Many adults can recall a teacher or an experience that brought Shakespeare to life for them in an active way. For example, Judi Dench's teacher led her to love Shakespeare after a previous experience of reading As You Like It around the class in a way which made her think "This is the most unbelievable and unutterable rubbish I have ever heard". Many people are left with that feeling. Carol Vordeman spoke for a great many people when she said that she found the work of Shakespeare "dull as ditchwater".
Ted Wragg agreed on the importance of 'doing' Shakespeare."I remember well studying Shakespeare and finding it excruciating, awful, but then acting it and finding it the most moving experience of my life ... If teachers were free to teach Shakespeare as they wanted to, youngsters would get so much more out of it."
Pre National Curriculum teaching
In the first half of the twentieth century, perceptions of Shakespeare were strongly influenced by the 'liberal humanist' tradition of criticism which regarded the plays as literature rather than drama, dramatic poems rather than plays. This influence has had a long life in secondary schools.
The English Association writing a pamphlet in 1908 regarded Shakespeare as "the supreme figure of our literature". They believed that plays should at least be read aloud and should be acted out as much as possible. Their pamphlet says what so many writers on Shakespeare education would echo throughout the century: "There is a serious danger in the class-room, with text books open before us, of our forgetting what drama really means." (p7)
In 1921, The Newbolt Report (The Teaching of English in England) was traditional in its regard of Shakespeare but encouraged active approaches, stating: "Anything in our treatment that makes Shakespeare dull or distorted is a crime against his spirit." (p319)
An early advocate of active learning of Shakespeare was Henry Caldwell Cook (around 1917) who taught at The Perse School in Cambridge. Peter Hall, a former pupil of the school, testifies to his continuing legacy of an active approach.
In 1954, A.K.Hudson's book Shakespeare and the Classroom (for The Society for Teachers of English) affirms the importance of active approaches to teaching Shakespeare. Hudson believes the techniques work with Secondary Modern as well as Grammar school students.
The Ministry of Education Newsom Report, from 1963 (Half Our Future) held firm to the belief that the arts are good for you: "All pupils, including those of very limited attainments, need the civilizing experience of contact with great literature, and can respond to its universality" (p155)
By the mid 1960s, the optimism of earlier educationalists had given way to a more pragmatic view that Shakespeare was just too difficult for the majority of students. Shakespeare was standard fare for Independent and Grammar school pupils, but more often than not avoided in Secondary Moderns and Comprehensives.
In the academic and theatrical worlds, attitudes to Shakespeare were undergoing a revolution, summed up in the title of Jan Kott's famous book, Shakespeare Our Contemporary (1965).
Where Shakespeare was taught in schools or where Shakespeare in schools was being written about, a "performance consciousness" was becoming very much the norm. For example, in Shakespeare Quarterly 1984: "Virtually everybody acknowledges the need to approach Shakespeare's plays as dramatic rather than literary works."
The late 1980s and early 1990s saw a clash of views over Shakespeare in education between the left wing cultural materialists and the right wing cultural heritagists. In 1993, John Major railed against 500 academics who had written a letter protesting against the Government's policies on literature teaching, including the introduction of Shakespeare for compulsory study at KS3.
Rex Gibson's Shakespeare in Schools project began in 1986 at the Cambridge Institute of Education. Committed to active teaching of Shakespeare, this included:
- a termly newsletter as a focus and support for the teaching of Shakespeare.
- an InService Scheme whereby each LEA was invited to second a teacher to carry out research into some aspect of pupils' encounters with Shakespeare.
This was followed by Gibson's school editions of plays, which first appeared in 1991, published by Cambridge University Press.
The RSA project in 1992-3 with Leicestershire Education Authority schools stated: "The intention of this Project is that Shakespeare is accessible in the original to all age groups from five upwards provided that the teaching and learning approach is well prepared and made exciting and enjoyable."
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