich complexity of how the poet was putting things together, the plays on formulaic language, the way that Beowulf the character is marked as equivalent through certain word choices to the monsters he faces (and that last is one that most of the verse translations can't do either because the vocabulary doesn't exist to do it clearly and concisely anymore). Every translation is an interpretation that aims to be as comprehensive as possible. As a result, every translation introduces something to the text, and has the potential to not account for something whether through inability or straight up missing it.

You've read Beowulf. You have not read the original (arguably nobody has, since we know the poem pre-dates the manuscript). And if you cannot deal with the original language of a piece of literature, you cannot meaningfully debate anything deeper than its plot with someone who has access to the original language, because you have no ability to contribute any insights about what it is saying at a deep level. Because getting at any piece of literature at a deep level requires attention to the precise language being used. And that's a good reason to teach Shakespeare in the original all by itself: it maks the student slow down and have to think and ultimately realize that there's a lot going on in language. If you can't read carefully, you can't get to the point of doing interpretive work. Shakespeare's original demands reading carefully these days due to the unfamiliarity. You can do it with more modern texts (I like Langston Hughes's poem "Harlem"), but having the text itself force the slowdown is helpful for teachers who have limited time in the classroom to try and teach these skills.

And comparing the language of Shakespeare, which is only marginally different from modern English to actual Old English is silly.

I will readily admit that it's not a great analogy. There are several better I can think of off the top of my head, but as before, none suitable for discussion here, so that's the one I went with.

As for whether Shakespeare in the original should be taught in high schools? Yes. Is it hard? Yes. Does that mean we should simplify it for high schoolers? I don't think so. I rather think the difficulty is the point for teaching it to high schoolers. Handled well, they ought to learn a lot from it - that we can read surprisingly old stuff fairly easily with little more than a few annotations, that you can pack a lot of dense meaning into a little space in language, that art does not have to be all highbrow but can be full of fart and sex puns, the power of a good metaphor, and more. They'll also learn that language changes over time, learn some historical context about a very important time in English history as England emerged as a world power (and thus set the stage for a lot of other stuff), maybe how fun performance can be, and other stuff.

And no other sources exist that can teach art does not have to be highbrow but can be full of fart and sex puns, the power of a good metaphor, and more? Because this still seems like more of the same "Shakespeare for the sake of Shakespeare" that I've been accusing academia of to begin with, so a brick in that ivory tower effectively taking the exact position I am against does little to sway my opinion. I also want to note that I am not against academia in general; my dad was educated in the Ivy League, taught at some prestigious universities, and ingrained in me a strong respect for the value of good education. I simply consider Shakespeare to not be a necessity (or even a convenient tool) for a good education for the vast majority of high schoolers.

Simplification is bad on the face of it. Human brains act like muscles, the more you force kids to overwork them the better they work in the end. Every child should be forced to struggle in school, whatever their natural intelligence. If that takes arbitrary course work that is fine, it is the struggle that leads to mental flexibility.

Yeah, I often think that fingerpaints in kindergarten should be replaced with teaching the substantive differences between their work and Pollock's, with an emphasis on abstract expressionism vs lyrical abstraction in the post-war avant-garde art world. The struggle will be good for them!

Making students struggle through arbitrary coursework is, quite possibly, the worst approach to education I could imagine.

[Tvtyrant]

My understanding of both the US and the UK education is that it does not reliable produce speakers in any language other than English, except for a few that also learn their local languages such as Welsh or Gaelic.


A canon does not require the story to be untranslated. Oedipus Rex still gives insights into Ancient Greek culture even when not read in Ancient Greek.


No, it is not. If "hard to learn" is actually desired, is is useful to learn advanced maths, not 400 year old poetry. And if 400 year old poetry is important, you'd think you'd learn from someone other than this one guy. I hear there were other authors back then? And yet this is the only one that somehow threads the needle to be taught? No, I think it is quite clear the reason is not to teach some random hard thing, it is specifically Shakespeare, and therefore this "make it hard for hardness sake" is not the actual reason.


What on earth are you talking about. How is Shakespeare, the guy who wrote about how the previous kings where hunchbacked evil murderers, a-political?


As I have already said, no, it is not. When I studied it, it wasn't to provide "a-political society cultural touchstones". It was to examine the political, cultural and societal realities of Spain in the time it was written. There was no pretence that it was anything other than an important product of its time. And yet it is still a better story in its own right than anything I've read from Shakespeare.

Grey Wolf

Yes, because it serves little purpose. The one language most people learn outside English is Spanish, because it gets used regularly. We nearly all take the courses, there just isn't as much utility as there is in other cultures. I took Spanish for 4 years and German another 4, I use basically none of it so it fades out of my head.

{scrubbed}

Yeah, I often think that fingerpaints in kindergarten should be replaced with teaching the substantive differences between their work and Pollock's, with an emphasis on abstract expressionism vs lyrical abstraction in the post-world avant-garde art world. The struggle will be good for them!

Making children struggle for the sake of making them struggle through arbitrary coursework is, quite possibly, the worst approach to education I could possibly imagine.

Complex thinking is hard, humans are lazy. If you don't force people to take complex math, philosophy, psyche, etc. they usually won't. The number of kids who hate learning the most basic history in school is amazing, much less the theory of knowledge works and economics everyone should be taking. That doesn't mean forcing everyone to the hardest possible subject, but everyone should be having a hard time in school based on their own abilities and background.

[Peelee]

Complex thinking is hard, humans are lazy. If you don't force people to take complex math, philosophy, psyche, etc. they usually won't. The number of kids who hate learning the most basic history in school is amazing, much less the theory of knowledge works and economics everyone should be taking. That doesn't mean forcing everyone to the hardest possible subject, but everyone should be having a hard time in school based on their own abilities and background.

Most people aren't forced to take complex math, philosophy, psyche, etc. Those are pretty much collegiate or post-grad areas, which are purely voluntary. Also, nobody should be having a hard time in school. They should be challenged, which is remarkably different than needlessly making a topic harder than it needs to be and using arbitrary work to enforce it. Which, again, is a horrible way to run an education system, and I am exceedingly thankful that, to the best of my knowledge, the education system I am familiar with is largely dissimilar to what you are describing.

[Tvtyrant]

Most people aren't forced to take complex math, philosophy, psyche, etc. Those are pretty much collegiate or post-grad areas, which are purely voluntary. Also, nobody should be having a hard time in school. They should be challenged, which is remarkably different than needlessly making a topic harder than it needs to be and using arbitrary work to enforce it. Which, again, is a horrible way to run an education system, and I am exceedingly thankful that, to the best of my knowledge, the education system I am familiar with is largely dissimilar to what you are describing.

I'm pretty glad I'm on my side of this fence too, so we will have to agree to disagree.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Yes, because it serves little purpose.

You are absolutely wrong. Study after study of bilingual people have shown amazing RoI on everything from cultural expansion to protection from Alzheimers. So it serves far more purpose than Shakespeare, at least.

We nearly all take the courses, there just isn't as much utility as there is in other cultures.

No. There is plenty of utility. You just don't make use of it.

I took Spanish for 4 years and German another 4, I use basically none of it so it fades out of my head.

Clearly, you weren't challenged for challenge's sake enough. Or possibly, that approach was useless. I favor the latter.

And none of this in any way defends your original assertion, that Shakespeare is worth teaching because it is hard.

Grey Wolf

[warty goblin]

I was homeschooled, so my curriculum was probably somewhat unusual. All I can say is that, of things I was required to read by various well meaning adults in my youth, I would put Shakespeare in the the top 10% hands down. Way more fun than a lot of the rest of the canon; there were obvious and often interesting conflicts, things actually happened, and a solid chance if some good old fashioned sex or violence along the way.



But the true literary misery of my younger days was book group. This was run by the father of one of my best friends, who thought a lot of himself intellectually, and sought to blow our tiny little minds with radical ideas. These radical ideas usually came via the medium of award-winning novels that conveyed such revelations as Racism is Bad or Sexism is Bad or Racism is Bad for a change, delivered with the subtlety of a frying pan to the head, characters often possessed of a whole single dimension (racist! not racist! racist!), and prose awkward enough to make early Weis & Hickman look like, well, Shakespeare. He also perpetrated Catcher in the Rye on us, which was even worse.

Later the guy who ran the group ran away with the mother of my other best friend; their affair came out at my sister's wedding. Small towns are weird.

[Scarlet Knight]

...
Having a canon gives society cultural touchstones... Latin used to take that position but it was abandoned as schools became more universal and the need for national instead of class identity came to the front...

I have noticed that if you can properly quote Shakespeare in a discussion, and the person you're speaking to recognizes it, your argument gains weight (we can argue how much weight) automatically; if for no other reason than you are perceived as having a good education.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I have noticed that if you can properly quote Shakespeare in a discussion, and the person you're speaking to recognizes it, your argument gains weight (we can argue how much weight) automatically; if for no other reason than you are perceived as having a good education.

Unless the argument is about the Shakespeare play you are quoting, or it is sufficient analogous to it, no, it doesn't. It merely becomes an appeal to authority fallacy. And I say that as the person that keeps using Pratchett quotes to support their arguments.

Grey Wolf

[Aedilred]

Unless the argument is about the Shakespeare play you are quoting, or it is sufficient analogous to it, no, it doesn't. It merely becomes an appeal to authority fallacy. And I say that as the person that keeps using Pratchett quotes to support their arguments.

Grey Wolf

I don't know. I think a well-deployed quotation (from any source) can add rhetorical weight to a proposition or argument, provided it isn't one of those that's been kicked around so much that it's become a cliché. Using unattributed literary quotes out of context (as is common, and is what I presume Scarlet Knight was principally talking about) isn't an appeal to authority per se, because you're not citing the authority in question. If people recognise the reference, they'll appreciate it; if they don't, they'll just take it as a well-coined phrase.

On the other hand, this is probably exactly the sort of thing that runs the risk of being an elitist circle-jerk and probably gets right up the noses of people who haven't had the benefit of an education that teaches this sort of stuff or resent Shakespeare on general principle.

With that said, that 's the sort of phenomenon that isn't going to be improved by limiting Shakespeare-teaching to a self-selected elite.


I think to an extent both sides in the "snobbishness" issue are to blame, really. Compare classical music, and opera in particular. These days, listening to classical music, and opera in particular, is generally held to be a somewhat elitist interest. But most of this stuff, and opera in particular, was written for mass consumption and only stopped being mass-consumed around 100 years ago (although I gather it remains more popular in some countries than others).

What's happened since is that once opera's audience started to decline (I'm not certain of why, but I'd wager that competition with cinema was at least part of it), the art form has been increasingly criticised as inaccessible, elitist and not for "normal people", with accompanying resentment of those who maintain their interest in it, and indeed opera itself. But the accessibility of the art form hasn't actually changed at all. There's no "archaic language" issue here, because operas are either performed in a foreign language or in modern English, and we have surtitles now so if anything it's become more accessible with time. The music, stripped of context, remains popular (witness any number of film scores, widespread abuse of Nessun Dorma, etc.) Ticket prices may have gone up a little on average, but you can still get them very cheaply and I suspect they retain roughly the same price range as they did 200 years ago. It isn't any less accessible than it ever was.

It may be less populist (although there are plenty of good populist companies around), but that's in part because the prophecy of the detractors has become self-fulfilling, because since opera adherents are being resented anyway, they in turn see no reason not to be snobbish and elitist about it. And round and round it goes, with the sides getting further and further apart and the middle ground getting sparser as new generations are inducted into what's become a class war of sorts.

Shakespeare has been around longer than most of the operatic canon but the same tendencies are noticeable with reference to his stuff and will only be exacerbated the more walls are erected around the material.

[Vinyadan]

With opera, the problem is that theaters are only showing old stuff. This means that no one has any interest in writing opera. So you are left with "oldies", which become increasingly démodé. It's a vicious cycle, and it isn't exclusive to opera; theatre has a similar problem. It's a good way to kill an art form.

On the other side, you have competition: from African-derived music becoming the preferred choice over classical, and also home entertainment vs going to the theater. The blues-jazz-swing-rock-pop-metal thing in particular doesn't just attract listeners, it attracts artists, too, so you have another vicious cycle: fewer artists means fewer listeners means less money means fewer artists...

So theaters are putting much effort into killing themselves, but, even if they weren't, they are also against serious competition.

[A.A.King]

Shakespeare is definitely severely overvalued when it comes to education. The guy may have been severely ahead of its time, maybe he was 400 years ahead of his time, that still means Romeo and Juliet became outdated 24 years ago and frankly I’d argue it was long before then.

I have a particular disdain for the argument that teaching something outdated like Shakespeare is important because it creates a shared culture and just because that argument is usually made by people who refuse to partake in the popular common culture. Yes, we are the failures for not getting your supposedly funny reference to Titus Andronicus but you following our conversation about the latest rose ceremony is perfectly acceptable. It’s weird how often the people who insist on schools teaching a certain cultural cannon are the same people who pride themselves on not owning a TV…

I would argue that the only shared culture that is the direct result of teaching Shakespeare is people’s bad memory of being taught Shakespeare. I don’t think people resent Shakespeare, they resent being forced to read it when they had no interest in it and gained nothing out of it.

Worst of all, your high school English teacher was almost certainly someone who loved reading things like Shakespeare so much that he went to college to get a degree in reading Shakespeare and subsequently failed to get a proper job. Now he is in front of you telling you that you are WRONG for not liking the classics. You don’t get it, you don’t understand it, you’re not smart or cultured enough to appreciate the greatness of Billy Shakespeare. They never stop to consider that maybe, just maybe, we’ve seen what he’s done before and frankly we have seen it better.

You can give credit to the guy all you want, I’m sure he has accomplished something amazing for its time but frankly he hasn’t produced anything new for quite a while and you can only rely on your old repertoire for so long. Eventually people will figure out just exactly what is about your work that it made so great for so long and they’ll use to lessons for their own work. Funnily enough, the more you’re worshipped/studied the likelier it becomes that somebody will figure out your secret. It’s like with Seinfeld. Modern watchers often don’t get why Seinfeld was as groundbreaking of a comedy as it was because a lot of what it did seems pretty standard not realizing that it was them who said that particular standard. It might seem cliché now, it wasn’t back then.

Shakespeare might have been funny or groundbreaking back then but the only groundbreaking material I found in Hamlet when I was in high school were those two gravediggers (and only then in the literal sense of the word).

So now you have a story that frankly isn’t anything special and you add on the fact that even as a native speaker you probably need a translation guide the first (few) time(s) you encounter it? Why bother? Surely the valuable lessons you want to teach through Shakespeare can be thought using a more modern work? If you want your students to really think about a story, to be able to answer difficult questions about themes, motivation and character then wouldn’t a story that is easier to read be better?

Don’t force something upon children just because it was forced upon you. Teaching Shakespeare is the literary equivalent of the cycle of abuse. I think that teaching Shakespeare and other ye olde classics can be directly blamed for many peoples disdain for reading. It's not that there aren't works out there that they could enjoy, it is that the works that very few people actually enjoy are the ones that get shoved down our throats as children.

[Aedilred]

Don’t force something upon children just because it was forced upon you. Teaching Shakespeare is the literary equivalent of the cycle of abuse.

Going by your own assertion that the people teaching Shakespeare are people who loved it, it's less a cycle of abuse, and, at least in principle, the opposite of that. A cycle of enjoyment?

[A.A.King]

Going by your own assertion that the people teaching Shakespeare are people who loved it, it's less a cycle of abuse, and, at least in principle, the opposite of that. A cycle of enjoyment?

Sadly abuse and love are not mutually exclusive...
But that particular point was less about the people who teach it than it was the people who insist that it keeps being taught just because they learned about in high school. Somebody told me it was the greatest work ever so now you have to listen to someone tell you it is the greatest work ever. Because that is our culture....

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Using unattributed literary quotes out of context (as is common, and is what I presume Scarlet Knight was principally talking about)

We don't have to presume, they told us: "if for no other reason than you are perceived as having a good education."

If someone thinks an argument is strengthened because they think the person making it "has a good education", it is an appeal to authority fallacy. And I was being generous, since it could be argued it is in fact an appeal to false authority, since the ability to quote random texts on command doesn't in any way indicate good education.

Grey Wolf

[Vinyadan]

About using difficult texts, isn't that how you improve textual understanding? By using texts that aren't immediately understandable, but clearly have some meaning behind them? It's not just Shakespeare, some texts in life are simply badly written or may use officialese.

Worst of all, your high school English teacher was almost certainly someone who loved reading things like Shakespeare so much that he went to college to get a degree in reading Shakespeare and subsequently failed to get a proper job. Now he is in front of you telling you that you are WRONG for not liking the classics.

Are there so few who want to be teachers where you live? Or do you simply consider teaching an improper job?

About TV, I agree that it's very tempting (and wrong) to call stupid everything meant for the masses. It's something you see a bit everywhere, intellectuals fear losing creed and being judged as someone of pedestrian taste by their peers. Metal has something similar with an adoration of black metal and disdain for power metal in the name of trveness.

However, it's also important to realise that TV and pop culture are just the tip of the iceberg. The products in TV come from very learned people who most likely know Shakespeare, although they are focused on production, rather than adoration. There are some exceptions, like sports or the descendants of carnie shows like professional wrestling, but e.g. Hollywood is in love with Aristotle's Poetics.

[CheesePirate]

your high school English teacher (...) failed to get a proper job.

Do you truly think so little of English teachers? Or teachers in general?

[Scarlet Knight]

Why do so many of you get the impression that Shakespeare is only taught because teachers were forced to teach it or were forced to learn it and not because it's actually good to know? I believe it is taught because schools think Shakespeare is beneficial as compared to whatever it would be replaced by... whether Tolkien, Joyce or Baldwin. Otherwise teachers would change if for no other reason than from boredom of teaching the same class year after year.

We don't have to presume, they told us: "if for no other reason than you are perceived as having a good education."

If someone thinks an argument is strengthened because they think the person making it "has a good education", it is an appeal to authority fallacy. And I was being generous, since it could be argued it is in fact an appeal to false authority, since the ability to quote random texts on command doesn't in any way indicate good education.

Grey Wolf

It may not indicate a good education in truth, but it is perceived as true. "Truthy" if you will. Just like being tall doesn't make you a good leader, but people will follow you when you're tall. Which come to think of it, may make you a good leader after all.

I suspect you would not quote Pratchett is there wasn't a benefit to it, justified or not.

[Aedilred]

You can give credit to the guy all you want, I’m sure he has accomplished something amazing for its time but frankly he hasn’t produced anything new for quite a while and you can only rely on your old repertoire for so long. Eventually people will figure out just exactly what is about your work that it made so great for so long and they’ll use to lessons for their own work. Funnily enough, the more you’re worshipped/studied the likelier it becomes that somebody will figure out your secret. It’s like with Seinfeld. Modern watchers often don’t get why Seinfeld was as groundbreaking of a comedy as it was because a lot of what it did seems pretty standard not realizing that it was them who said that particular standard. It might seem cliché now, it wasn’t back then.

But if you actually want to study sitcoms, rather than just laugh at their jokes, you ought to be familiar with Seinfeld.

This is part of the point about "education" that people have been trying to make throughout the thread. While I might (and do) believe that Shakespeare can be entertaining in itself (albeit I acknowledge that being well taught is important) the point in studying English literature isn't just "read some books". Reading some books is a side effect.

Shakespeare is possibly the single most influential author in the history of English literature. Virtually everyone who has written anything worth reading in English since he stopped has been influenced by him in some way, even if it's only to the extent of trying to avoid doing what he does because they don't like him. So if you're trying to build an understanding of English literature, which is the point in studying English literature, it may not be strictly essential to be familiar with Shakespeare, but you'll be missing a big piece of the puzzle if you're not.

Shakespeare might have been funny or groundbreaking back then but the only groundbreaking material I found in Hamlet when I was in high school were those two gravediggers (and only then in the literal sense of the word).

I'm imagining a film studies student. "Do we really have to watch Citizen Kane? Sure, it might have been groundbreaking in its day but it's in black and white, for god's sake! What's Orson Welles made lately anyway?"

So now you have a story that frankly isn’t anything special and you add on the fact that even as a native speaker you probably need a translation guide the first (few) time(s) you encounter it?

I don't really think you do. You might need to look up the occasional word, but it's much less alien than people assume. There are plenty of modern dialects around that are equally incomprehensible, and you get movies and TV made in those that people watch. See my comment about The Wire earlier. That Baltimore dialect and accent was genuinely difficult for me to understand and it took me a while to "tune in" to it. Even when I did there were still several words I wasn't familiar with and had to infer from context. Shakespeare's just the same.

Yes, it is not the easiest stuff to read. It's not something I read when I want to turn my brain off. But nor is Roddy Doyle. Or large chunks of Umberto Eco (even in translation). Or, to be honest, quite a lot of genre fiction, for that matter. That doesn't mean it's not worth reading or that it's not possible to derive enjoyment from it.

[Peelee]

But if you actually want to study sitcoms, rather than just laugh at their jokes, you ought to be familiar with Seinfeld.
[snip]
I'm imagining a film studies student. "Do we really have to watch Citizen Kane? Sure, it might have been groundbreaking in its day but it's in black and white, for god's sake! What's Orson Welles made lately anyway?"

It sounds like we're in complete agreement here. If you want to actually study English, Shakespeare is great. If you're a literature student, absolutely dive deep into Shakespeare. If, however, you're in high school and not specifically focusing on a specific topic but getting a good smattering and grounding of them, then no, I don't much see the point in picking up a print copy of Romeo and Juliet any more than studying the actual script for Citizen Kane.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

It may not indicate a good education in truth, but it is perceived as true. "Truthy" if you will.

Yes. Or, to give it its proper name, a fallacy.

I suspect you would not quote Pratchett is there wasn't a benefit to it, justified or not.

The benefit is never "it makes my argument stronger by making it look like I'm educated".

Grey Wolf

[Vahnavoi]

As someone who is only familiar with Shakespeare through adaptations, but has studied several languages:

False friends in foreign languages are a pain. And yes, old versions and dialects of a language essentially count as foreign.

Beyond certain point of fluency, your mind automatically interpretes certain sounds or letters as specific meanings, without conscious thought. So if a foreign language uses the same sounds or letters to mean something completely different, you'll automatically interpret them wrong, in a way that's about as easy to unlearn as learning to write with your non-dominant hand.

Or at least that's my excuse for not learning estonian.

[Themrys]

Sadly abuse and love are not mutually exclusive...
But that particular point was less about the people who teach it than it was the people who insist that it keeps being taught just because they learned about in high school. Somebody told me it was the greatest work ever so now you have to listen to someone tell you it is the greatest work ever. Because that is our culture....

That's now how it is.

I have zero problems with hating stuff that I was told was "our culture". In fact, I hated a good percentage of the books I had to read in high school, and would totally agree that other children should not have to read them.

But I like Shakespeare. Even though it isn't my culture. There's just not many modern authors who are able and willing to write in iambic pentameter and put in so many layers of meanings.

Don't assume just because you don't like something, no one else could possibly like it and that they are inflicting it on others just because it was inflicted on them. You should know at least some people who have a completely outlandish hobby you think is extremely boring - would you assume that they only have that hobby because it was forced on them? That collecting stamps is somehow part of a cycle of abuse?


And about Shakespeare being outdated ... I don't think so. Humans are stupid and never seem to learn, and that feud that is the actual topic of Romeo and Juliet is something you could surely still observe in some countries.


Some books I had to read in school could probably be replaced with better ones, but - and that is interesting - I do not know which.

"Effi Briest" was an absolute torture to read, but I have not seen its criticism of men's treatment of women in any other book that I could imagine being accepted as compulsory school reading.

Okay, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, perhaps? But that's not modern, either, and it is originally written in English, so probably not as suitable for reading in German class.

I would be totally in favour of replacing those books with more modern ones, but it seems there are none, or if there are some, those are not famous enough for me to have heard of them.

There's plenty feminist books by women, but it would be even harder to make boys read those than some book they just think is boring and whose social commentary they do not understand.

So ... perhaps the problem is that privileged male authors just don't write enough groundbreaking stuff to replace the old groundbreaking stuff.


And unlike with opera or theatre, literature certainly has no problem with publishers preferring to re-use the old stuff.


So, if you hate Shakespeare, look at why English teachers make their students read it, and write something that can serve the same purpose.

[A.A.King]

Okay, great, you like Shakespeare (and seem to have a hard on for a particular kind of bad writer that has nothing to do with the subject at hand so don't see why you brought them up, but oh well). Also why am I not surprised that you're perfectly okay with doing away with certain old parts people like for cultural reasons, just not the part that you liked?
Individuals are allowed to like Shakespeare, people are allowed to pursuit pointless pastimes, my problem is with those hobbies being forced upon others. I would argue that writing everything in iambic pentameter is a perfect example of style over substance but it's the flashy trick that impressed you so I guess it payed of for him in the end. That you like him doesn't mean that everybody does, or that most people do. That certainly doesn't mean that everybody who is in favour of the school curriculum staying exactly the same is a card carrying member of the Shakespeare fan club. Most people telling you that "Shakespeare should be taught in our schools because he is the greatest English writer that ever lived" have not gone to one of his plays, have not bought one of his works and certainly hasn't read any of it after their English high school teacher forced them to memorise the line "he is the greatest English writer that ever lived". They objectively got nothing out of that part of their general education but it's part of their culture so damn anyone trying to take it away.

You can teach the dissection of language, story, character, themes and subtext with many many works. It wouldn't be a valuable part of your general education if it wasn't applicable to other works. The universal lessons about stories and language that can be taught by using Shakespeare would be better learned from a work that is more universally enjoyed in modern times. There are plenty of good books, even great ones, that weren't already old when the teacher was still young that could be used for the purpose of literary study. The result of English teachers trying to be gatekeepers about what is and isn't "literature", about what works are and aren't worth asking deeper questions about is NOT students appreciation the "classics" more. No, the result is students caring about "literature analyse" less.

Even if Shakespeare was somehow a superior teaching tool when it comes to all the things I mentioned above (which it certainly isn't) than I would still advocate against it's mandatory inclusion in the High School curriculum. The simple fact that it is a slog to get through, the simple fact that so many people can get things about the language wrong that OP felt the need to complain about people misinterpreting a simple phrase like "wherefor art thou Romeo" means that it's failing to get across the most important lesson of them all:

"Reading can be fun"

I'm not saying that we should replace ye olde english with "YOLO Juliet" (though that particular adaption is still more readable than the original), I'm saying that we should pick modern books for modern people. People are allowed to like Shakespeare but they should atleast accept that they hold the minority view. It is not helping our high school kids.

[Aedilred]

They objectively got nothing out of that part of their general education but it's part of their culture so damn anyone trying to take it away.

But you could make this argument about so many things. I have objectively got nothing out of most parts of my general education. I don't use maths beyond basic arithmetic, I haven't touched any sort of science since the age of 16; two of my GCSE subjects were dead languages one of which I couldn't forget about fast enough.

In fact I'd be willing to wager that if you take a specific topic studied as part of one's "general education" and ask every student who studied it whether they ever consciously used the knowledge that they got from it, the majority would say no.

Now, I'm of the mindset that education is valuable for its own sake independently of whether you use anything you learned as part of it ever again in your daily life. But even if you're not, the variety of things that people are interested in and go on to do mean that it's impossible to tailor a general education precisely to "those things that are going to be useful".

So at some point and whatever your philosophy regarding education as a whole, you have to draw a line around certain things that are worth teaching for their own sake, and where that line goes will be largely subjective and, to an extent, arbitrary.

On that basis, and if we consider "English literature" worth teaching at all, which apparently at least in this country we do since it makes up at minimum 10% of your assessed general secondary education, teaching Shakespeare doesn't seem unreasonable.

It is funny how I never hear this argument used about quadratic equations, or moles (of the molecular variety) or ox-bow lakes. Well, ox-bow lakes a bit. But people don't create threads complaining about how annoying it was to learn about them. All of it does rather lead me to suspect that not only do some people resent Shakespeare, but some people just resent humanities subjects.

The simple fact that it is a slog to get through, the simple fact that so many people can get things about the language wrong that OP felt the need to complain about people misinterpreting a simple phrase like "wherefor art thou Romeo" means that it's failing to get across the most important lesson of them all:

"Reading can be fun"

Honestly, if that lesson hasn't been learned by the time that Shakespeare is being taught, then it's probably not going to sink in anyway.

And while it is important to teach people that reading can be fun, it's arguably more worthwhile to teach them that reading can still be fun even if it's challenging. I find it more fun to read Asterix comics than I do almost anything else, but they don't teach me anything, they don't make me think about anything, and once I've put the book down I pretty much forget about it.

Compare literature which is more of a struggle to get through but which stays with me and ultimately imparts much more lasting value. I'd include Shakespeare in that, although he wouldn't be at the top of the list. But if I hadn't been introduced to that when I was, I might have just assumed anything that it was unreadable and steered clear. I probably wouldn't, because I've been interested in reading for as long as I've meaningfully had a personality, but you never know how many minds are opened up by things they're introduced to at school - or conversely, shut off from certain areas by things that they're not.

People are allowed to like Shakespeare but they should atleast accept that they hold the minority view.

Honestly I'm not even persuaded that we do. We probably do but I have yet to encounter any evidence beyond the individual and anecdotal that indicates relative proportions of people who do or do not like Shakespeare or think he's worth teaching.

And even then, a minority view can still be correct.

[Peelee]

It is funny how I never hear this argument used about quadratic equations

I snipped only this because for the rest, I'm more in agreement with you than A.A. King, but theres a reason this argument isn't made for quadratic equations, for example. STEM is incredibly important, and requires a hefty foundation in math. The people who eventually go into STEM fields need to have those math skills honed before they can proceed to the more specific ones that they need in their field, because it's all built off each other. Even if only 1% of the people who are taught quadratic equations go on to those fields, the 99% who don't will still benefit from their work. And, as it's impossible to tell who will and who won't, we just teach all of them.

With literature, the few who go on to further study and populate the field largely do not impact the whole, so the two aren't comparable. Which, I should note despite that it should go without saying, is not at all the same as saying the teaching literature is not worthwhile.

[Murk]

Also, "Will I ever use any of this in real life?" is the complaint I heard (and made) most in math class throughout my education.

The argument "this is of no practical use" is absolutely made for other topics than Shakespeare - and not just by moody teenagers. I'm a boring adult with a responsible job and all that, and I'm still of the opinion that a large part of what they taught me in school (or tried to teach) was a complete waste of my time.

[CheesePirate]

I find it more fun to read Asterix comics than I do almost anything else, but they don't teach me anything, they don't make me think about anything, and once I've put the book down I pretty much forget about it.

O Histrionix, Histrionix! Wherefore art thou Histrionix?