Shakespeare and the Common Core
An opportunity
to reboot
Common
Core
Shakespeare’s works should continue to be prevalent in American
secondary education, but teachers will have to improve their
instructional methods to reach 21st-century students.
By Laura Turchi and Ayanna Thompson
S
hakespeare is with us in the 21st century. The Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy strongly encourages teachers to use “seminal U.S. documents” and offers
38 fiction and nonfiction titles that the writers consider “illustrative texts” — but Shakespeare is
the only author specifically named as worth teaching.
The Common Core generally eschews mandating texts in favor of promoting critical analysis
and rigor. So it’s significant that Shakespeare is the only author invoked in imperatives. His explicit inclusion offers a significant opportunity for educators to rethink how we approach Shakespearean
instruction.
We’ve been studying the teaching of Shakespeare in secondary schools, and the Common Core almost
LAURA TURCHI ([email protected]) is an assistant professor of education at the University of Houston, Houston, Texas.
AYANNA THOMPSON ([email protected]) is a professor of English at George Washington University, Washington, D.C.
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If the Bard is universal, the ways we teach him
don’t have to be antique and predictable.
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never enters the discussion about teaching Shakespeare. In response to a survey of teachers, one respondent gushed that Shakespeare is good for almost
everything:
OMG, increases vocabulary, increases paraphrase
ability, increases student confidence about tackling
difficult material. Opens up universal themes, increases cultural appreciation. Allows students access
to material that challenges their reading/emotional
maturity/academic rigor. Too much more to specify!
Despite this teacher’s enthusiasm for Shakespeare
as the answer to every student’s needs, we aren’t arguing for a Shakespeare-centric curriculum. Rather,
like Stanislavsky, we believe less is more. One good
act of Shakespeare — read with purpose, spoken,
embodied, and made relevant — can be more rigorous and eventful for students than the entire canon
taught as something distant, ancient, and solidified.
Although Shakespeare’s works should continue to
be prevalent in American secondary education, typical instructional methods for Shakespeare are inadequate for the 21st century.
Students won’t meet Common Core goals if we continue simply
to require plot summaries, character reductions, and recited
platitudes about a given play’s universal themes.
Fundamentally, educators must ask themselves
what exactly coverage accomplishes for their students. If the educator’s primary goal is to expose students to a Shakespeare play with the plots, themes,
and characters enumerated, then typical approaches
are perfectly adequate — if excruciatingly dull. If,
however, the goal is to equip students with the tools
to understand, decode, and analyze complex texts
(as the Common Core advises), then these older
approaches are woefully inadequate. Thus, the first
step is for educators to have a frank conversation —
and perhaps a debate — about why Shakespeare is in
their curriculum. Based on this discussion, educators
can create more targeted and intentional frames for
using Shakespeare’s works in their classrooms.
Our fear is that educators will react by simply adding material to their already crammed curriculum;
in contrast, we hope educators will be inspired to
reboot their curriculum by starting over and paring
down. Students won’t meet Common Core goals if
teachers continue simply to require plot summaries,
character reductions, and recited platitudes about a
given play’s universal themes. Educators may hope
that the Common Core won’t threaten their well-es34
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tablished Shakespeare units, yet the Common Core’s
call for developing 21st century skills demands that
Shakespeare’s plays are not simply translated, “appreciated,” and reduced. Instead, an intentional
framing — with clearly articulated goals, outcomes,
and assessments — requires a re-examination of
these well-established units.
Questions over answers
Given the Common Core’s focus on increasing
academic demands for textual analysis and argumentative writing, teachers can challenge conventional practices of teaching Shakespeare. Under
the “Anchor Standards for Reading,” the Common
Core offers teachers an opportunity to reframe their
approach to Shakespeare. Students (not the teachers) are to “Determine central ideas or themes of a
text and analyze their development.” While many
ELA teachers believe the benefit of teaching Shakespeare resides in his treatment of universal themes,
the Common Core wants students to discover those
themes, not simply regurgitate them. If teachers
want to promote analysis and the use of textual evidence effectively, students need to hear less about an
“answer” and have more opportunities to ponder the
meaning of a play or passage.
Without careful framing and close reading of key
scenes, 14-year-olds aren’t convinced that “Romeo
and Juliet,” for example, is speaking to or about
them. Despite explicitly teaching the play’s prologue,
which summarizes the entire plot, the teacher we
observed began instruction of Act V with the comment, “we know they are all going to die,” and the
students protested loudly that this had spoiled the
ending for them. Students were so used to reading
passively that the play’s tragic ending took them by
surprise. If students read carefully selected excerpts,
and read again, and read aloud, and stand up and
attempt to envision not only a character but also
how that character moves in a scene, and what he
or she says, and why, they will have far more insight
and understanding than if they are passive listeners,
skimming through the story. Active reading begins
the process of giving students the responsibility for
making sense of the text.
If the Bard is universal, the ways we teach him
don’t have to be antique and predictable. Educators
should teach the plays through deliberate and focused explorations. We endorse performance-based
Shakespeare pedagogies, like those promoted by the
Royal Shakespeare Company and the Folger Shakespeare Library, but they’re not employed widely. We
hope that such embodied approaches, coupled with
consistent demands that students engage in the kinds
of tasks described in the Common Core, will lead
to meaningfully different 21st-century classrooms.
Tennis balls, my liege
What might a Common Core-based focus or frame for Shakespeare look like in a secondary classroom? Fundamentally, it is one
where teachers suggest themes to be explored, rather than announcing topics that will be “proven.”
Act I, Scene 2 of “Henry V” offers close reading opportunities. The new King of England receives an emissary from France. Shakespeare portrayed Henry V in his early days as a wild youth in the Henry IV plays. The question raised by this scene is: Will Henry
V now be a good king? In this lesson, students think critically about the selected text through enacting the scene, examining the
extended metaphor, and considering a thematic frame of maturity and authority.
Here is a suggested sequence:
1. An opening freewrite provides a foundation for the ideas: “Write about a time in your
life when your maturity was being tested.”
2. A “metaphor machine” activity asks each student to create and portray a brief action depicting maturity through simile or analogy.
3. The teacher sets the scene. A new king receives a gift
from another king (a cousin): The ambassador calls
it a treasure, but it is a box of tennis balls. It is a
test in front of all the powerful people of his new
realm. Will Henry treat the tennis balls as a joke
or an insult?
4. Students listen to an audio recording of the
scene and in small groups use a tennis ball
to create a tableau to embody the moment.
5. Students use the text as a script, and, remembering the ways that they portrayed maturity earlier, indicate how they would direct
the scene. Where are these men? Are there
women in this scene? Would Henry stand?
What does Henry look at? What does he touch
or point to? With whom might he make eye contact? If Henry were a woman, and thus a new
Queen, how might the scene change? What does
it mean to “act mature”?
Shakespeare was, after all, a playwright, and his texts
are scripts, not scripture.
6. Because visual literacy matters, students should now observe at least two short clips from productions. Compare the
student interpretations (in #5) with the professional productions. Where are they similar, different, and what does that tell you
about the different interpretations of Henry’s kingship?
7. Concluding questions: What do we know about Henry V? What type of king will he be? What evidence are you using to prove
your argument?
There are potential extensions beyond this activity that could include the extended metaphors in Shakespeare sonnets or, more
thematically, contemporary portrayals of men and women assuming power.
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Because of the emphasis on digital literacy in the
Common Core, students should be accessing and
analyzing what is available on film and the Internet
(including Shakespearean movies directed by Baz
Luhrmann and Franco Zeffirelli) and participating
in dialogues about — and creating their own — performances, interpretations, and adaptations.
The Folger Library’s Shakespeare Set Free includes multiple activities and discussion prompts for
finding nuanced meanings in particular scenes and
then suggests open-book assignments that focus on
decoding vocabulary in the context of the play. A
student who can successfully deconstruct individual
lines after extended engagement with them will have
a richer understanding of the play and will have reinforced the importance of context clues. Furthermore, active Shakespeare pedagogy has students
enact Capulet family dynamics (e.g. the fight about
Juliet’s proposed marriage in Act III, Scene 5). A
teacher can use the debate between Juliet and her
Active reading begins the process of giving students the
responsibility for making sense of the text.
parents as an entry point to the drama of the text itself
and into the real lives of the students, but framing
is everything. A teacher who rushes to universalize
the play, for example by noting that Juliet doesn’t get
along with her parents either, glosses over historical
and contextual evidence that students could tease out
about Renaissance families, gender roles, parental
authority, class dynamics, and more.
The Common Core provides ample justification to promote student analysis and engagement
— ideally through performances — of Shakespeare’s
plays over passive translation and explanation and
that too-easy claim of universality. Teachers should
not feel beholden to treat Shakespeare’s words and
speeches as if they are sacred and unimpeachable. For
example, countless adolescents are told that Mercutio’s Queen Mab speech in “Romeo and Juliet” (Act
I, Scene IV), is famous and reveals Mercutio’s wit.
While Mercutio’s rhetorical flourishes are witty, the
Queen Mab speech is also an excellent example of
rhetorical diarrhea: Mercutio runs at the mouth in
a seemingly uncontrollable way. Educators should
encourage and enable students to approach that text
with a critical eye. In other words, the Queen Mab
speech provides an opportunity to be critical of the
work, to wonder about the purpose of the speech,
the intention of the speaker, and his role in the play.
Aesthetically, the Queen Mab speech is beautiful, and, like the sonnets, which many teachers teach
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well, is rich in the figurative language and meaning
that we want students to analyze, understand and
appreciate. But frames for teaching Shakespeare that
are bounded by an expectation of understanding every word and allusion and rationalized by a claim
of universal significance are destined to fail because
they imply there is one set of correct answers. The
teacher we observed created an extensive worksheet
that forced students to regurgitate “answers” about
the play, including “Who is Queen Mab? What
purpose does she serve in Mercutio’s monologue?”
The worksheet format itself reinforces the idea that
there is one clear and correct answer to the question.
Shakespeare was, after all, a playwright, and his texts
are scripts, not scripture, despite the heft of the typical survey-course textbook.
Instead, teachers should enable students to explore textual ambiguities, and they should present
the exploration process as the desired outcome, instead of a canned answer that must be repeated on
a test or a worksheet. The teacher should identify
key passages, dialogues, or scenes, which are rich
in complexity beyond the vocabulary and plot, but
should not frame the discussion through a translation of plots or themes. All too often in the rush for
coverage — one teacher we observed repeatedly said
to the students “we have to get through this” — there
is too much teacher talk providing translation and
explanation. There is not enough opportunity for
students to wrestle, grapple, analyze, and, therefore,
own interpretations of the text.
As 300+ years of Shakespeare scholarship reveals,
there is no single answer to any Shakespeare play;
there are always competing readings, divergent
opinions, and contested evidence. Thus, we aren’t
advocating for any particular answer, reading, or
ideology. Instead, educators should teach the plays
through deliberate and focused explorations (instead
of answers). Perhaps an educator of 3rd graders will
aim to create Shakespeare enthusiasts — students
who aren’t afraid of Shakespeare and who will look
to his plays for pleasure. Perhaps for the 12th-grade
AP, the teacher’s one goal will be to create students
who find pleasure in wrangling a complex text —
students who may not necessarily be enthusiastic
about Shakespeare but who enjoy working through
a difficult (and perhaps distant) text. By privileging
Shakespeare in the U.S. curriculum, the Common
Core has created space for both and raised the expectation that more students can and should work
with and through Shakespeare. For us, the Common Core is empowering educators to throw out
the study guides that try to be all encompassing and
to replace them with evocative questions based on
limited performances, selected scenes, and competing interpretations.K
One good act of Shakespeare — read with a purpose,
spoken, embodied, and made relevant — can be
rigorous and eventful for students.
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