On one hand if that's the case shift it from lit to drama, but on the other we also did The Crucible in lit and that has plenty going.
Did you look at racism, misogyny, antisemitism etc in Shakespeare study?
- Thread starter Cloo
- Start date
sure it does, but have you ever reached for it since?
(I listened to and really enjoyed this In Our Time on the Salem Witch Trials the other night btw BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, The Salem Witch Trials )
Good. I binged The Get Down with my nephew and niece and we all enjoyed it.
No, but I read Death of a Salesman a couple of years ago on the strength of it.
Kevbad the Bad
Amiable Bowel Syndrome
I don't know why the Mail is getting so excited. I'd heard that Shakespeare was homosexual, and therefore, of necessity, a vegetarian, communist drug taker. If Corbyn had been around at the time they would probably have been mates.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
If you take the first 13 numbers of the fibonacci sequence, you'll find the first letter of each line (ignoring the second '1' of the sequence) in Macbeth spells out Jeremy Corbyn. And if you read the play backwards there are hidden messages which have led to significant policy shifts by labour governments eg the withdrawal from east of suez
Kevbad the Bad
Amiable Bowel Syndrome
I thought you were joking at first, but I checked, and you're right. This thread has come over all spooky all of a sudden.
Agent Sparrow
the age of slippers and migraines
Wunderbar!
Monkeygrinder's Organ
Dodgy geezer swilling vapid lager
Played by David Warner, an accomplished Shakespearean.
Good that he's been able to get past being typecast as a sandpaper cheating gobshite.
hitmouse
so defeated, thinks it's funny
No-one can remember what they learned about Shakespeare in school, surely? It's Shakespeare, it's not supposed to be interesting, I thought you were just meant to suffer through it and then forget all about it as soon as possible? I think we got taken to see the one where the dolphin plays tennis.
ElizabethofYork
Old Crone
I studied Macbeth for my O level English and really enjoyed it. There was no discussion about the misogyny in the play - it was the 70s after all, and misogyny was a part of life at the time and not even noticed as anything wrong.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
there are seven themes of imagery in macbeth, the only one of which i can remember is ill-fitting clothes. we also read julius caesar and i'm sure there were a couple of others. when i did an english degree we looked at titus andronicus, which is reassuringly bloody. but once you get past the veneer of archaic language there's a lot there which is really entertaining. i saw twelfth night at the national theatre a couple of years back, with tamsin grieg out of friday night dinner in it, really really funny. the richard iii production with mark rylance was a barrel of laughs although i never thought it would be. shakespeare's plays (i'm not familiar with the sonnets) contain themes which still resonate today, which i think is why they still remain remarkably popular. there's the saying that all quotes are from the bible or shakespeare, and while not entirely true a surprising number are. i understand why you're not a fan, but i think that if you were to give it a go, you might really like it. there's a reason his plays are still put on so widely today.
Thora
Differently Ethical
I did Romeo & Juliet in Year 8 at school, just as the Baz Luhrman movie came out. Luckily we had a cool young English teacher. Good times
StoneRoad
heckling from the back!
Back in the distant past, when I did GCE "O" and "A" levels ...
Being something of an argumentative personality - as in always wanting to question the "accepted" interpretation of what we were being taught, I questioned many things in the English Literature we were being presented with to learn. Especially the imagery in the poetry.
For "O" levels, the two teachers did encourage us to learn the "accepted" versions, but allowed some discussions as to what else we "saw" in the various works [poems, plays and novels] that were on the official list.
When it came to the Shakespeare - we had the "Romans" - Julius C, Ant & Cleo ... and 12th Night. But discussions were quite limited, and largely stuck to the normal for the time views.
At least I don't think that they were significantly bowdlerised.
We did get to see both traditional and modern dress versions of 12th Night.
In the 6th form, we had the very traditional "Head of English" and he was well into imposing the traditional interpretations of the works in our official list. We were encouraged to read other works of the same era / author.
But, personal interpretations of poetry, other things such as noticing & calling out the the misogyny, casual racism, slavery were actively discouraged.
After several disagreements over interpreting some Wm Blake / GM Hopkins and commenting on society in Dickens & Shakespeare the dissenters [just the same three of us, over different things] were "failed" at the end of year exams.
I didn't particularly mind leaving the course, as it left me more time to concentrate on my other three subjects and the two O levels.
So, tl;dr.
Yes & No, we did discuss these things amongst ourselves, but it wasn't prominent.
Being something of an argumentative personality - as in always wanting to question the "accepted" interpretation of what we were being taught, I questioned many things in the English Literature we were being presented with to learn. Especially the imagery in the poetry.
For "O" levels, the two teachers did encourage us to learn the "accepted" versions, but allowed some discussions as to what else we "saw" in the various works [poems, plays and novels] that were on the official list.
When it came to the Shakespeare - we had the "Romans" - Julius C, Ant & Cleo ... and 12th Night. But discussions were quite limited, and largely stuck to the normal for the time views.
At least I don't think that they were significantly bowdlerised.
We did get to see both traditional and modern dress versions of 12th Night.
In the 6th form, we had the very traditional "Head of English" and he was well into imposing the traditional interpretations of the works in our official list. We were encouraged to read other works of the same era / author.
But, personal interpretations of poetry, other things such as noticing & calling out the the misogyny, casual racism, slavery were actively discouraged.
After several disagreements over interpreting some Wm Blake / GM Hopkins and commenting on society in Dickens & Shakespeare the dissenters [just the same three of us, over different things] were "failed" at the end of year exams.
I didn't particularly mind leaving the course, as it left me more time to concentrate on my other three subjects and the two O levels.
So, tl;dr.
Yes & No, we did discuss these things amongst ourselves, but it wasn't prominent.
Artaxerxes
Look out, he's got a gnu!
We touched on antisemitism and briefly on racism but not in any depth I think. Most of our focus was on Midsummer Nights Dream and I think Macbeth as that was on test.
We did it too and watched the Zeffirelli film. When it got to the sex scene, the video started crackling and jumped to the next scene. Bizarrely, exactly the same thing happened at the bloody bits in Polanski's Macbeth the following year.I did Romeo & Juliet in Year 8 at school, just as the Baz Luhrman movie came out. Luckily we had a cool young English teacher. Good times
By the time we got to Hamlet, the video was completely fine, as it had been for An Inspector Calls, The Crucible, Death of a Salesman and and To Kill A Mockingbird...
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quimcunx
imprimeo, lamino, distribuo
I did midsummer nights dream, twelfth night, merchant of venice, julius caesar, Macbeth and hamlet.
I vaguely recall mention of the description of shylock being anti semitic but not any sort of deep dive or context. I expect sexism was mentioned too but I dont remember.
I vaguely recall mention of the description of shylock being anti semitic but not any sort of deep dive or context. I expect sexism was mentioned too but I dont remember.
hitmouse
so defeated, thinks it's funny
Tbf I hated my Eng Lit GCSE in general, it took me until probably my mid-twenties to realise that in retrospect I would probably have enjoyed doing it at uni. Last Shakespeare-related thing I remember liking was the Macbeth episode of Inside No 9. I still reckon that getting English GCSE students to study texts that are sort of in another language is making life harder than it needs to be, but then I'm not an English teacher so my opinion's probably of limited relevance there.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
tbh it's not so much in another language as eg the canterbury tales are, of which i am woefully ignorant as i couldn't handle chaucer's english. yeh you have to make an effort with shakespeare but once you're through that barrier it's a great pleasure. i am not an english teacher either.
I saw the Bridge Theatre's immersive production of Julius Caesar where you were part of the mob being stirred up one way and the other to revenge and violence.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
I’m a big fan of the Three Inch Fools’ outdoor performances. If you ever get a chance to see them do.
trashpony
Hag
My son is studying Merchant of Venice at school and they are discussing the anti-semitism at length.
I did hear an interview with Juliet Stevenson who thinks it and the Taming of the Shrew should be consigned to the dustbin of history. That would be an interesting thing for them to write about.
The thing that pisses me off more about the gcse english curriculum is how stale, pale and male it is.
They aren’t studying anything which was written post 1950s. Hardly ‘modern’.
I did hear an interview with Juliet Stevenson who thinks it and the Taming of the Shrew should be consigned to the dustbin of history. That would be an interesting thing for them to write about.
The thing that pisses me off more about the gcse english curriculum is how stale, pale and male it is.
They aren’t studying anything which was written post 1950s. Hardly ‘modern’.
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