Life! - Friday Mailbag (13 August 2004)
"THOU SHALT NOT BASH THE BARD"
By JULIA GABRIEL
In response to "The Bard? Who Cares?" by Robert Taylor (Life! Aug 7), well, I do.
All the world's a stage and countless generations have been moved to tears of pain, and joy, from insights into Shakespeare's humanly flawed characters, his peerless poetry and deep sensitivity to life.
That's why many of us, thank goodness, find pleasure in the classics.
At 12, I went with my school to see Much Ado About Nothing. The play was magic (neither dull nor impenetrable), we all fell for the beautiful, tights-clad Benedick, and I was hooked.
Confused by the language? Why should I be? All communication is interpreted in connection with gesture and body language, so we don't need to understand every word to gather meaning. Children pick up and master entire codes of language this way.
If today's audiences know the words of Darth Vader better than those of Hamlet, Iago or Lear, it's because they watch films and TV more than theatre, and read pulp fiction more than poetry.
Add to this handicapping the reduced language of SMS text, email and pop music culture and we're producing children in danger of understanding and speaking only simplified codes of communication.
Shakespeare didn't write for readers. Most members of his theatre audience were illiterate, but they relished the real-life situations, characters and language on stage.
Should we force children to study, or read, these plays today? Probably not.
But should they experience Shakespeare on stage, act out scenes themselves, improvise, discuss and explore the characters and situations in school? Certainly.
Engaging learners joyfully gets results too, as is evident in correlations between dramatic arts and higher college entrance scores in the United States.
The College Board (2000) reported students with acting or production experience scoring 53 points higher than non-dramatic arts students on the average maths and verbal scores.
Bard-bashers beware of belittling the beauty of language and pray that your voice, like a piece of uncurrent gold, be not cracked within the ring.
"THOU SHALT NOT BASH THE BARD"
By JULIA GABRIEL
In response to "The Bard? Who Cares?" by Robert Taylor (Life! Aug 7), well, I do.
All the world's a stage and countless generations have been moved to tears of pain, and joy, from insights into Shakespeare's humanly flawed characters, his peerless poetry and deep sensitivity to life.
That's why many of us, thank goodness, find pleasure in the classics.
At 12, I went with my school to see Much Ado About Nothing. The play was magic (neither dull nor impenetrable), we all fell for the beautiful, tights-clad Benedick, and I was hooked.
Confused by the language? Why should I be? All communication is interpreted in connection with gesture and body language, so we don't need to understand every word to gather meaning. Children pick up and master entire codes of language this way.
If today's audiences know the words of Darth Vader better than those of Hamlet, Iago or Lear, it's because they watch films and TV more than theatre, and read pulp fiction more than poetry.
Add to this handicapping the reduced language of SMS text, email and pop music culture and we're producing children in danger of understanding and speaking only simplified codes of communication.
Shakespeare didn't write for readers. Most members of his theatre audience were illiterate, but they relished the real-life situations, characters and language on stage.
Should we force children to study, or read, these plays today? Probably not.
But should they experience Shakespeare on stage, act out scenes themselves, improvise, discuss and explore the characters and situations in school? Certainly.
Engaging learners joyfully gets results too, as is evident in correlations between dramatic arts and higher college entrance scores in the United States.
The College Board (2000) reported students with acting or production experience scoring 53 points higher than non-dramatic arts students on the average maths and verbal scores.
Bard-bashers beware of belittling the beauty of language and pray that your voice, like a piece of uncurrent gold, be not cracked within the ring.
posted by ah lum @ 3:43 AM
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