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| Pembroke Bush Comprehensive School |
My Upper 6th English teacher for Shakespeare was Mr. O'Driscoll, or Mrs. O-D as she was affectionately known by her charges. Our A-Level text was Anthony and Cleopatra and often I found it a dry, dull experience until Mrs. O-D helped me turn a corner.
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| Burton and Liz's 'Anthony and Cleopatra' |
I'm going to assume you've all seen The Incredibles. The teenage me was very much the daughter Miss. Invisible, mainly due to much relentless, cruel, and aggressive bullying by some girls in my year group. It was a blessing not to be noticed. Juniour school me was an eager, hands up, 'I know the answer Sir!' to almost every question answered kind of pupil. Do that in my comprehensive school and it did one thing, make you a target. I learned to be quiet; I learned to get my head down and work; I learned to not bother speaking as my primary survival tactics.
So what did Mrs. O-D manage to do? She asked me to read some of Anthony and Cleopatra aloud to the class. I had knots in my stomach, sweaty palms and an urge to vomit, but I read.
Mrs. O-D asked me a simple, but powerful question after I'd read a passage (I have NO recollection of which bit), she asked me, 'Have you done this before? You read it so naturally.'
I looked up, blushing a bit and replied with, 'Erm, no, er, thanks Miss.'
Inside, oh inside it was a different matter, I was beaming.
This was an astute lady.
Later on when we were ploughing our way through Anthony and Cleopatra, we discussed and analysed some dialogue between the two main characters. Mrs. O-D concentrated on the words, 'death' and the verb, 'to die'. How morbid? You could assume...but no, how fruity and bawdy? Mrs. O-D revealed to us that they were talking about sex, about Cleopatra's orgasm which is what the verb, 'to die' referred to and there we learned that Shakespeare was a bit rude! Anthony and Cleopatra was no longer this dry, dusty old thing...we had become intrigued.
After the lesson, my friend Lynne and I made EVERY effort to use the 'to die' verb and all its double entendre possibilities at EVERY opportunity. (The irony being that neither of us had a scoobies what an orgasm actually was, other than a description in a dictionary, but still, we LOOKED like we knew).
So, nearly *coughs* twenty years later I remember that morsel or bawdy information about our Mr. Shakespeare and an apparently, dry, dusty old text. That and a bit of a soliloquy from the play: 'Age cannot wither her/Nor custom stale her infinite variety.' thanks to the audio tape I listened to ad infinitum before my exam.
Shakespeare, thou art talking gibberish.
We are English teachers, we love Shakespeare, yes? Even if you do think it was De Vere and not the glove maker's son from the Midlands, we like the fella, we get it don't we? Then what is it that can make teaching it a tad scary? It is the language.
For pupils, of all abilities, there is a barrier to the language which we can call 'the fear' the reasons for it are numerous.
Compare it to any contemporary text, and it looks alien (not quite as scary as Giger's Alien, but alien it is). It does not resemble texts that they normally read, it is all (I know it's not all, but lots of it is) in poetry for God's sake - who the heck speaks in poetry, that's just weird isn't it? This is before we even get to the reading of it, or bathing in the richness of his language.
So, how can we over-come 'the fear'?
We can learn from the wise Mrs. O-D, by using an age old tac tic - don't blush now - get to the nub of the 'rude' bits and even, start off by showing them how to insult each other Shakespeare style.
If you click on this link here: http://www.pangloss.com/seidel/shake_rule.html you will find a Shakespeare insult generator. I have given you the link for the simplest one which can be printed off as it is, if needed.
What on earth can you do with it?
Start by giving the pupils a copy each of the sheet. Before you've even finished handing it out and giving any form of instruction, they'll be reading them aloud to themselves or calling their neighbour an insult on the sheet. The cheekier ones will start insulting you with it with a, 'Miss, you are a bot-less, half-faced, baggage!' You of course, MUST insult them back, and there you are, an improvised argument - Shakespeare style. Your classroom is already awash with Shakespeare without a huge amount of effort in your part.
Some of your more curious beasts will point at an insult, or indeed call you it, and then ask you what it means. Now, I don't tell them because, in all honesty, I have no idea what each of them means but also, this isn't about scrutinising meaning in the insults, it is really about the pupils making meaning from them. It is important that meaning of the language is not fixed and not fixed by you, but by them. This will pay huge dividends later when you are asking (note - NOT telling) them to find meaning in, 'Macbeth hath murdered sleep' or what, 'Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?' REALLY means.
This activity does need some structuring, which is really rather simple. Get the pupils to generate 'X' number of insults (I usually go for 10) by putting 'Thou art' or 'You are' at the beginning and all they need to do is choose an insult from each column, put them together and job done. It helps to model an example on the whiteboard for the 'I don't get its'. Give them a set time to do it - deadlines are always useful, and then you can get onto the really fun bit, you are giving them licence to be rude in a lesson...just not THAT rude.
Below is what I give the students to do. It is usually done with a class I have not taught Shakespeare to before and it can work for KS3 or 4. Use this how you wish:
Shakespeare insults:
Creative/Drama task.
Challenge: In pairs use your Shakespeare insults to
write a script for an argument. Instead
of using swear words you will use your very own Shakespeare insults YOU have
just created!
Choose
topic for your argument:
Bad food in restaurant a messy bedroom being late to a lesson
Toothpaste lid always left off smelly bathroom
someone has kept something borrowed
the last chocolate muffin in the canteen.
An idea of your own!
Arguments have a simple
structure:
- Polite/friendly conversation
- Someone says or does something to upset the
other
- The argument starts – fairly calmly
- The argument increase – getting louder
- The argument reaches a climax – even louder and
more insults
- Someone wins….but who?
Make sure you follow the
same structure:
Integrate your Shakespeare
insults with Standard English from part 3:
AND use the format of a
play-script when you write
BOTH of you MUST have the
script in your book.
e.g. (From point 3)
Miss: So, (pause) once again Kieran you are a goatish,
idle-headed baggage for yet again having no reasonable excuse
for being late to my lesson. (Sighs sarcastically)
Kieran: What did you just
call me? (shocked) You can’t say that, you’re a teacher! (getting angry
now).
Miss: (staying calm,
just) When you are late THIS many times,
jolthead, (pause) I can pretty
much say what I like.
As with any teaching resource or idea, there is no need to use it verbatim. Use as much or as little as you need and adapt it to suit your teaching group and lesson objectives.
What next?
Now this will be dependent entirely on the nature of your group, their ability and the personality mix you have in the room with you.
Years ago I was fortunate enough to have a very able top set in Year 9, most of whom were also doing Performing Arts GCSE. They made their insults, devised their own ideas for an argument, wrote their scripts, rehearsed it many, many times and they performed their sketches in front of each other in the classroom. As an audience all were supportive, encouraging and polite. As performers they were confident, slick, and very, very funny.
During the lesson there was lots of laughter, huge rounds of applause and cheering and thanks to one cheeky so and so, an improvised Shakespeare insults argument between myself and the cheeky so an so. As Liam Gallagher nasally whined, 'You've got to roll with it' and so we did. We argued until the bell tolled for break, received a huge round of applause and off they went down the corridor...insulting each other Shakespeare's way as they pootled off to the feeding frenzy of the school canteen. I locked the classroom door totally elated.
It is always handy to kill two birds with one stone in our job, so should you wish to, you can also get a Speaking and Listening assessment from this. Bonus.
I have done this this year with my less able Year 9 group who began the year as the sort of group you lose sleep over and you notice new grey hairs and wrinkles every week. To say they were not keen dramatists would be an understatement (trying to find what they were keen on was tricky to say the least) but they all engaged with the insults, using them verbally in the lesson; all had a go at writing their insult sketches and some chose to perform to me in the classroom after school.
When it came to reading Macbeth with them, to my surprise, I had many volunteers to read. Shakespeare and his insults had helped us, teacher and class, turn a corner.
What's the point of it?
This is so simple it is almost absurd: you get rid of 'the fear' and you have given them a pleasant, perhaps even fun, or even better, funny experience of our chap from the Midlands. They find out for themselves that the language is versatile, funny and creative and they find that out about themselves too. As for the rude bits, well, there are PLENTY of those to choose from in most of his plays.
Where do we go next?
So we waltz into another potential minefield of, 'What the heck do we do now?' and 'How do I get them intrigued by the story?' educational bombs which are quite entitled to their very own blog posts. *Noted down carefully in shiny new academic diary*
