Kremer and Sanders |Nick
Shakespeare
3D: Bringing
Bard toSanders
Life through New (Old) Media
Kremerin and
Harlowthe
Stewart
page
Shakespeare in 3D:
Bringing the Bard to Life through
New (Old) Media
I
n a world of YouTube, why Shakespeare? Sure, he is as “canon” as
they come, but with an endless array
of multimedia available to readers today,
the Bard’s work is bound to feel more
two-dimensional than timeless . . . right?
In middle school classrooms where every
text students encounter may be the difference between a life of literacy and a lack
thereof, why risk the flowery verse of a
long-dead Brit?
Instead of teaching A Midsummer Night’s Dream
this year, what if you substituted Christopher
Nolan’s contemporary dream narrative, Inception (Brigham, Tull, & Nolan, 2010)? But rather
than view the acclaimed film, you hand students
a copy of its 146-page screenplay and require
them to spend the next four weeks cold-reading
the script, stopping every few lines to check for
comprehension. Imagine the results. Students
who saw the film in theaters seem enthusiastic,
but those who didn’t soon despise the endeavor.
They have a hard time following the dreamwithin-a-dream plot sequences laid out in stage
directions instead of colorful, contrasting sets.
They don’t feel the suspense in action scenes
normally accompanied by a full orchestral score.
They miss the humor in lines read awkwardly by
classmates instead of professional actors. And the
film’s award-winning special effects pass unnoticed when they are mere footnotes on a page.
Source material isn’t the problem. Just as
Nolan’s screenplay for Inception was never in-
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tended for an audience of anyone other than
moviemakers, Shakespeare didn’t write scripts so
much as he wrote plays—live productions to be
acted out in front of audiences with costumes and
sets, music and make-up, intonations and accents.
A script-only approach to the Bard deprives students of the myriad visual, auditory, and performative elements that make his plays so enduring.
As two veteran language arts teachers, we
certainly have made these same mistakes. But
over time, we have witnessed how multimodal
approaches can be used to breathe new life into
Shakespeare’s timeless texts. We have found that
the Bard can engage our students in uniquely
powerful ways, so the remainder of this article
will discuss best practices that have emerged
from our action research, engaging “new” literacies with these “old” texts.
Kremer’s Multimodal Approach
to Romeo and Juliet
The sound of subwoofers greets my students as
they enter the classroom, a ritual they’ve come
to expect since we started Romeo and Juliet a
week ago. Today’s particular flavor is an R&B
rap by Poetry N’ Motion, though our “theater”
has already featured a playlist as diverse as Dire
Straights (rock), Taylor Swift (country), the Reflections (oldies), and Toybox (techno), with
many more musical genres to come (see Appendix A).
I don’t give my students time to complain
about the Bard; instead, I bombard them with
his persistent legacy—in this case, modern music making allusions to his work. In fact, I preempt cynicism from the very beginning of the
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unit, launching a series of engaging, studentcreated YouTube videos of the show’s Prologue
(see Kwanjan 12, 2009; Polizardeyelash, 2009;
TheRadnessQueen,
The goal is more than just
2010) before I’ve even
to hook my audience: it is to announced we’re starting the play. The goal
provide an intertextual apis more than just to
proach to literacy whereby hook my audience: it is
to provide an intertexmy students can improve
tual approach to literacy
their comprehension of whereby my students
can improve their comShakespeare’s narratives by
prehension of Shakecoming to understand them speare’s narratives by
coming to understand
in the context of other,
them in the context of
more familiar texts. other, more familiar
texts (Scolnicov, 1995).
This pedagogy of intertextuality continues in
individual journaling, occurring immediately after the last rap beat fades away. Today’s prompt
asks students to engage in “soundtracking”—devising a list of songs that correspond with the
themes and moods of the scenes studied thus far.
Other entries will include formulating a cast list
of contemporary actors, imagining alternative
settings to Renaissance Verona, and reflecting
upon ways that love between two people is still
sometimes forbidden in society. All daily writing
builds toward the unit’s culminating project: the
Director’s Seat, an invitation for students to take
a scene from the play and “make it their own”
through radical adaptation. Some of the most
interesting submissions over the years have included a satirical puppet show of “Lil Romeo
and Jules” (see Appendix B), a machinima production of warring space factions (from HALO
video game footage), and a documentary-style
film of a doomed Jewish–Palestinian love in the
Middle East. Assessing students through performance—as opposed to their recall of obscure plot
details—provides a more authentic indication of
textual mastery and requires an enhanced level of
engagement (Gilbert, 1984).
Of course, before students can effectively
take the director’s seat, they must experience the
play. Unfortunately, the preferred text, a professional live performance of Romeo and Juliet, is
rarely on hand when needed. As a practical alternative, my students watch a filmed stage version,
a little-known 1982 production featuring Alex
Hyde-White and Blanche Baker. Just as with
print literature, though, we frequently pause the
action to allow for class discussion and comprehension checks. We also occasionally watch multiple versions of the same scene from different
productions to emphasize the power a director
wields in the meaning-making process.
“Watch” is an important verb here. While
giving students an opportunity to visualize their
own conceptions of a narrative is productive,
Shakespeare never expected his audiences to do
that work for themselves. Case in point: They
fight. Epic duels (and other acts of physicality)
that normally take several minutes on stage are
reduced to anticlimactic footnotes in scripts. But
by providing a visual context alongside the language, drama can be restored to They kiss and
She dies. Furthermore, the information contained
in visual texts—sets, costumes, props, character
expressions/posturing—provide readers with an
additional “silent” language by which to make
meaning (Stern, 2007). Susan Spangler writes in
a recent edition of English Journal (2009), “This
method of engaging with Shakespeare’s texts
teaches multimodal literacy skills and critical
thinking skills that the traditional methods cannot” (p. 130).
For similar reasons, I give my students a
graphic novel version of the play rather than
just a script. There are two good options available—one with manga-style art and modernized
language published by No Fear Shakespeare
(SparkNotes Editors, 2008), and one classic adaptation with original language by John McDonald
(2009). Research has shown that the visual nature
of graphic novels significantly improves comprehension in language learners (Cary, 2004),
and Elizabethan English is very much a second
language to most students. Graphic novels also
help retain reluctant readers (Smith & Wilhelm,
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2002) and increase both functional literacy skills
(Jacobs, 2007) and multimodal understanding
(Schwarz, 2006). Dr. James Bucky Carter (2007)
writes that the more graphic novels and other
visual texts are used in the classroom, “. . . the
more transformed English will become, moving
away from ‘one-size-fits-all’ literacy instruction”
(p. 52). Shakespeare would have it no other way.
Sanders’s Multimodal Approach
to Hamlet
Sackbuts (a trombone from the Renaissance and
Baroque eras), rather than subwoofers, greet
my students on day one of our Hamlet unit,
but they’re not shocked by the antique music.
Shakespeare’s plays are filled with cues for music, though no scores survive. Fortunately, other
written compositions by 16th- and 17th-century
English composers do survive, so we know what
Elizabethan music sounded like (see Appendix
C). My students get an authentic, aural taste of
the Bard’s world just by walking into the room.
And should any of them express an interest in
playing some of this sublimely modal repertoire,
I “book” them for a future date, sheet music be-
ing readily available online (e.g., http://early
musichicago.org/sheet_music_scores.htm).
As the bell rings, I fade the volume and ask
my students if any of them believe in ghosts. Almost every hand goes up. Personal anecdotes ensue, after which I offer an oral synopsis of Act
1, Scene 1. Then, without further ado, I play an
audio recording of the scene. We are rapt as we
listen to the 10½-minute excerpt featuring the
voices of Kenneth Branagh and company.
The actors exit the imagined stage, and I
ask my students if they understood the dialogue.
Somewhat surprised, they insist they did; nevertheless, I probe. Sure enough, the stuff about
Fortinbras’s “resolutes” is a bit murky, but that’s
to be expected, regardless of our approach.
Feigning confusion, I ask the class why Shakespeare has been difficult for them in the past. Almost in chorus comes an agonized, “It’s that Old
English!”
Shakespeare’s Early Modern English (EME)
can be difficult even for educated adults. To minimize the intimidation in our Hamlet study, I’ve
prepared a PowerPoint of the first dozen lines
of Beowulf (c. AD 750): “hwæt, we gar-dena in
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connections from readwritethink
Bridging the Gap between the Bard and the Digital Age
The authors shared how they brought new life to the studies of Shakespeare in their classrooms. ReadWriteThink.org has
some additional examples. In the lesson plan “All’s Well That Sells Well: A Creative Introduction to Shakespeare,”
students compare attending a performance at The Globe Theater with attending a modern theater production or movie.
They then create a commercial for an Elizabethan audience promoting a modern product.
http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/well-that-sells-well-1120.html
Explore the modern significance of an older text, such as Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, in the lesson plan “StarCrossed Lovers Online: Romeo and Juliet for a Digital Age” by asking students to create their own modern interpretation of specific events from the drama.
http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/star-crossed-lovers-online-857.html
After reading Shakespeare’s Hamlet, students identify, analyze, and explain how elements in Botticelli’s painting Birth of
Venus and examples from the play illustrate the philosophy of Renaissance Humanism in the lesson plan “Renaissance
Humanism in Hamlet and The Birth of Venus.”
http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/renaissance-humanism-hamlet-birth-297.html
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geardagum . . . .” This, I tell my students, is Old
English. They’re incredulous, so I call up a modern scop (an Old English minstrel) performing
the epic on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=Y13cES7MMd8). Slowly, they begin
to recognize a word here and there.
Next, I show them the opening to Chaucer’s
“General Prologue” (c. 1400), announcing it as
Middle English: “Whan that aprill with his shoures
soote . . . .” As I read it aloud, more of the text begins to seem familiar. (Alternatively, use http://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=QE0MtENfOMU.)
Then I show them the
When teachers tap into the first 12 lines of Hamlet’s
famous soliloquy: “To be,
vast multimedia resources
or not to be, that is the
available to them, Shake- question . . . .” Suddenly,
the Bard’s EME looks
speare will come to life in
shockingly normal.
With apprehensions
their classrooms, and will
abated and imaginations
prove—in three powerful
enlivened, we are now
dimensions—why his work prepared to read the text
aloud, continuing the
has stood the test of time.
ghost story in Scenes 4
and 5 (skipping Scenes 2
and 3 temporarily). And as our post-reading discussion attests, they understand it. But to take
this budding “old” literacy a step further, I hand
them a fresh copy of a 30-line excerpt (see Appendix D) from the Ghost’s account of his “murder most foul” and ask students to “translate” it,
with a partner, into the English they speak. My
unabridged Merriam smolders the next morning
as volunteers present their versions to the class.
Here’s an example from two students who relished sharing their new vocabulary:
Yeah, that sister-marryin’, wife-taking beast,
With witchcraft and cleverness, with his skill of
betraying—
Oh, wicked cleverness and gifts. He has the power
to persuade her
To be his lover!
Realizing now that Shakespeare’s every syllable is charged with matter, my students can
take the leap of faith, trusting the Poet to make
meaning well worth their pains.
We’re far from finished, however.
The students’ next challenge is to apply the
visual composition techniques they learned in an
earlier graphic novels unit and storyboard the
passage they’ve paraphrased (see Appendix E).
The process of creating graphic images from a
verbal text organizes students’ thinking. It taps
into their working memory and refines it as it incorporates the new information (Woolley, 2010;
Van Meter, Aleksic, Schwartz, & Garner, 2006).
In short, students’ comprehension of the verbal
text is significantly improved. Additionally, storyboarding flexes the imagination of the artist
and the viewer, both of whom must supply closure to “fill in the gaps” between frames of the
narrative (McCloud, 1994). Using their paraphrased texts in their storyboards extends the
remix of literacies even further, as students must
assimilate Shakespeare’s verse in greater depth to
“translate” it into their 21st-century vernacular
(Kletzien, 2009; Meijer, Veenman, & van HoutWolters, 2006; Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995). But
the ultimate medium for students’ exploration of
the text is still a verbatim performance.
Edward Rocklin (2009) lays out a near-comprehensive method by which teachers can sensitize their students to the subtle textual details so
crucial to a successful Shakespearean realization.
Why does Barnardo ask, “Who’s there?” What
would be his state of mind, and tone of voice, as
he asks? My students’ intertextual approach—
hearing, reading, paraphrasing, and drawing
the text before performing it—leads them to
discover many of these critical details on their
own (Bruner, 1977; Dewey, 1910; Piaget, 1952).
But as Rocklin (1999) points out, Shakespeare
wrote in two languages: that of the script, with
its speeches and stage directions; and that of the
stage, whose medium is the actor (p. 50). Shakespeare wrote plays.
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Conclusion
Literacy today cannot be exclusively defined by
print media anymore than it could be in Shakespeare’s lifetime. The Bard incorporated a wide
range of visual, auditory, and performative modes
of expression; to strip him, and our students, of
these important means of communication does a
disservice to all involved. When teachers tap into
the vast multimedia resources available to them,
Shakespeare will come to life in their classrooms,
and will prove—in three powerful dimensions—
why his work has stood the test of time. Avatar,
eat your heart out.
References
Brigham, C., Tull, T. (Producers), & Nolan, C. (Director). (2010). Inception [Motion picture]. United
States: Warner Bros. Pictures.
Bruner, J. S. (1977). The process of education. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Carter, J. B. (2007). Transforming English with graphic
novels: Moving towards our Optimus Prime. English Journal, 97(2), 49–53.
Cary, S. (2004). Going graphic: Comics at work in the
multilingual classroom. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Dewey, J. (1910). How we think. Boston, MA: D. C.
Heath.
Gilbert, M. (1984). Teaching Shakespeare through
performance. Shakespeare Quarterly, 35, 601–608.
Jacobs, D. (2007). More than words: Comics as a
means of teaching multiple literacies. English
Journal, 96(3), 19–25.
Kletzien, S. B. (2009). Paraphrasing: An effective
comprehension strategy. The Reading Teacher, 63,
73–77. doi: 10.1598/RT.63.1.7
Kwanjan12 (Poster). (2009, April 16). William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet animated [Video].
Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=kV8kIUd5x
McCloud, S. (1994). Understanding comics. New York,
NY: Harper.
McDonald, J. (2009). Romeo and Juliet: The graphic
novel. Litchborough, UK: Classical Comics Ltd.
Meijer, J., Veenman, M. V. J., & van Hout-Wolters, B.
H. A. M. (2006). Metacognitive activities in textstudying and problem-solving: Development of a
taxonomy. Educational Research and Evaluation,
12, 209–237. doi: 10.1080/13803610500479991
61
Piaget, J. (1952). The origins of intelligence in children
(M. Cook, Trans.). New York, NY: International
Universities Press.
Polizardeyelash (Poster). (2009, May 5). Romeo and
Juliet prologue [Video]. Retrieved from
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__F9yYl
-vCE&feature=related.
Pressley, M., & Afflerbach, P. (1995). Verbal protocols of
reading: The nature of constructively responsive reading. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Rocklin, E. L. (1999). Performance is more than an
“approach” to Shakespeare. In M. C. Riggio (Ed.),
Teaching Shakespeare through performance (pp.
48–62). New York, NY: MLA.
Rocklin, E. L. (2009, September). “Stand and unfold
yourself”: New moves for exploring Hamlet. English
Journal, 99(1), 79–84.
Schwarz, G. (2006). Expanding literacies through
graphic novels. English Journal, 95(6), 58–63.
Scolnicov, H. (1995). An intertextual approach to
teaching Shakespeare. Shakespeare Quarterly, 46,
210–219.
Smith, M., & Wilhelm, J. (2002). “Reading don’t fix no
Chevys”: Literacy in the lives of young men. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Spangler, S. (2009). Stop reading Shakespeare! English
Journal, 99(1), 130–132.
SparkNotes Editors. (2008). Romeo and Juliet: No
fear Shakespeare graphic novels. New York, NY:
SparkNotes.
Stern, T. (2007). Watching as reading: The audience
and written text in Shakespeare’s playhouse. In L.
Maguire (Ed.), How to do things with Shakespeare:
New approaches, new essays (pp. 136–159). Oxford:
Wiley-Blackwell.
TheRadnessQueen (Poster). (2010, March 08). Romeo
and Juliet prologue act one [Video]. Retrieved
from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
C---Kx70l_o.
Van Meter, P., Aleksic, M., Schwartz, A., & Garner, J.
(2006). Learner-generated drawing as a strategy for
learning from content area text. Contemporary
Educational Psychology, 31, 142–166. doi:
10.1016/j.cedpsych.2005.04.001
Woolley, G. (2010). Developing reading comprehension: Combing visual and verbal cognitive processes. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy,
33, 108–125.
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Appendix A. Allusions to Romeo and Juliet in contemporary music
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
The Killers/Dire Straits—“Romeo and Juliet” (Rock)
Taylor Swift—“Love Story” (Country)
Poetry N’ Motion—“Romeo and Juliet” (R&B/Rap)
Toybox—“Romeo and Juliet” (Techno)
Drop Dead Gorgeous—“Love Is Murder” (Punk)
Blue Oyster Cult—“Don’t Fear the Reaper” (Classic Rock)
The Reflections—“Just Like Romeo and Juliet” (Oldies)
West Side Story—“Tonight” (Musical Theatre)
Appendix B. Excerpt from “Lil Romeo and Jules” script
Lil Romeo: Cuz, why you gotta be all up in my Kool-Aid? You ain’t gonna figure out my flavuh.
[A beat while Benvolio talks back]
Lil Romeo: Fine, you wanna know what’s eatin’ me? It’s my girl, Roz. I can’t get no lovin’ from her. She
treatin’ me like I got the plague.
[A beat while Benvolio talks back]
LNick Kremer and Harlow Sandersgvb
[Enter Jules, in full bling]
Lil Romeo: DANG……………….!!!
[Jules stands admiring herself in a mirror, oblivious to Lil Romeo’s presence]
Lil Holmes: [hanging up the phone] Holmes, I’ll hit you later.
Jules: [aside] Romeo, Romeo, where you be, Romeo?
Lil Romeo: [jumping forward] I be right here, girl!
Jules: Who are you, playuh?
Lil Romeo: Your new boyfriend. Do you believe in love at first sight, or should I walk by again?
Appendix C. Audio recordings of Elizabethan music
Terpsichore: Renaissance and Early Baroque Dance
Music. This is a wonderful CD! Performer: Konrad
Ragossnig. Composers: J. Besard, F. Caroso, P. F.
Caroubel, J. Dowland, C. Gervaise, et al. Label:
Archiv. ASIN: B0000057CM.
Byrd: Consort and Keyboard Music; Songs and Anthems. Performers: Red Byrd, Rose Consort
of Viols, Timothy Roberts, Tessa Bonner, Ian
Honeyman, et al. Composer: William Byrd. Label:
Naxos. ASIN B0000013UP.
Dowland: Consort Music and Songs. Performer:
Rose Consort of Viols. Composer: John Dowland.
Label: Naxos. ASIN B0000014DF.
Elizabethan Songs and Consort Music. Performer:
Rose Consort of Viols, with Catherine King,
Mezzo-soprano. Composers: William Mundy,
Richard Farrant, Robert Parsons, Anonymous,
John Taverner, et al. Label: Naxos. ASIN
B00003Q40F.
The Glory of Early Music. Performers: Unicorn
Ensemble, Ensemble Villanella, Shirley Rumsey,
Joseph Payne, et al. Composers: Anonymous,
Turkish Traditional, Macedonian Traditional,
French Traditional, Italian Anonymous, et al.
Label: Naxos. ASIN B0000014GL.
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Appendix D. Excerpt for paraphrase assignment
Hamlet
Act 1, scene 5: The platform, Elsinore Castle
GHOST
‘Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard1,
A serpent stung me. So the whole ear of Denmark
Is by a forgèd process of my death
Rankly abused. But know, thou noble youth,
45
The serpent that did sting thy father’s life
Now wears his crown.
HAMLET
O, my prophetic soul! My uncle!
GHOST
Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,
With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts— 50
O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power
So to seduce!—won to his shameful lust
The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen.
.....................................
But soft2, methinks I scent the morning air.
Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard,
My custom always of the afternoon,
Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,
With juice of cursèd hebona3 in a vial,
And in the porches of my ears did pour
The leprous distilment, whose effect
Holds such an enmity with blood of man
That swift as quicksilver it courses through
The natural gates and alleys of the body,
And with a sudden vigor it doth posset
And curd, like eager droppings into milk,
The thin and wholesome blood. So did it mine,
And a most instant tetter barked about,
Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust
All my smooth body.
Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother’s hand
Of life, of crown, of queen at once dispatched[.]
65
70
75
80
orchard: palace garden
soft: “enough,” or “wait a minute”
3.
hebona: a poison
1.
2.
Appendix E. Storyboarding
Student storyboarding and paraphrasing example from Hamlet:
Online resources for storyboarding:
http://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/storyboarding.html
http://accad.osu.edu/womenandtech/Storyboard%20Resource/
http://multimedia.journalism.berkeley.edu/tutorials/starttofinish/storyboarding/
Nick Kremer is a doctoral student in English Education at the University of Missouri, Columbia,
and the coordinator for language arts and social studies K–12 for the Columbia Public School District. Harlow Stewart Sanders is a former professional drummer—with acts as disparate as Blood,
Sweat & Tears and the Lawrence Welk Show—a former 9–12 English teacher, and currently a 4thyear doctoral student in English Education at the University of Missouri, Columbia.
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