Teaching Reading Shakespeare Teaching Reading Shakespeare is for all training and practising secondary teachers who want to help their classes overcome the very real difficulties they experience when they have to ‘do’ Shakespeare. Providing a practical and critical discussion of the ways in which Shakespeare’s plays present problems to the young reader, the book con- siders how these difficulties might be overcome. It provides guidance on: • confronting language difficulties, including ‘old words’, meaning, grammar, rhetoric and allusion; • reading the plays as scripts for performance at Key Stage 3 and beyond; • using conversation analysis in helping to read and teach Shakespeare; • reading the plays in contextual, interpretive and linguistic frameworks required by examinations at GCSE and A Level. At once practical and principled, analytical and anecdotal, drawing on a wide range of critical reading and many examples of classroom encounters between Shakespeare and young readers, Teaching Reading Shakespeare encourages teachers to develop a more informed, reflective and exploratory approach to Shakespeare in schools. John Haddon has over 30 years’ experience of teaching English in the classroom, 17 of them as a Head of Department. He has contributed to a number of titles on A Level teaching practice, English in the National Curriculum and teaching fiction at Key Stage 3. Teaching Reading Shakespeare John Haddon First published 2009 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2009. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. © 2009 John Haddon All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Haddon, John, 1948- Teaching reading Shakespeare / John Haddon. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Study and teaching--United States. 2. Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Study and teaching (Secondary) 3. Education, Secondary--United States. 4. Language arts (Secondary)--United States. I. Title. PR2987.H33 2009 822.3'3--dc22 2008033867 ISBN 0-203-87075-1 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 10: 0-415-47907-X (hbk) ISBN 10: 0-415-47908-8 (pbk) ISBN 13: 978-0-415-47907-3 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978-0-415-47908-0 (pbk) Contents Acknowledgements vii Prologue ix PART 1 Language 1 1 Admitting the difficulty 3 2 ‘All these old words’ 6 3 Case study: ‘virtue’ 15 4 Grammar 21 5 Metaphor 30 6 Allusion 34 7 Rhetoric 39 8 Paraphrase 46 9 Some strategies 53 10 Long speeches 57 PART II Aspects 73 11 Narrative 75 12 Theatre 91 vi Contents 13 Context 113 14 Interpretation 132 15 Talk 151 Appendix to Chapter 15: punctuation 175 Epilogue: finding value in Shakespeare 178 Notes and references 187 Index 193 Acknowledgements Earlier versions of parts of this book appeared as articles in The Use of English. I am grateful to the editor, Ian Brinton, for permission to make use of them here. Thanks are due to my pupils, students and colleagues over the years, particularly those of Littleover Community School, Derby, where most of the work described here was done. For realistic commentary and encouragement I am grateful to my wife Trish, and for close editorial work to my daughter Ruth. Prologue There are quite a few books available on teaching Shakespeare. My aim in this one is to give sustained attention to what is involved in readingShake- speare in the classroom, confronting some of the very real difficulties which our pupils and students encounter in, say, Romeo and Juliet, Richard III or Twelfth Night. Many of the approaches to Shakespeare developed in recent years are inventive, enjoyable, well motivated and potentially very productive. However they can – although they need not – evade or defer engagement with the language (and therefore the substance) of the plays. Thematic and empathic approaches seek to make the plays more relevant to the lives of young people, but at some risk of missing what is distinctive about them. Even those that involve splendidly physical treatments of the language and an awareness of theatre can prove remark- ably indifferent to questions of meaning.1 My main concern in this book is to consider the contributions that can be made by, not to put too fine a point on it, teaching. I’ve tried to be both principled and pragmatic, with a wide range of practical suggestions and examples, some lightly sketched, some worked out in detail. The approach throughout is informed by literary-critical reading with a strong bias to performance. The chapters can be read independently but are interrelated and cross-referenced and build up into a complete argument concerning what might be involved in the teaching of Shakespeare. Since the main barrier to Shakespeare for our pupils is his language, Part 1 offers a detailed consideration of the difficulties it presents and some of the ways in which they can be tackled in the classroom. Part 2 dis- cusses five areas of interest which can provide ways of focusing on improv- ing reading in the classroom and beyond. The first discussion concerns how work on the plays’ stories might enhance, and be enhanced by, reading. The second focuses on reading Shakespeare’s plays as scripts for performance. The next three are concerned with prompts to read within frameworks of understanding insisted on by some examinations: contex- tual, interpretative and linguistic. The intention here is to be both critical and constructive, focusing on how these frameworks may help or inhibit