Shakespeare’s Seat in the Classroom 

I remember my very first exposure to Shakespeare. I was in the fourth grade, and I found a book that summarized a variety of ballet plots from Swan Lake to Don Quixote and, as fate would have it, Romeo and Juliet. At the time, I knew nothing about Shakespeare or this particular story. Though I had heard of the infamous lovers, I was completely unaware of the tragic ending. By the end, I was sitting, stunned with hot tears rolling down my face in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon, struck by the sweetness and sadness all at once and feeling something strange long after I closed the book. The story stuck with me in a way that others hadn’t. Even then, I could tell there was something very different but very true about that story. 

Shakespeare writes human stories. One might argue that all stories with humans are “human stories”, but what I’m referring to is his acute way of capturing human emotion, desire, and folly. As young as nine years old, I was struck by a story of a young couple in love because I felt their longing, the sadness of their parents, the guilt of the friar, and the rage of the prince–it awakened a desire in me to find other stories that felt as “real” as that one had. This desire would lead me to the great books, and before I knew it, I longed for a love like Darcy and Elizabeth, I recited Coleridge and Poe, but my particular soft spot for the bard has always remained. 

Several years later, while working on my Master’s degree, it came time to choose an area of study for my thesis project. The burning question I longed to answer was simple: Are Shakespeare’s works as pivotal to other students as they were for me? My advisor, though he appreciated my enthusiasm for the way that Shakespeare had stirred my heart, steered the project in a more practical and easy to evaluate direction. The question evolved into a survey. The excitement devolved into spreadsheets. And my project would now investigate if studying Shakespeare was addressing the highest areas of need in public high school classrooms in my region. 

As predicted, students struggled with reading comprehension, critical thinking, and writing skills. The Shakespeare units aided students in these areas in the majority of schools surveyed… but I was unsatisfied that something so beautiful could be reduced to a check mark on a rubric. Could this possibly be the only reason these plays are in the classroom four-hundred years later? The public schools that received my surveys were adamant that Shakespeare was practical for forming skills, and so, he “earned” his place in the curriculum. This pleased my advisor, but it felt inadequate because Shakespeare has so much more to offer. The needs of students must be addressed, but that doesn’t have to come at the expense of stripping the students of the wonder that can accompany an immersion in Shakespearean drama. 

Since then, I’ve discovered the world of classical education that recognizes in Shakespeare the same thing I always have: his skill at capturing raw, humanness. I have learned just as much about who I want to be from reading Shakespeare’s heroines as I have learned who I never want to become from studying his villains. There are lines of Shakespeare’s poetry and plays that come flooding back to me when my brain struggles to conjure words of its own. These characters and words are imbued with a goodness that have become a part of me, enriched me, and challenged me to a higher level of virtue. Though the world has changed so very much, the human soul has not, and so the characters of Shakespeare are just as real now as they ever were. We don’t just read Shakespeare to look smart, and we certainly don’t read his work to improve our spelling. But there is the chance that if we dare to brave through the language, the truth in those words will penetrate our hearts and render us just a little more human. For that reason, reading his work will always be worthwhile. As far as I’m concerned, Shakespeare will never have to “earn” his seat in my class. He’s always on the roster.

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Top Image

Leighton, F. (1853-1855). The Reconciliation of the Montagues and Capulets Over the Dead Bodies of Romeo and Juliet.

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Join Katie Łastowiecka this fall in a study of Shakespeare’s greatest villains to determine which is the most diabolic and how one ought to measure villainy. Twitter: @sourdohscholar