20th August 2010 9:00
By Harriet Boulding
I love teaching Shakespeare to teenagers because the plots of the plays are so easily relatable to modern day life. However, Shakespeare, Chaucer, and the language of old has seemed increasingly alien to students who have never been exposed to it, as its presence in the school curriculum has dwindled, especially at earlier levels. Some have argued that this kind of literature represents an elitist curriculum that many students cannot relate to. As an English tutor, I believe that Shakespeare remains one of the most relatable writers, and should be used to encourage students to study pre 19th Century literature.
Teen life, as we know too well, is full of angst about relationships, how accepted young people feel and the stress of obligation versus hormones. All this is the very substance of Shakespeare, and as such should attract younger students rather than put them off. Indeed, many of his characters are the same age as those the students are studying. Romeo and Juliet were not seasoned 30 year olds discussing children and a mortgage, rather they were teenagers falling in and out of love at the drop of a hat, being dramatic and not thinking too hard about the future.
One of the biggest challenges for a younger audience is the language, but the goal of tutoring here is to get past the language and encourage the students to relate to the meaning instead. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is an excellent example of this. It features a wonderful cat fight between two female characters arguing over a man, in which they refer to one another as ‘cankerblossoms’, ‘clowns’, and ‘painted maples’. One we get past the unusual turn of phrase, teenagers can quite easily picture a fight over a lad in which girls call each other silly tarts.
The truth is that Shakespeare isn’t nearly as grown up as much of the poetry students are being asked to study at the same age, and certainly far less mature than the popular GCSE text To Kill a Mockingbird. If English tutors can point out that plots of these plays are often not so different from issues that students have experienced, it will make this literature far more accessible.