Question of the Week
One question that kept coming up in the Shakespeare in American Education conference was “Why Shakespeare?”. Why does this one author out of all of the other authors deserve such a place in the canon? Why spend valuable instruction time in school working on Shakespeare? Is Shakespeare useful in teaching other subjects, or is Shakespeare a topic worth studying in its own right?
Can the answer be agreed upon in the same way as “Why arithmetic?” or “Why writing?” pretty much can be? Or is the answer to “Why Shakespeare?” too ineffable to be codified in that way. Can there ever really be an answer? And if there can’t, how can we justify teaching it?
Of course, all of this begs the question, and you may choose instead to answer in the negative. Is Shakespeare’s popularity a result of a social and political construction, and not based on the merit of the work? Is there some grain of truth to the high school student’s suspicion that it’s all just a scam? Is there a more deserving candidate, or is the elevation of a single individual counter-productive to the idea of a canon?
Nevertheless, I ask you…
Why Shakespeare?
March 20th, 2007 at 3:15 pm
Must we. Okay fine. How’s this?
Shakespeare is widely considered the world’s pre-eminent dramatist. He’s certainly the pre-eminent dramatist in the English language. This cannot be argued. He’s also the most performed. Shakespeare’s works have been translated into every major living language and his plays are continually performed all around the world. In addition, Shakespeare is the most quoted writer in English speaking world and many phrases we take for granted find their source in his work. All that is apparent and irrefutable. Here’s more:
To exclude him from any study of the arts is obviously unthinkable. He’s the pre-eminent influence and innovator in English speaking theatre. His works have influenced not only all subsequent dramatic works, but television, vaudeville, radio plays, and cinema as well. And considering that so many of his works contained standard and borrowed plots (albeit brilliantly executed), he’s worthy of study as a study of the evolution (if not the pinnacle) of theatrical plots in the Renaissance. Plus he covers a gamut of genres: dramas, comedies, romances, histories and was arguably the inventor of tragicomedy (which my theatre history teacher said didn’t exist really until the 20th century but is easily present to at least some regard in the Bard’s “problem plays.”)
PLUS, he is of the rarest order – the most consistently acclaimed and yet POPULAR artist. There are few of his like – Hitchcock and the Beatles are perhaps are only real 20th Century examples. Studying the economics of the arts must include him for this reason as well.
To exclude him from any study of English literature is unthinkable. You wouldn’t exclude Moliere from French literature and he in no way had the impact of WS. Nor would you exclude Keats, Yeats, or any other English poet from English literature. If he’d only written the sonnets, that would have been enough to warrant his special inclusion in an educational curriculum.
Indeed to exclude Shakespeare from any study of English history is unthinkable as his works (the histories, duh) are the best (and most entertaining!) examples we have of how revisionist and contextual histories work as the plays are so pro-Tudor and so pro-Elizabeth (esp. the end of Henry VIII which is just so transparently silly with it’s praise of a daughter that Henry VIII was ungrateful for.)
And if that’s not enough – to exclude him from any study of “English as a Language” is unthinkable. “It is widely assumed that Shakespeare himself introduced more words into English than all the other writers of his time combined.” (from Wikipedia) And his plays and sonnets are such a vast resource, that even if he didn’t actually invent these words – he is our first printed source of them (hold on to your hats – the list is soooooooo long it should end the debate once and for all):
Academe
accessible
accommodation
addiction (Shakespeare meant “tendency”)
admirable
aerial (Shakespeare meant “of the air”)
airless
amazement
anchovy
arch-villain
to arouse
assassination
auspicious
bachelorship (“bachelorhood”)
to barber
barefaced
baseless
batty (Shakespeare meant “bat-like”)
beachy (“beach-covered”)
to bedabble
to bedazzle
bedroom (Shakespeare meant “room in bed”)
to belly (“to swell”)
belongings
to besmirch
to bet
to bethump
birthplace
black-faced
to blanket
bloodstained
bloodsucking
blusterer
bodikins (“little bodies”)
bold-faced
braggartism
brisky
broomstaff (“broom-handle”)
budger (“one who budges”)
bump (as a noun)
buzzer (Shakespeare meant “tattle-tale”)
to cake
candle holder
to canopy
to cater (as “to bring food”)
to castigate
catlike
to champion
characterless
cheap (in pejorative sense of “vulgar”)
chimney-top
chopped (Shakespeare meant “chapped”)
churchlike
circumstantial
clutch
cold-blooded
coldhearted
colourful
compact (as noun “agreement”)
to comply
to compromise (Shakespeare meant “to agree”)
consanguineous (related by blood)
control (as a noun)
coppernose (“a kind of acne”)
countless
courtship
to cow (as “intimidate”)
critical
cruelhearted
to cudgel
Dalmatian
to dapple
dauntless
dawn (as a noun)
day’s work
deaths-head
defeat (the noun)
to denote
depositary (as “trustee”)
dewdrop
dexterously (Shakespeare spelled it “dexteriously”)
disgraceful (Shakespeare meant “unbecoming”)
to dishearten
to dislocate
distasteful (Shakespeare meant “showing disgust”)
distrustful
dog-weary
doit (a Dutch coin: “a pittance”)
domineering
downstairs
East Indies
to educate
to elbow
embrace (as a noun)
employer
employment
enfranchisement
engagement
to enmesh
enrapt
to enthrone
epileptic
equivocal
eventful
excitement (Shakespeare meant “incitement”)
expedience
expertness
exposure
eyeball
eyedrop (Shakespeare meant as a “tear”)
eyewink
face (meaning the dial of a clock)
fair-faced
fairyland
fanged
fap (“intoxicated”)
farmhouse
far-off
fashionable
fashionmonger
fathomless (Shakespeare meant “too huge to be encircled by one’s arms”)
fat-witted
featureless (Shakespeare meant “ugly”)
fiendlike
to fishify (“turn into fish”)
fitful
fixture (Shakespeare meant “fixing” or setting “firmly in place”)
fleshment (“the excitement of first success”)
flirt-gill (a “floozy”)
flowery (“full of florid expressions”)
fly-bitten
footfall
foppish
foregone
fortune-teller
foul mouthed
Franciscan
freezing (as an adjective)
fretful
frugal
full-grown
fullhearted
futurity
gallantry (Shakespeare meant “gallant people”)
garden house
generous (Shakespeare meant “gentle,” “noble”)
gentlefolk
glow (as a noun)
to glutton
to gnarl
go-between
to gossip (Shakespeare meant “to make oneself at home like a gossip – that is, a kindred spirit or a fast friend”)
grass plot
gravel-blind
gray-eyed
green-eyed
grief-shot (as “sorrow-stricken”)
grime (as a noun)
to grovel
gust (as a “wind-blast”)
half-blooded
to happy (“to gladden”)
heartsore
hedge-pig
hell-born
to hinge
hint (as a noun)
hobnail (as a noun)
homely (sense “ugly”)
honey-tongued
hornbook (an “alphabet tablet”)
hostile
hot-blooded
howl (as a noun)
to humor
hunchbacked
hurly (as a “commotion”)
to hurry
idle-headed
ill-tempered
ill-used
impartial
to impede
imploratory (“solicitor”)
import (the noun: “importance” or “significance”)
inaudible
inauspicious
incarnadine (verb: “to make red with blood”; used in Macbeth)
indirection
indistinguishable
inducement
informal (Shakespeare meant “unformed” or “irresolute”)
to inhearse (to “load into a hearse”)
to inlay
to instate (Shakespeare, who spelled it “enstate,” meant “to endow”)
inventorially (“in detail”)
investment (Shakespeare meant as “a piece of clothing”)
invitation
invulnerable
jaded (Shakespeare seems to have meant “contemptible”)
juiced (“juicy”)
keech (“solidified fat”)
kickie-wickie (a derogatory term for a wife)
kitchen-wench
lackluster
ladybird
lament
land-rat
to lapse
laughable
leaky
leapfrog
lewdster
loggerhead (Shakespeare meant “blockhead”)
lonely (Shakespeare meant “lone”)
long-legged
love letter
lustihood
lustrous
madcap
madwoman
majestic
malignancy (Shakespeare meant “malign tendency”)
manager
marketable
marriage bed
militarist (Shakespeare meant “soldier”)
mimic (as a noun)
misgiving (sense “uneasiness”)
misquote
mockable (as “deserving ridicule”)
money’s worth (“money-worth” dates from the 14th century)
monumental
moonbeam
mortifying (as an adjective)
motionless
mountaineer (Shakespeare meant as “mountain-dweller”)
to muddy
neglect (as a noun)
to negotiate
never-ending
newsmonger
nimble-footed
noiseless
nook-shotten (“full of corners or angles”)
to numb
obscene (Shakespeare meant “revolting”)
ode
to offcap (to “doff one’s cap”)
offenseful (meaning “sinful”)
offenseless (“unoffending”)
Olympian (Shakespeare meant “Olympic”)
to operate
oppugnancy (“antagonism”)
outbreak
to outdare
to outfrown
to out-Herod
to outscold
to outsell (Shakespeare meant “to exceed in value”)
to out-talk
to out-villain
to outweigh
overblown (Shakespeare meant “blown over”)
overcredulous
overgrowth
to overpay
to overpower
to overrate
overview (Shakespeare meant as “supervision”)
pageantry
to palate (Shakespeare meant “to relish”)
pale-faced
to pander
passado (a kind of sword-thrust)
paternal
pebbled
pedant (Shakespeare meant a schoolmaster)
pedantical
pendulous (Shakespeare meant “hanging over”)
to perplex
to petition
pignut (a type of tuber)
pious
please-man (a “yes-man”)
plumpy (“plump”)
posture (Shakespeare seems to have meant “position” or “positioning”)
prayerbook
priceless
profitless
Promethean
protester (Shakespeare meant “one who affirms”)
published (Shakespeare meant “commonly recognized”)
to puke
puppy-dog
pushpin (Shakespeare was referring to a children’s game)
on purpose
quarrelsome
in question (as in “the ___ in question”)
radiance
to rant
rascally
rawboned (meaning “very gaunt”)
reclusive
refractory
reinforcement (Shakespeare meant “renewed force”)
reliance
remorseless
reprieve (as a noun)
resolve (as a noun)
restoration
restraint (as “reserve”)
retirement
to reverb (“to re-echo”)
revokement (“revocation”)
revolting (Shakespeare meant as “rebellious”)
to reword (Shakespeare meant “repeat”)
ring carrier (a “go-between”)
to rival (meaning to “compete”).
roadway
roguery
rose-cheeked
rose-lipped
rumination
ruttish (horny)
one’s Salad Days
sanctimonious
to sate
satisfying (as an adjective)
savage (as “uncivilized”)
savagery
schoolboy
scrimer (“a fence”)
scrubbed (Shakespeare meant”stunted”)
scuffle
seamy (“seamed”) and seamy-side (Shakespeare meant “under-side of a garment”)
to secure (Shakespeare meant “to obtain security”)
self-abuse (Shakespeare meant “self-deception”)
shipwrecked (Shakespeare spelled it “shipwrackt”)
shooting star
shudder (as a noun)
silk stocking
silliness
to sire
skimble-skamble (“senseless”)
skim milk (in quarto; “skim’d milk” in the Folio)
slugabed (one who sleeps in)
to sneak
soft-hearted
spectacled
spilth (“something spilled”)
spleenful
sportive
to squabble
stealthy
stillborn
to subcontract (Shakespeare meant “to remarry”)
successful
suffocating (as an adjective)
to sully
to supervise (Shakespeare meant “to peruse”)
to swagger
tanling (someone with a tan)
tardiness
time-honored
title page
tortive (“twisted”)
to torture
traditional (Shakespeare meant “tradition-bound”)
tranquil
transcendence
trippingly
unaccommodated
unappeased
to unbosom
unchanging
unclaimed
uncomfortable (sense “disquieting”)
to uncurl
to undervalue (Shakespeare meant “to judge as of lesser value”)
to undress
unearthy
uneducated
to unfool
unfrequented
ungoverned
ungrown
to unhappy
unhelpful
unhidden
unlicensed
unmitigated
unmusical
to un muzzle
unpolluted
unpremeditated
unpublished (Shakespeare meant “undisclosed”)
unquestionable (Shakespeare meant “impatient”)
unquestioned
unreal
unrivaled
unscarred
unscratched
to unsex (verb: “to [in its context] make a woman unwomanly (that she might do deeds of men (murder)”; said by Lady Macbeth, in her husband’s play)
unsolicited
unsullied
unswayed (Shakespeare meant “unused” and “ungoverned”)
untutored
unvarnished
unwillingness (sense “reluctance”)
upstairs
useful
useless
valueless
varied (as an adjective)
varletry
vasty
vulnerable
watchdog
water drop
water fly
weird
well-behaved
well-bred
well-educated
well-read
to widen (Shakespeare meant “to open wide”)
wittolly (“contentedly a cuckhold”)
worn out (Shakespeare meant “dearly departed”)
wry-necked (“crook-necked”)
yelping (as an adjective)
zany (a clown’s sidekick or a mocking mimic)