Shakespeare: A Spicey Dish

Shakespeare is a core part of a proper Charlotte Mason curriculum.  Most students would read three Shakespeare plays per year starting in the fourth grade.  So far it's only been my highschoolers who have ventured to works of the bard.  My oldest daughter went from not liking Shakespeare to reading his plays for fun. In fact, I had to remind her to tell me that she had read them so that she could get credit.  For her freshman year of college, her advising group was the Shakespeare class.   Loving Shakespeare doesn't mean you have to like all of his works. Her favorite is King Lear, but she found nothing appealing about The Tempest.  She felt like there was no real ending. In her words, "It's like Shakes just gave up." She also wasn't a fan of "Twelfth Night."
    When she was in a public school high school (part of 9th grade), she applied a feminist understanding to the character of Lady MacBeth.  Yasmeen had also read extensively on the six wives of Henry VIII at this point and had a unique understanding of the survival instincts of women of this era and how society did and did not attribute worth to them.  Anyhow, she wrote an essay that asked the reader to reconsider Lady MacBeth's role as a villain, but almost as a warrior. Unfortunately, her teacher wrote, "I think you sided with the wrong character."  That was her entire point!!  She was deliberately siding with the villain to see the humanity and what might drive someone like Lady MacBeth to such a desperate act.  She returned to homeschooling shortly after that.
    I was certain my son would have to be dragged slowly through Shakespeare and would run as fast as he could from it once it was over.  Was I ever wrong.    He started by watching a BBC production of Julius Caesar (1979) which was a verbatim production of Shakespeare's work and also had subtitles.  I found this use of subtitles to be very helpful as it allows you to read and listen simultaneously thereby letting the audience experience each word on screen as something with life and emotion while reversely seeing the dialogue as almost palpable.
   After Caesar, he made an attempt at "Much Ado About Nothing."  For some reason, it didn't click. Oh, I should have added that I had chosen "Julius Caesar" as his first Shakespeare play because he was very familiar with Julius Caesar and had read Plutarch's Julius Caesar earlier that year.  Much Ado About Nothing flopped the first time around.
  Liam's next Shakespeare play was "Henry V."  Liam already had a great understanding and set of knowledge right off the top of his head on The War of The Roses, so we approached this as somewhat of a prequel to that.  He watched Kenneth Branagh's "Henry V" (1989) in fifteen minute increments.  After that, he read the play using No Fear Shakespeare.  We did some readings together, but then he did most of them independently.  He read the original words and then the modern translation.
    Using No Fear Shakespeare, Liam would continue his Shakespeare readings so far covering "Much Ado About Nothing" (with a lot more success this time), "MacBeth," and "Romeo and Juliet."  By the time, he read "Romeo and Juliet," he hardly had to use the modern ranslation.  He chose not to watch film versions (which shocked me) because he says that they interfere with his imagination and interpretation of a scene.
     Understanding Shakespeare is not entirely a linear process. Yes, it becomes easier with practice and exposure, but some works are harder than others.  We try not to become discouraged if something isn't clicking or needs a lot of modern translation.  Shakespeare is like that oh so delicious spicey dish at a feast.  You want to devour it, but you know you have to take it bite by bite and maybe with some bread (modern translation) to make it edible.  But once your palate is adjusted, just go for it.  That spice won't seem so hindering in the end, but rather delicious - just like the works of the bard.