Re: Chapter 25 intro joke
Posted by:
Puck (---.brmngh01.mi.comcast.net)
Date: November 02, 2005 11:33PM
robert wrote:
> If you 'retell' or simplify Shakespeare, it's not Shakespeare.
I could not agree with you more! "Shakespeare for Children" is not nearly the same as actual Shakespeare, but it serves a good purpose in that it lets kids know that Shakespeare is neither stuffy nor incomprehensible (both sadly far too common misconceptions) and that the Bard was truly an excellent storyteller.
That is the difference between those picturebooks and publications like Cliff's Notes and its ilk. They do exactly the opposite by effectively telling high school students (who, unlike 3rd graders, should be fully capable of understanding the plays) that "Shakespeare is far too difficult and erudite for you to grasp by yourself. You need to buy this guide to explain all the hard stuff for you! Can you believe how unreasonable your English teacher is being, expecting you to understand all those complicated words without my help?"
(And I quote from an "Understanding Shakespeare" video we watched in class: "When Juliet says, 'That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet,' she means that even if a rose were called something else it would still smell just as good." Duh. Sad, isn't it?)
Besides, I have a problem with Cliff's Notes for other reasons as well: in oversimplifying the plays, they can sometimes make broad statements about things that are open to the interpretation of the individual actor. For example, in Dream when Lysander suggests to his fiance Hermia that, "one turf may serve as pillow for us both" and she objects that they should wait until after the wedding, Cliff goes on about how naive and innocent Lysander is. Supposedly, he simply does not see how lying down together to sleep could be inappropriate. Most actors see his motivations quite differently (the more likely interpretation, in my opinion, remembering that the church records in Stratford-upon-Avon record the christening of Suzannah Shakespeare less than nine months after the wedding of Will and Anne...). It is incredibly limiting to assume that The Bard According to Cliff is the one and only "correct" interpretation.
(A much better resource for critical analysis of Shakespeare's plays is the book Shakespeare After All, by Marjorie Garber. It is lucid, intelligent, and quite obviously written for people who have read the plays!)
I also agree with robert that the plays were meant to be seen and heard, not solely read. I watch stage and screen productions whenever possible. Or I just read them out loud (although the people in the library do give me awfully funny looks!).
Incidentally, does anyone else bristle when they hear some unenlightened clod refer to Shakespeare's language as Old English? Beowulf was written in Old English, Chaucer wrote in Middle English, and Shakespeare wrote in Modern English!!! (Sorry, that's just my little irrational pet peeve!)
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Metaphors be with you!