So where do you find 30 fifth graders who are enthusiastic about Shakespeare? For the past 26 years at Nottingham, we have tried to manufacture them.
We start with visits to each fifth grade classroom. In years past, we made three visits per class just before the winter break, concentrating on Shakespeare’s Life, Times and Works in Visit 1 and Shakespeare’s Language in Visit 3. Visit 2 would vary, depending on which play we were presenting. At the end of the three visits, the students knew enough about Shakespeare to know that 1) his words are not that hard to understand, and what’s more, are fun to say out loud; and 2) his plays are full of action, songs, slapstick comedy, swordfights, girls dressed as boys, boys dressed as girls, and sometimes ghosts—in other words, they are not at all boring. Then we sign them up for our after school acting program.
This year, because the population of fifth graders at Nottingham is almost 50% larger than in previous years, we decided to offer two sessions of Shakespeare. Since the first session needed to begin just a few weeks after the school year started, we were only able to make one classroom visit before enrolling the students in the after school program. It had to be an attention-grabbing, this-is-the-most-fun-you-are-going-to-have-this-year kind of classroom visit, so I altered my usual curriculum.
I like to start their Shakespeare education by asking the fifth graders what they already know about Shakespeare, and that is usually quite a bit—they all know that he lived in England a long time ago and wrote plays. Some of them know that he was also a poet and an actor. Some of them know that women were not allowed onstage in Shakespeare’s time, and young boys had to play the women’s roles. Usually at least a third are familiar with one or more of his plays, and have perhaps even seen one on stage or in a movie adaptation. The plays they mention most are the ones you might expect: Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet.
Then I explain that Shakespeare and his companions in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men had to compete for the Elizabethan public’s entertainment penny, and that, in fact, playgoing was only the fourth most popular entertainment of the time. (Public executions were #1, in part because everyone got the day off work to attend; the blood sports of bull- and bear-baiting came next.) I then invite some of the students to participate in a demonstration, developed by my friend Carol Ann Lloyd-Stanger and embellished a bit by me, that helps them understand what the experience of hearing a play in Shakespeare’s London would have been like.
I give six students the first page or so of text from Romeo & Juliet, and tell them to quietly prepare it while I discuss a few things with the rest of the crowd. In addition to the script, they get some wooden swords (with which they are forbidden to touch each other) and the instruction that their only goal is to keep their audience entertained. The rest of the group are assigned the roles of either: lords, who are allowed to sit on or wander around the stage and draw attention to themselves; vendors, who can sell fruit, nuts, or ale, as loudly as necessary; or groundlings, who watch the play and react as they see fit—applauding, laughing, and cheering, or else booing, heckling, throwing imaginary objects, or even demanding to see a different show. Once the demonstration begins, things get chaotic very quickly. The actors learn they must practically shout their lines in order to be heard, and must get to the exciting bits (in this case, insults and swordplay) as quickly as possible, cutting text if necessary. The lords are obnoxious from start to finish. The groundlings usually get a little drunk with power. After a few minutes, I call a halt to the proceedings and we deconstruct what happened. The fifth graders then understand that Shakespeare couldn’t have made a living writing impenetrable verse to impress the university-educated few. He wrote ripping yarns for an easily distracted, unruly, bloodthirsty public not too different from them, with some gorgeous poetry thrown in. Hmmm. Those plays must be pretty interesting.
After discussing the difference between comedy, history, and tragedy, I lead them in an activity that never fails to please. As a bonus, it lets me see which of my potential cast members are apt to be the biggest hams. Volunteers get to act out the manner of death of the characters in Shakespeare’s ten tragedies, as creatively, graphically, and lengthily as they can. The most common manner of death is stabbing, and it unfortunately loses its power to horrify after a few instances of someone clutching their belly, saying something like “aaargh!”, and falling to the ground. It gets old. But when they watch one of their classmates try to figure out how to be torn apart by a mob (the death of Cinna the Poet, Juliius Caesar), or get slaughtered, baked into a pie and eaten (Tamora’s sons, Titus Andronicus), the students perk right up again. Some deaths evoke laughter, some groans, but the audience is continuously engaged.
And enthusiastic about Shakespeare.
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