http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/book ... leads.html

I would say “don‘t write them then” if I ever met him. Of course his books are going to be sued in the classroom. They are very popular, and there is a very successful TV series to back them up.


The “failed teacher” criticism is one I have heard often before. I doubt he’s wrong on that one.

I guess he's worried about the Shakespear effect.
His plays were written to entertain the masses. They were never designed to be picked apart and analysed by teachers/pupils. It ruins them. I know myself I hated being forced to study Shakespear at school. I'm sure millions more will have been put off by their school experience too.
He's probably scared that children will start to resent or hate his stories, not because the stories are bad, but because they're forced into it.

Shakespeare is terrible on account of being 500 years old, the language and terminology is horrendously inaccessible to modern audiences/readers.

Yeah I know. If only we had some form of capacity to learn or something. Then we could understand his language and how he constructed his dramas.

That's just what I like on a Saturday night, having to concentrate really hard so that I can my head around obtuse, archaic language. I might as well watch a play written in Classical Chinese or Latin while I'm at it.

There are plenty of more modern, more accessible and brilliant pieces of writing we could be teaching children about, but no - we have to persist with Shakespeare because he's supposedly brilliant and also happened to be English.

That was my experience

I'm not talking about the exclusion of more modern classics. There should be, however, provision in the curriculum to offer more historic texts to provide some context in the construction of modern literature. I studied a wide range of texts from John Donne, Shakespeare, Douglas Adams, Harper Lee, Hardy, J.G. Ballard and more.
I quite enjoyed the Shakespeare - it's not that hard to comprehend, really.

Shakespeare's awesome. I love the fact that however much you analyse it, it holds together even though it wasn't written with that intention, it was just brainfart. No wonder they make you study it, it really makes you understand what the study of literature's all about. If you don't get that, then it's not for you. Doesn't make it bollocks.

Well no, clearly, since that can only ever be a subjective assertion. Perhaps I should clarify and say that to me, Shakespeare is utter bollocks. If I ever see references to daggers, mad women called Ophelia or shrews ever again it will be too soon.

Shaespeare created plays. They should be seen, and not read, dissected and essayed upon.

That just about sums it up nicely.

Indeed. However, The Bard appears to have some special fence erected around him. I’m not sure if an actor is allowed not to like him - if they do, they are very quiet about it. Always spoken about in hushed tones.

Shakespeare is, or was, a kind of Elizabethan version of Viz. A lot of the jokes were aimed at the masses, and were fairly base, but, yes, there were spatterings of genius to be found too - observations on a higher level, but penned in such a way that the audience would understand. This is partly to do with the fact that the cheap seats were at the front by the stage. If you wanted people to shut up, you throw in some knob jokes (or similar), and the rabble hushes, and the wave of attention spreads back to the more affluent seats. We must also remember that the really rich people went to the theatre not to see the play, but to be seen to be there. As such, the play was less for them and more for the cheaper ticket holders.

It is also worth noting that, according to the tour guide at The Globe, action not only took place on the stage, but also amongst the audience. It would be no surprise to them if the fights in Romeo and Juliet took place amongst the crowd watching. They became citizens of Verona, jeering on the protagonists. Modern theatre tends not to do this - we have lost that part of the theatrical tradition on the whole.

Shakespeare is teated with kid gloves far too much. He is becoming linguistically distant, and in part this is helping move his works to a more elite position, and encouraging academic excesses.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-17769799

It seems Shakespeare, The Brand™ is going global. It doesn't look much like kid gloves to me.

I’ve seen that on the news last night. No worse than performing it in its original Klingon, I guess. But even this is more about reverence than anything else.

I disagree. Shakespeare's been subject to as many reinventions and 'new' portrayals as you could care to count.

Also, aside from the plays, there's the sonnets. There's the words he contributed to the language.
In fact, there's a bunch of things attributed to him that we take for granted today.

One thing that I find galling is that we're so keen to pin this massive body of work to one man; it more than likely isn't.
What's far more likely is the plays as they stand today are the result of subtle revision by the cast and directors who performed them.
You can read more on the topic here.