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Introducing Shakespeare Through Modern Language Underestimates Your Pupils And The Playwright Alike

Georghia Ellinas of Shakespeare's Globe makes a case for staying faithful to the Bard's original words

Georghia Ellinas
by Georghia Ellinas
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PrimaryEnglish

What is the hardest word to understand in this sentence, ‘If I be waspish, best beware my sting’ ? You might translate this into, ‘I am bad-tempered and can hurt you’.

There are those who consider Shakespeare is too hard for all but the brightest students and some editions for schools treat the text as if it were a modern foreign language. The problem with the translated sentence, though, is that it lacks the punch and poetry of Shakespeare’s words. Shakespeare’s sentence yields so much more.

The entomological link between waspish and sting; the alliteration with best and beware and the two pronouns I and my work together to create the picture of a character full of anger delivering a sharp warning to others to leave her alone.

This is Katherina from The Taming of the Shrew and she proves as good as her word in inflicting physical pain on those who upset her. Katherina’s words are then used by Petruchio as wordplay when he saucily asks if he should look for her sting in her tail.

Modern audiences, as Elizabethan audiences did, laugh at the sexual innuendo and Petruchio’s ability to play Katherina at her own game.

Facing up to the difficulty

Shakespeare wrote his plays to be performed and seeing Shakespeare performed is a key part of Globe Education’s mission.

Our annual Playing Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank productions are created especially to engage young people. Over 18,000 free tickets are given each year to state secondary students in London and Birmingham, accompanied by workshops for students and teachers and online resources. The productions are edited to 90 minutes, but we do not change the language.

This year’s play was The Taming of the Shrew. Someone remarked to me that it had been deemed a ‘banned’ play because you could not perform in the 21st century a play which casts and treats women in such a cruel and vicious way. That is exactly why we think we should be offering it to young people.

The Taming of the Shrew deals with, amongst other things, sibling rivalry, domestic abuse, parental control over choice of marriage partner and society’s perceptions of what constitutes womanly behaviour – all issues as relevant today as they were 400 years ago.

We want our young audience of 11 to 18 year olds to think about how Katherina is treated by her husband, to reflect on the rights of an individual within a marriage and consider whether cruelty disguised as kindness is an honest, humane and enduring way to change anyone’s behaviour.

The students who have seen this production have understood. One young woman was so outraged by Katherina’s final speech that she yelled out ‘Hell, no!’ Others standing against the stage warned Katherina not to marry him because he was bad and told her to run when she had the chance. They understood what she was facing.

After our recent training for teachers, 99 percent said they will now teach this play because we have helped them to see how a script with such dark issues can be relevant to young people, and how approaching it through drama and discussion can bring a text written over 400 years ago alive in their classrooms.

Our training on engaging with the language of the play means they do not have to endure word for word translation in lessons – meanings can be explored and determined by practical activities, as actors do in rehearsal.

Understanding through play

In our daily Lively Action workshops at the Globe, our practitioners select a text extract that matches the ability, age and needs of the group.

It may be as little as half a dozen lines from the play because the objective is to engage with the characters and their needs, the themes and ideas of the play and to develop a personal response. All of this can only happen through exploring the language through play in order to reveal different interpretations and meanings.

Pointing on the pronouns in a short duologue between Beatrice and Benedick from Much Ado About Nothing, for example, will tell you a great deal about their relationship, their personalities and how they blame one another for their lost love.

Whispering the opening of Richard III’s will sound like hissing, which creates tension and suggests snakes and danger – a fitting backdrop for this play.

We work with over 125,000 students a year at the Globe and many more across the world; we are expert in working with students for whom English is an additional language. In all our work we never use translations and we remain faithful to Shakespeare’s text.

Age is also no barrier; we believe in introducing Shakespeare as early as possible. Our Children as Storytellers project engages five and six year olds with Shakespeare’s plays in an active way.

Children are invited to release their imagination and join the storyteller in the world of medieval England where young Prince Hal has just become King Henry V. In the follow up in class sessions we use call and response so that the pupils speak Shakespeare’s words.

O for a muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention: A kingdom for a stage, princes to act, And monarchs to behold the swelling scene

At one primary school where 80 percent of students are from minority ethnic backgrounds and over 70 percent with English as an additional language, the headteacher recently remarked, “Some adults don’t understand the relevance of Shakespeare to their lives today, five and six year olds at our school have cracked it.”

Natural enthusiasm

Having the opportunity to hear and speak Shakespeare’s words is an essential element to all our work with schools; we know that with the right approach and support all children can do that. The youngest children do not see the words as ‘difficult’ or ‘foreign’, they simply see new words to learn and use.

How you tell the stories and what you do with them in the classroom overcomes any obstacles to engaging, exploring and understanding them. We have recently begun storytelling in Year 9 as an introduction to studying the play for GCSE and in Year 11 as support for revision.

From our huge range of work with students I see that they are eager to perform Shakespeare. They are not deterred by sentences and words that do not correspond to modern usage – they work harder to create meaning, and they do it very well.

Georghia Ellinas is Head of Learning, Globe Education at Shakespeare’s Globe.

Browse our Shakespeare Week resources.

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