Reading Shakespeare

It was a rite of passage in my day to read some Shakespeare in high school. There was a sort of progression to it, though it doesn't make a lot of sense to me today. We started with "Julius Caesar" in sophomore year (and read Shaw's "Caesar and Cleopatra" as a companion piece). My teacher that year was Miss Blong, who about as inspiring as her name. I had a lot of trouble, not unsurprisingly, understanding the language. I remember reading pages over and over and still not understanding what I had read. I had Cliff's Notes, of course, which helped. I recall the Shaw being a huge relief because it was relatively easy to understand.

I think we had "Romeo and Juliet" as juniors--this was right around the time the Zeffirelli film came out, so we had a big field trip to see it. And that was illuminating, because the movie juiced the story up as a teen romance, and I could see that there was something beyond the struggle with the words on the page. And during senior year, with the formidable Eunice Borman as a teacher, we had "Macbeth". She was an old dragon who was great at what she did. For three years I, like all my classmates, had been taught the 3-3 paragraph, a formula for writing essays. It was much hated but absolutely required for all papers. And from Miss Borman I learned that though I was a good student and got good grades, I had never understood the 3-3 paragraph. She was unimpressed by my previous achievements, and she taught me the whole thing again from the beginning. This time I got it. It stood me in good stead through the rest of my academic career and beyond.

And by this time I was starting to be a thinking person. Though I was a smart kid, I don't think I was doing any independent thinking till I hit 17. Having Miss Borman and taking "Macbeth" apart was a big part of making that change for me. I remember that play and its characters and their motivations in a different way than I remember "Julius Caesar" and "Romeo and Juliet". I think Miss Borman was simply so challenging and so thorough as a teacher that she hammered my brain into some kind of adult shape so that I would be minimally prepared to face the world.

It's interesting to me that Shakespeare was the way they introduced kids of my era to the more challenging works of English literature. The plays are still used that way to a degree, but my kids didn't have a play a year, as we did. I'm sorry about that. I think it was a wonderful way to test myself against the best literature there is. (But then, I'm an English major.)

Through the years I didn't see a lot of Shakespeare plays until I came to Richmond, where the vibrant Richmond Shakespeare company does a fabulous summer outdoor festival in the courtyard of a genuine Tudor mansion (transported here in pieces). In recent years they have added a winter season, so I get to see Shakespeare year-round. The company works with minimal sets and focuses on the language, which makes it a true pleasure for me.