Much Ado About Nothing Much

The Chandos Portrait of William Shakespeare, 

attributed to John Taylor

As a university student of English Literature and an avid book fan, it is hardly shocking to reveal that I truly enjoy the works of William Shakespeare. His use of language and metre is revolutionary, and the plays themselves make up an integral part of not only English literature and its progression, but that of drama and performance too. However, this does not mean that he is everyone’s cup of tea, and certainly it doesn’t justify forcing his writing onto young people in education.

Currently, Shakespeare is a compulsory element to the school curriculum, whereby students must study at least one of his most famous plays (usually Romeo and Juliet or Macbeth) for use in coursework and exams. Yet I cannot help but think that this is quite unjust. In a world preaching total inclusion, gender equality and religious acceptance, why do we continue to present the horrors of misogyny, marginalised voices and racism to young, impressionable students? I can understand you might be confused, so let me explain…

Scene from Macbeth by Hungarikusz Firkász

 via Hungarian Wikipedia

To begin with, in the vast majority of Shakespeare’s plays there is an average of only 3 female characters who usually have very few lines each. If an actress (or rather actor, as female parts were traditionally played by men) does not play the devoted wife, sleazy prostitute or gossip girl, then they can expect simply to be demoted to the subdued handmaiden. Any and all female characters are gruesomely reliant on male attention and almost completely disempowered, regardless of status, and even in his comedies Shakespeare’s happy endings often consist of dishing out the females to the highest bidder. Is this the kind of thing we want to be promoting to young school girls? If Lady Macbeth can’t handle the power, then clearly women aren’t meant for leadership roles. If Desdemona allows herself to be physically abused, then this must be typical treatment for devoted wives. If Cleopatra spends her stage time yearning for a man, clearly that must be the sole aim of even the strongest of women. These messages surely are not appropriate for girls still finding their feet in society. Neither is it appropriate to be showing the young boys, as too easily might they get a warped and even dangerous impression of modern social and gender norms. Women are grossly underrepresented as weak and largely pathetic in Shakespeare’s plays. And what’s more, I refuse to say that this kind of presentation is fitting for the era in which it was written as others might speculate, when it was Elizabeth I, a strong and influential female, who sat on the throne at the time. Could we even consider it slanderous to this powerful queen and her sex?

Ira Aldridge as Othello

via Wikimedia

Similarly, there is a large underrepresentation of racial and religious minorities in Shakespeare’s plays. If the character is not a Protestant Englishman, then you’ll probably find that they are either the antagonist of the play or (at the very least) the butt of a joke. In fact, one of Shakespeare’s most famous plays, Othello, has its whole plot centred around the usurpation of a black ‘moor’ and the damaging of an inter-racial marriage, but this kind of character is equally present in a number of others too. For example, a native of the island, Caliban’s ‘otherness’ seems to automatically put him in the position of a slave, while the Jewish Shylock seems destined for the antagonistic role in such an anti-Semitic Venice. Do these repeated themes not simply encourage the idea of ‘otherness’ as acceptable in the minds of young people? After all, it is very often this ‘other’ character who meets an inevitable doom, not the white Englishman.

Of course, we must consider that, written under the reign of Elizabeth I and James I, the persecution of Catholics was the norm, and people would often go to watch public executions as a part of their everyday entertainment. It is no surprise then that this kind of treatment is present in Shakespeare’s plays. Similarly, it is common knowledge that the man was the head of the household in a large majority of cases, but this still does not excuse the sexist, racist content that is continually taught in our education system today. The Elizabethan public might have been hardened to this kind of shocking performance, but I argue that it is unsuitable for modern teaching. 

Aside from the shocking values that the plays promote, it is also well worth mentioning that Shakespeare’s plays were never meant to be read, but spoken and heard as a piece of theatre. Why then do we insist on school children having to stumble their way through pages worth of text that they can barely understand in the first place? The Bard's own 16th century audience were highly unlikely to comprehend every word and detail projected to them, when the playwright himself was so busy coining new words and phrases that they could scarcely keep up with. It thus seems rather odd that school students should have to dissect every word and stage direction – in fact, very often it is this kind of gruelling exercise that pits them against Shakespeare for years to come. While some students might find a love of Shakespeare in this environment, there are a great many more that seem to switch off to him.

Photo by Nicole Honeywill via Unsplash

Additionally, very few (if any) of Shakespeare’s plays are set outside the realm of nobility. Even when stranded on a Mediterranean island in The Tempest, or exiled into a forest in As You Like It, the majority of the characters are of noble birth and blood, often concerning themselves with issues of marriage and status. Considering that we have only a very loose class system nowadays, how can this style of playing be relevant to a modern audience concerned with modern issues. Arguably it merely renders the characters much more 2-dimentional, less relatable and therefore less believable, so students rarely find interest here. 

Comedy is one genre that you might think seems appropriate for a younger audience, but this too has its issues. Much of the humour is quite political, and if you do not have an understanding of contemporary events or even nicknames for certain groups of people, you will undoubtedly struggle to find the comedy (aside from the obvious plot arc). Are students really expected to have this kind of foreknowledge? I also feel that there are only so many times that a person can find humour in synonyms for ‘penis’ or the repetition of cuckoldry. Even schoolchildren surely would struggle to giggle more than a few times at these re-used and over-worked puns. 

There is also the more complicated issue to consider of labelling the plays as a specific genre in the first instance. Rather than simply ‘History’, ‘Tragedy’ or ‘Comedy’, there are those which cross all kinds of boundaries and make the potential for confusion all the greater (although it has to be said that it is unlikely that such things as Tragicomedies* would be taught in anything below secondary schools). Such plays include Measure for Measure and The Winter’s Tale, which explore tragic issues of justice and death, alongside the use of disguise and marriage, typical plot features of a comedy.

Samuel Johnson 1709-1784
via Wikimedia

I am not at all claiming that Shakespeare’s plays are to be avoided by everyone at all costs, because they do remain to this day complete works of art. However, Shakespeare is out of his depth in a world which is looking forward to equality on all fronts – he cannot be a guide for the future generations when he belongs in the past. Even adults find his work tiring, frustrating and often simply baffling at the best of times, so I do not believe that we should be forcing young school children to be studying his texts when it seems simply to serve as a deterrent to him for the future. He does not, as those suffering from Bardolatry** repeatedly claim, offer unparalleled insight into universal human truths, particularly for young people today, and I might argue that we continue to have the Bard on the curriculum simply out of habit. Perhaps only when students reach more maturity and have gained a better understanding of how the modern world works should they begin to delve into these wonderful plays.




*Tragicomedy - a literary genre that blends aspects of both tragic and comic forms. Most often seen in dramatic literature, the term can describe either a tragic play which contains enough comic elements to lighten the overall mood or a serious play with a happy ending.
**Bardolatry - farcical idolatry or excessive admiration of William Shakespeare.