Reading Shakespeare: Something is rotten in Common Core

(from The Chicago Tribune
by Ralph E. Shaffer)

William Shakespeare enjoyed a remarkable 2013 in Illinois, especially in the Chicago area. The successful "Illinois Shakespeare Festival" at the Ewing Cultural Center in Bloomington last summer was matched by an expanded season of Chicago's "Shakespeare in the Parks" and the Shakespeare Project of Chicago performed "Merchant of Venice" at several sites. Yes, The Bard thrives in Illinois' adult world. What, however, is his future in America's public schools?

He seems to have it made. Shakespeare is the only author that America's public high school students must read. That's specifically mandated in the new federally imposed English requirements, misnamed the Common Core state standards. America's classic writers, such as Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner and John Steinbeck, may be included in some English teacher's reading assignments, but the only one required is that Englishman.

Kids will read Shakespeare, but in what form? They will probably prefer to read a comic graphic novel titled "Kill Shakespeare," one of the books on Common Core's approved reading list. Even a synopsis of "Kill Shakespeare" makes for exhilarating reading. That book will have more appeal to students than Shakespeare's own works.

Since no specific work by Shakespeare is required, teachers can assign any one they choose. Consequently, it's unlikely that the standardized test will ask students much more than to correctly select the name of one of his plays. First we memorize our presidents in order, then we memorize the titles of each Shakespeare play.

I'm not a Shakespeare fan. I think I read Macbeth in the eighth grade at a California junior high school. I asked seven of my classmates, now all in their mid-80s, if they remembered reading Shakespeare. Not one of them could tell me that we had. But I recall something about Birnam Wood moving to somewhere.

I tried to read another Shakespeare play in junior high. I couldn't stand his old English and the unusual rhythm of his sentences. I gave it up quickly. The short newspaper pieces every Sunday by Mark Hellinger, sort of an O. Henry for the 1940s, were more my style.

I never saw a Shakespeare play, unless you count "West Side Story" or "Kiss Me Kate." The worst parts of the latter musical occurred when they actually performed scenes from "The Taming of the Shrew." If Shakespeare had written stuff with the appeal and clarity of Stephen Sondheim's lyrics for "West Side Story," I might have enjoyed him.

Instead, I've turned to writing parodies and puns of his most-quoted lines. RhymeZone has a list of 500 of those lines on the Internet. I'm slowly working my way through the list.

Sample: What was the response of the surrogate mother, hired by Julius and Calpurnia to bear their child, when told by Calpurnia on the eve of birth that they no longer wanted the baby and that the expectant mother would have to keep the child?

"I come to bear a Caesar, not to raise him."

Or, Julius' comment after he abruptly ended a distasteful phone conversation with a persistently nagging neighbor about a timber company's plan to log the woodlot near their residences, which Julius opposed:

"The pest is pro-log."

That's a lot more fun than struggling through Shakespeare's outdated language. Perhaps that's how Shakespeare will come into the Common Core. We won't force the kids to read any one particular play. Instead, let them pick one, go to RhymeZone, and pun the play's quotable lines. Turn it into a contest.

If today's secondary students don't read Shakespeare they won't be much worse off than my generation. Critics of today's schools often cite the students of my era as the products of a great educational system that has declined in the last three-quarters of a century. Actually, the kids of the 1930s and '40s were a lot less savvy than today's youngsters.


Ralph E. Shaffer is professor emeritus of history at Cal Poly Pomona.