Why Study Shakespeare at All?

By Randee Baty, instructor for The Classical Bard: Shakespeare, at The Lukeion Project

Earlier in The Sassy Peripatetic, I discussed why I teach Shakespeare the way I teach it. That may raise the question, why teach Shakespeare at all?  There has been a group of voices lately calling for the banishment of this author from the high school classroom entirely. Who needs that kind of negativity? Instead of responding to such a foolish suggestion, let’s look, rather, at why we love and still teach Shakespeare 400 years after his death.

Shakespeare writes about the universal human experience. He eloquently and profoundly sums up the range of human emotion. If you’ve felt it, Shakespeare has described it. But can’t modern authors talk about the same things in contemporary settings? Sure, they can and they do. But you’ll find few authors that cover the wide range that Shakespeare covers. From young love (Romeo and Juliet) to mature love (Antony and Cleopatra), from patriotism (Coriolanus) to treachery (MacBeth), the feeling of being an outsider (Othello), the feeling of sheer happiness (A Midsummer Night’s Dream), you would be hard put to find a modern author who has covered the full range of emotion that Shakespeare does.
   
He’s a great storyteller. He was able to take material from other sources, such as Plutarch’s history, and turn it into plays that people have loved for 400 years. His range covers tragedy, comedy, love stories, fairy tales, histories, and melodrama. He includes ghosts and witches, curses, mistaken twins, lots of disguises and a million ways for people to bite the dust. I love to show my students a chart of all the different ways people die in Shakespeare plays. He just knows how to spin a good yarn!
   
Along with great stories, Shakespeare draws great characters. Shakespeare’s characters are deep and complex. They are among the favorite roles for actors to perform because they are emotionally rewarding. From Brutus trying to make the correct decision for Rome to Puck commenting on what fools these mortals be, the characters have a depth of humanity rarely seen in modern drama. This is why students are so excited when we start performing the plays in Week 3 of the semester and why I hear the “I wish class was longer” frequently from my students.
   
It isn’t just the fun that people love about Shakespeare. The sheer beauty of the language draws people back to Shakespeare again and again. There’s a reason that Shakespeare is still the most often quoted English author. His ability to turn emotion into words is unsurpassed. His ability to coin new phrases (most are still in use) and his creation of around 1700 new words show his mastery of language. Shakespeare is one the driving forces in the way English is used today.
   
Shakespeare is a cultural icon. Other than Greek Mythology and the Bible, Shakespeare is probably the most quoted or alluded to writer by modern authors. The well-respected modern absurdist play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead can’t be understood without a knowledge of Hamlet. The title of William Faulkner’s influential work The Sound and the Fury takes on a whole new meaning to those who love MacBeth.  Modern literature is more complete and enjoyable when you have the Shakespeare background behind it.
   
A well-educated person is presumed to have a grasp of Shakespeare. Just as knowledge of The Iliad and The Odyssey are foundations of a classic liberal arts education, familiarity with Shakespeare is a mark of a well-educated scholar. Homer, Shakespeare and the Bible were the basis of most of the early education in America.
   
As Rex Gibson, an English academic put it, “Every student is entitled to make the acquaintance of genius. Shakespeare remains a genius of outstanding significance in the development of the English language, literature and drama.” He’s a genius we think is important enough to keep in our curriculum.