I'm reminded of those master's degree candidates I TRIED to mentor whose grasp of the English language, spelling, grammar, and inability to express a complex thought were met with such disdain and arrogance toward going back and remedying those deficits. I am thrilled when I occasionally meet the "exception to that rule."

It is monarchist propaganda and suicidal ideation. Plenty of great lines and great ideas but should not be anyone's intro to dialectic.

Turns students off to how good theater CAN be.

We get it. You are anti-Royalist and all things UK. Good for you, I guess. The rest of us are a bit more discerning to facts and evidence (and motivations for certain posts).

The rest is nothing that Brits haven't pointed out. I like the UK and Brits admit it is quirky. I'm calling balls and strikes. Shakespeare is good and challenging stuff but it isn't something that should be forced on students. I have yet to read you argue why it should be.

It is true that the UK has more horses than tanks. Note the source:

BBC: Why does the British Army have more horses than tanks?
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-22951548

You haven't refuted anything I wrote. Just called me names and made sweeping assumptions.

I did not call you names. I called you on your apparent disdain for all things UK. I am equivocal about much, but I certainly don't have that seeming antipathy--particularly given their rich history, from which we can learn a great deal.

Ironically, you have just proven how much reading some Shakespeare would benefit you. I suspect history isn't your thing either, but I hope that is not the case.

"You are anti-Royalist and all things UK" etc. Post #7 here. Water off a duck but you still have not refuted anything just ad hom and now gas lighting, ("I did not call you names&quot .

Turns out the UK does have more horses than tanks just I asserted. Strange but true. If the UK wants to have more horses than tanks that is their choice. You were wrong and very confident about it ("BS&quot . Apology accepted in advance.

I know English history well and have toured the country several times. Have been to the fake Globe theater and have seen excellent theater productions in the West End. England has a strong theatrical tradition and great support for the arts. A key distinction between the US and UK came with the birth of broadcast radio around 1922. The USA used interruption advertising while the UK created the BBC with the idea that media should educate and elevate in ways that made commercial sponsorships incompatible.

I like parts of Shakespeare but in my own experience growing up in a theatrical family, sitting through live Shakespeare as a child was a real turn off, not just to Shakespeare but to live theater in general. The first live theater I liked was "Stop the World I Want to Get Off" with Anthony Newly and then an excellent amateur production of 'Guys and Dolls'. Forcing anyone to sit through 3 hours of shouted iambic pentameter (Shakespeare) that they barely, or do not at all, understand is a disservice to them and to theater.

And yes, discussed the horse vs. tank issue accurately-had you actually read my posts to you.

I hope you actually DO spend time learning and enjoying history, but the themes from Shakespeare's plays are absolutely those of history AND (in the words of Santayana) provide those lessons man continues to fail to learn from and thus to repeat. I'll leave it there.

1. His plays show how people lived in his time, so they have historical as well as literary value.
2. The plays are available with margin and foot notes to explain archaic words or objects.
3. Students can expand their minds and thinking processes by making a little extra effort to understand passages and plots.
4. They show that, although language and technology change, some basic things about human nature remain the same throughout centuries.
5. Numerous everyday expressions come from Shakespeare's plays, so they are still relevant.
6. Shakespeare's eloquence is unmatched by any other writer that I know of. Students deserve to be exposed to it.

Regarding other good literary works that you mentioned, there is no reason why they can't be covered, too, over 4 years of high school. It does not need to be either/or.

Agree with all except 1 and 6

1. The history plays are Tudor propaganda. Unbalanced and inaccurate by design.
Many other plays are reworks of earlier publications of Italian (All’s Well That Ends Well, Cymbeline and The Two Gentlemen of Verona, heavy influence of Boccaccio) , French (Love’s Labour’s Lost) and Danish (Hamlet is based on 'Amleth' by Saxo Grammaticus, ~1200CE) stories. Shakespeare adapts 'Hamlet' from the French translation from Danish done by Belleforest. We know this because Shakespeare makes more than fifty allusions to characters, events or words and phrases in Belleforest’s Les Histoires Tragiques.

Locations and cultures are transposed. Interesting. Entertaining but not accurate history. Until very recently history was strictly a branch of literature, eg of fiction. The kind of history that says Rome is started by Romulus and Remus who were nursed by a wolf. History is more forensic and fact based now. Thomas Jefferson's miracle-free Bible was emblematic of the turning point from fictional history to fact-seeking.

6. Marlowe and Jonson were easily as good as the best Shakespeare stuff. There is a lot of grammatical error in Shakespeare that remains uncorrected. I looked into the original wording and punctuation of "We are such stuff as dreams are made on, (sic) and our little life (sic) is rounded with a sleep." It was worse in the 1623 portfolio but even now there are two obvious grammar errors (or typos). That IMHO is the problem with using only superlatives and pretending it is all perfect.

To be more clear, I love that line but I think the lack of correction shows the confusion this stuff can bring to less confident readers and, to my original point, students. I also think convolutions are part of the appeal. It's like Yoda. It sounds smarter because it is convoluted or errant yet enshrined like gospel.

Last edited Wed Apr 1, 2026, 10:33 PM - Edit history (1)

historically accurate. Was not even referring to the history plays. I was referring to things like the language used and the customs portrayed, e. g. how personal feuds and grievances were avenged, belief in witchcraft (Macbeth) and ghosts (Hamlet).

Yes, I know that Shakespeare's plots were borrowed and rewritten from different times and places. I know that the historical plays had to conform to the Crown's views because Ellizabeth was a patron. But his ability to evoke emotion and to tell a story is good.

On grammar, Shakespeare was quite..um..."innovative" in his use of words, expressions, grammar, and in making up words. Consequently, his plays introduced meanings and expressions that have become commonplace and frequently quoted. His influence on the English language is tremendous.

I agree that Marlowe and Johnson were good, but believe that Shakespeare was better at portraying human nature and appealing across classes. But, I have to admit that I am more familiar with Shakespeare than with the other two.

I also love Shakespeare's sonnets. My favorite is "My mistress's eyes..." I don't remember the number of that sonnet. I love it for its humorous jabs at hyperbolic poets while conveying that sincerity of feeling is better than flowery fantasies.

So much was happening at once and so much of it set in motion the world we live in now.

I have researched Henry Hudson (1565 - c1611) off and on for about 7 years now. London is a fairly small community at that time. Smaller still when you get down to only those who can write and who have access to patrons. Walter Raleigh, John Dee, Haklyut, Hudson, etc. London was the last place in Europe to get printing presses and there were only 25 master printers. England goes from forgotten Roman backwater to globe-spanning empire in one sustained push.

I assume the sonnets were never intended for publication. They are cryptic unless we know who is writing to whom.

This is some of Shakespeare's best:

I use it to illustrate why Shakespeare was such a great writer even though his plots were not original and his history not accurate. You could sum up that quote in modern English and it would pale against how Shakespeare said it. Not quite as eloquent if you just say, "Don't take yourself and life too seriously. What's your importance? You're just one person among many before and after you."

Cervantes -- Spanish was my major. We read Don Quixote in the original Spanish.

and while I was waiting for the tow I saw something written in pencil on the back of road sign. I looked closer: "Tomorrow and tomorrow..." the whole bit.

Years later 8AM I was getting off the subway, 50th and Broadway. High schoolers get off that stop with the rest of us. Two of them right in front of me:

A: Did you learn that shit?
B: Of course
A: You did not.
B: I did
A: Prove it
B: Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow... (etc.)

Speaking of students quoting Shakespeare, when I was in high school, we had students monitors in the halls and cafeteria. They could give out detention slips to students who broke rules after getting a warning, and stop them to check for a hall pass if they were in the halls during class time.

After reading Hamlet, they quoted it when stopping someone. "Stand and unfold yourself!"

In chemistry class, someone would pop up with, "Fire burn and cauldron bubble." (Macbeth)

Describing the character of Malvolio in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night,
“so crammed, as he thinks, with excellencies that it is his grounds of faith that all that look on him love him.”

Is your knitting finished?

so little time.

who actually read it in my English class. It was a 'guaranteed 'A' to be doing that, but it was the 2 of us that kept the discussion going for the entire 45 minutes - while the rest of the class stared at their shoes!

high brow.
Learning Emily Post is passe, but lacking manners is not.

Shakespeare wasn’t that great. All he did was string together a bunch of well-known sayings.

And with that I will exit stage left.

"School was easier in Shakespeare's day because they didn't have to study Shakespeare."

So, I guess I should not be surprised at this particular meme either. Whether they have 334 tanks or 30, this just seems like a concerted hit piece on the UK. We get it. You don't like the UK, Shakespeare, the monarchy or all things British. Gotcha. (and as to the tank deficit, G. Britain is working to reverse that trend, especially now that your MAGA President is making grunts about leaving NATO)...

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=21136488

I haven't seen "The Glass Menagerie", but if it's like Tennessee Williams' other plays, it involves deeply damaged characters treating each other sadistically just for the Hell of it. Rather like watching someone tear the wings off of flies just to be entertained by their suffering.

Williams grew up in a dysfunctional family with an alcoholic father and later became an alcoholic himself. He wrote about dysfunctional relationships because that's what he knew. That doesn't make it worthy of the name of "art".

Williams wrote more than 70 plays (including collaborations). Most are forgotten. More should be.



PS: Yes I know it's April Fools' Day. But some of the recommended plays are far less appropriate for a high school class than anything Shakespeare ever wrote. (BTW, we read "Our Town" in high school. BOOOOOOring. And the idea of performing without a real set is just too pretentious for words.) You won't be surprised that I'm not a fan of theater, and wouldn't likely attend a live play even with free tickets.

surprisingly good. Didn't think I would like it.

Students may like or dislike Streetcar but at least they will understand it. Unlike:

Blanche Dubois said: "Deliberate cruelty cannot be forgiven." His voice, through her character, was so tragic.

Especially the ones where the girls outsmarted the boys

performed live or video?

I agree that much of it reads well but it is terrible when staged.

by junior college students put on for the general community. The characters came alive and drew the audience into their schemes and interactions. I saw it during the Reagan/Bush era and could well relate to a line in the play about the suffering of a nation when the rulers are corrupt.

And, I mostly concur.
But, it won't be dropped from any curricula.

of Shakespeare. This isn't a matter of what plays you think are relevant to modern culture, it's about teaching works with significant historical impact. Most of your complaints about Shakespeare could really transition to any historical piece. Should we not teach the Odyssey or the Iliad because they don't apply to modern life?

as the King James Bible. The English language is not standardized until this period. England is mostly illiterate in the 1500s. Spain is conquering the new world and Spanish is very easy to learn. It reads just like you would expect. England plays catch up. John Dee writes a textbook of euclidian geometry in the late 1500s because England needs a generation of sailors.

We can read (to some degree) the original printings of Shakespeare today because the standardization that was established then continues to the present.

The plays were not standouts in the 1587 - 1623 period (source: Henslowe). The First Folio was a very expensive book (still is). The plays are about monarchy and high net worth individuals. They tell us a lot about what those people's values were and what kind of entertainment they liked but history is better understood through primary sources -- letters, contracts, censuses, wills, etc.

Shakespeare isn't Shakespeare until 1769. That's a big gap. 'Mucedorous' was the top selling play of Shakespeare's era. The name Shakespeare was mostly known in print for 'Lucrece' and 'Venus and Adonis'. The amount of apocrypha is equal to the amount of works in the official cannon. The idea that people were flocking to plays with that name on them is revisionist and not supported by the evidence.

university librarians I knew asked me if I'd like to look at the university's copy of the First Folio. They had me sit in a chair and put the book on my lap. I was almost too much in awe of it to turn the pages. To me, that book was as important as any book ever printed.

Let's put it this way. Given the state of the culture of the American people today, Shakespeare is not very good entertainment. But he is not taught and studied to be entertaining. By your criteria, no literature more than 20 minutes old is worthy of being taught in school.

-- Mal

Didn't say Shakespeare should not be taught. Said it should not be required.

Me thinks I doth protest too much

Burn!

They used to have, "Shakespeare in the Park," on a regular basis. You'd bring a picnic supper and a blanket, and be enthralled by the performances. Loved it!

Also read plenty of Shakespeare and Greek tragedies in my high school class, "Greek and Elizabethan Drama and Derivatives." I will never forget, or regret, that experience.

"We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep." ?

Two errors yet students will be told 'this is the best writer who ever lived." It was much worse in the First Folio but after the first round of corrections it may as well be carved in stone, errors and all.

Not saying it should not be taught to those who want it. Saying it should not be forced on students since it is confusing, inconsistent and archaic.

Ridiculous!

Even with subjectivity, we would not force students to learn musical scales where 2 out of the 7 notes were wrong. We would never force students to learn the blues scale: C, E♭, F, G♭, G, and B♭ as, for example: C, D♭, F, G♭, A, and B♭

You seem to be insisting that we continue to teach poor grammar (?) We don't need to. Shakespeare has value but there is far more appropriate material for students to study.

He wrote in iambic pantameter - a poetry form.

Almost NO poetry is "proper grammar" it is an ART FORM.

the utter beauty of that line?

But the grammar always bugged me which is why I looked for answers about why it was never corrected.

Is the line less impactful if corrected to:

"We are such stuff as dreams are made of and our little lives are rounded with a sleep." ?

They are the conscious choices of the artist,
as is your focus on grammar when the line
calls to your soul.

was printed. IOW they did not sign off on the printed text.

In the 1623 printing the quote is printed as:

Leave not a racke behinde: we are such stuffe
As dreames are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleepe: Sir, I am vext,

So modifications to spellings and punctuation have been made in subsequent printings but "on" for "of" remains as does lack of agreement between "we" and "life"

if they hadn't already been dumbed down by social media with shallow content that didn't require more than five minutes' study. I read Shakespeare in high school and loved it. I read plays that weren't even required reading because the language was so wonderful. It's like saying why listen to Bach, that music is so complicated and boring, when you can have all the Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber songs piped right into your head on demand?

But this is incomprehensible as Ben Jonson noted 403 years ago:

both were very enjoyable to me...

Silas Marner - boring

The Mill on the Floss - boring

Great Expectations - AGONIZINGLY BORING

I hated everything I ever read by them.

Maybe it had to do with my developmental stage at the time, but I found most of them, even the shorter ones, to be a slog. There were exceptions of course, but relatively few. It might just be a coincidence that the 19th century might be when Shakespeare’s influence on English literature was strongest. Not all of us can or need to be Shakespeare. In any case, the density of Shakespeare’s works provided a more interesting language game to me than many 19th century novels. I found the European and Russian novels from that time period spoke to my intellectual curiosity a bit more directly.

So they purposely tried to be as wordy as possible.

And, just as it is not a good idea to ignore the past the it comes to politics, science, or medicine, it is not a good idea to ignore the literature and artistic methodologies that created the literature and methods we use today.

Try reading some science fiction if you would like to learn about what can happen to civilizations that forget their histories and/or mythologies.

It never ends well for them. Ever.

Of course, I had read most of the main plays by the time I was twelve. I love Shakespeare.

(English nerd here.).