Bringing Forth the Bard

A guide to teaching Shakespeare in the English classroom

Zoe Enser

• Publisher: Crown House Publishing
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781785836299
• eBook ISBN: 9781785836336
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Éducation générale

Foreword by Professor Emma Smith.The more you explore the plays of Shakespeare, the more you realise how they are an interrelated network of ideas and themes - linked to his context, his audience and his understanding of the world. In Bringing Forth the Bard, Zoe Enser equips busy teachers with the core knowledge that will enable them to make links between the themes, characters, language and allusions in Shakespeare's oeuvre. Each chapter includes tips on how to bring his plays to life in the classroom, and features case studies from practising teachers in a range of contexts to illustrate how they can ensure that their students develop an appreciation of his work - moving beyond the requirements of exams and empowering them to engage in the discussion around his influence and enduring appeal.Underpinned by the author's academic enquiries on the subject, at both undergraduate and master's level, the book enables teachers to access the information they need in order to enrich their teaching beyond a single play and begin to unpick the threads of Shakespeare's work as a whole. The link between subject knowledge and pedagogical approaches runs throughout the book, focusing on the Shakespeare plays most popularly taught in the classroom and how we can enrich students' understanding of these by looking both at the links across the domain and the bigger picture his work presents.Zoe builds a detailed schema of Shakespeare's work, his world, his ideas and his influences - and offers signposts to further reading and provides an appendix which will support teachers to rapidly find references to the plays they are teaching, and the ideas related to them.Suitable for teachers of English in all phases.

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Chapter 1

Bringing Forth His World

Context, Influences and Inspirations

A plague upon you, murderers, traitors all!

(Lear, V, iii, 272)

Why teach it?

The world Shakespeare presents to us can often feel quite remote from our modern perspective, located at a time when things seem alien to our own everyday lives and experiences. Whilst this means immersing ourselves in his stories can provide something of a welcome relief – an escape from reality, as with all fiction – for many of our students this can be a significant barrier. To them the noughties can feel like more lifetimes ago than they can begin to imagine, and the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods may as well be on the moon. This, further compounded by the seemingly impenetrable language, can lead to a perfect storm of confusion.

There are also many misconceptions about his world that have been embedded by popular media, our merging and shifting understanding in the historical or literary world, or even by partially understood snippets of history that have pervaded our society. A quick google brings up questions such as, ‘Did Shakespeare know Queen Victoria?’, ‘Did all men wear tights in Shakespeare’s time?’ and ‘Did they all speak like this?’ Students have even had the audacity to wonder if I had met him! All students will have heard of him, but his world, his writing and his importance are wrapped up within cultural understanding of what these were as opposed to the historical or literary truth insofar as we can understand it. This makes it all the more important that we devote some time to exploring context with our students. This will also enrich their 24understanding of his characters, themes and language and hence why I am starting here in Chapter 1 of this book.

What is it?

As I have mentioned elsewhere, whenever we start to teach about context we run the risk of our lessons becoming history ones, moving away from the disciplinary exploration of literature and into a whole new discipline. Whilst we may have a lot of knowledge about this domain in relation to literature, many of us are not historians and as we strive to ensure students have a good grounding in context, we potentially run the risk of offering something which is an unsatisfying hybrid of the two areas. Context is important though, providing a frame on which to hang his work – just as it is important to understand other contexts in which writers are producing their work. Knowledge of society and women during the early 1800s helps us to contextualise the writing of Austen or Brontë and having knowledge of The Great Depression and the impact of the Dust Bowl in 1930s America helps us to locate the ideas that Steinbeck aimed to address in his novels. However, we always read their texts with fresh eyes, shaped by our own understanding of the world and it is important we don’t eclipse new and personal interpretation by overloading a text with context. But an awareness of why certain language is used, some of the specific concerns of the period in which it was written and how they reflected the perspective of the author is still a necessary part of our work if we want students to really understand the text. Imagine, for example, teaching The Crucible with no reference to McCarthyism, or Blake’s London without nods to the French Revolution. Whilst an understanding could be reached, there would be much lost if you didn’t have some of these contextual details to hand.

However, finding where the context crosses over into the work, enriching our understanding and helping to shape meaning is a useful approach, so this chapter explores some of the most significant issues that were relevant to Shakespeare’s writing and audience. This selection is by no means exhaustive but it provides a framework upon which an understanding of the context can grow as you explore the plays and the context in action. 25

The theatre and the publishing world

Whilst the Globe has become known for its association with Shakespeare’s plays, with many indeed performed there (both during his lifetime and beyond), there were lots of other theatres and venues used too. It is believed that Julius Caesar was his first to be performed at the Globe in 1599, with 13 of his 37 plays already having been performed elsewhere. Private performances in courts and taverns were also well established; something we see in both Hamlet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Players had traditionally been nomadic troupes and professional actors associated with theatres were a relatively new construct. Much is often made of the open-air nature of the performances at the Globe and there are certainly compelling arguments we could make that suggest this setting is reflected in his work, with language cues as to the time of day and weather which would not have been possible to emulate. However, we need to be cautious not to embed misconceptions around this that could be unhelpful to students’ understanding of the plays and performance, just as we should be cautious to suggest they were only ever written for performance.

Nevertheless, when considering the context Shakespeare was working within, the social and political position of theatre and the purpose of the plays is always an interesting area in which to delve. Control of social commentary was linked closely to control of the printed word and it is frequently argued that Shakespeare is a writer eager to challenge the political and social status quo. Whether this is actually the case, as opposed to providing an outlet for some of the anxieties of the period – for example, by exploring concerns around lineage – is very much up for debate. Leonard Tennenhouse argues, ‘If art and politics define the same domain of truth when Shakespeare wrote, we must assume his art was always political and it is our modern situation and not his world which prevents us finding his politics on the surface.’1 If this is the case, then having an awareness of the political context of Shakespeare’s writing would certainly enable us to have a deeper understanding of his plays and the themes and ideas he was keen to explore. This is not to say that all his work is subversive or necessarily inviting debate, with much in his work suggesting that hierarchies are upheld – with rightful kings back on the throne and social order restored. The same is true with his 26comedies which end in marriage and social harmony is the prevailing message.

But regardless of whether we think Shakespeare was a political animal or not, aiming in his writing to challenge or endorse the status quo, one thing is clear: during his lifetime theatres and publishing were subject to much scrutiny, not least from the diktats of Queen Elizabeth I. In 1581 a decree was passed stating all plays needed to be submitted to the Master of the Revels prior to performance to monitor them for religious or political sedition.2 This was extended to all publications in 1607 and we know that some of Shakespeare’s plays, such as Richard III and Henry IV (Parts 1 and 2), were subject to censorship under this ruling. Richard II contains a scene in which Richard is deposed (Rich. II, IV, i). After the Earl of Essex’s unsuccessful revolt against Elizabeth in 1601, the queen complained that a ‘certain play’ had been performed publicly to encourage insurrection.3 It was on the eve of the rebellion that Essex’s followers had sponsored Shakespeare’s company – the Lord Chamberlain’s Men – to perform this play and Elizabeth, it seems, saw a clear connection between the two. The censor judged the deposition scene to be too politically sensitive to be performed and it was omitted from all editions of the play until 1608, after Elizabeth’s death.

This may have had a significant influence on the work of many playwrights of the period, and Shakespeare’s use of fantastical locations – as in Twelfth Night, As You Like It or The Tempest – could have enabled Shakespeare freedom of political expression where the histories did not. By removing them from the known locations, he had a licence to satirise and allegorise events taking place in the world around him. In ‘Political Propaganda and Satire in A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ Edith Rickert states ‘in the years immediately preceding A Midsummer Night’s Dream, political satire on the public stage was commonplace’4 – part of the expectation of what the experience would bring. By employing a historical setting, Shakespeare may have been awarded greater licence to navigate the censors, as we see in Macbeth or the Roman plays. Students often wonder how he was able to present some of his criticisms of kingship at a time when political control was at such a height. They assume 27that this would have made him unpopular in court, whereas in actual fact he was able to explore some of the concerns of the period around power relatively unfettered. Having a greater understanding of how he presented these ideas, both through setting and language, can enrich students’ readings of the plays.

Religion, the theatre and censorship – the bishop’s law

Censorship did not just involve the political, and religious materials were also subject to the same regulations enforced on fiction and performance. The distinction between the political and the religious during this period and the reformation of the church in England began with Henry VIII in 1534, when he passed a law to make the monarch the Supreme Head of the Church of England. This stemmed in part from the pope’s refusal to agree to Henry’s request to divorce his wife, but there were also political considerations – particularly involving ownership and power.5 What this meant for Shakespeare was that he was living at a time when there were significant tensions between the Protestant and Catholic Churches and significant reforms to the publication and distribution of the Bible. Versions of the Bible were removed from publication, once again shaping how his ideas were presented. It is widely accepted that Shakespeare studied the Geneva Bible as that is the one whose wording fits most closely with his own references.6 Its portability made it popular at the time and was produced by Protestant exiles ...

Table of contents

• Praise
• Title Page
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Chronology of Shakespeare’s work
• The First Folio
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Bringing Forth His World
• Chapter 2: Bringing Forth His Characters
• Chapter 3: Bringing Forth His Allusions
• Chapter 4: Bringing Forth His Themes
• Chapter 5: Bringing Forth His Language
• Chapter 6: Bringing Forth His Theatre
• Chapter 7: Bringing Forth His Influence
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Additional Resources
• Index of Entries
• Copyright