Columns, Opinion

RILEY: The Magic of Shakespeare

I will never forget the first teacher that taught me how to love Shakespeare. Literature is one of my favorite subjects, and I have a tremendous appreciation for my four high school English teachers, all of whom succeeded in expanding my view of the world, both past and present.

It’s no hard sell to get students engaged in books such as “The Great Gatsby” and “1984,” which are two of my favorites. But to instill a love of Shakespeare in a class full of antsy 16-year-olds is another task altogether. An instructor teaching Shakespeare must know the Bard’s work well, genuinely take pleasure from his ornate language and know just how large his influence over the literary world is.

I found all these traits in Connie Francis, my 12th grade English teacher. Her love of Shakespeare was evident from the moment I first stepped into her classroom — she had commissioned a mural on her walls that depicted the woods near Athens in which “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” takes place.

I can still remember marveling at the painting during class. The room was a whimsical forest wrapped in midnight, with the spritely figure of Puck looking down from his perch in one tree and ferries dancing on the adjacent walls. Above the dry erase board at the front of the room, one of Shakespeare’s most famous lines floated in golden lettering: “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players.”

I learned from Mrs. Francis that Shakespeare invented so much that is commonplace in the world of storytelling, from popular plot devices to common words and phrases. “Love is blind,” “For goodness’ sake” and “Heart of gold” are all sayings that derive from Shakespeare’s writing. He also coined words such as swagger, assassination and eyeball. And let’s not forget that he brought the dirty joke into mainstream dramas, constantly employing double entendre to create sexual innuendo.

While studying abroad in Auckland, New Zealand, I have again encountered Shakespeare’s work with a course I just finished entitled “Comedies and Tragecomedies.” And once again, I have been blessed with an instructor who understands the importance of Shakespeare’s body of works and the discourse that surrounds them pertaining to gender roles, social class, family values and so many others. In reading the five Shakespearean plays required by the course, I have come across several strikingly familiar ideas.

From “Twelfth Night” comes the idea of complications created by disguising genders to deceive others. Much like in the Amanda Bynes movie “She’s the Man,” which was inspired by the play, protagonist Violet pretends to be a man to serve a Duke named Orsino, with whom she soon falls in love. Orsino sends her to profess his love for a Countess named Olivia, who becomes taken with her male disguise. “O Time, thou must untangle this, not I,” Violet exclaims when she discovers she is the object of Olivia’s affection. “It is too hard a knot for me t’untie.”

From “All’s Well That Ends Well” comes the idea of unrequited love of the unworthy. Helena, the daughter of a late renowned physician, falls madly in love with a future count named Bertram whom she believes to be out of her league because of her lowly social status. “There is no living, none/ If Bertram be away,” she pines. “’T’were all one / That I should love a bright particular star / And think to wed it, he is so above me.” The events of the play prove that Helena is, in fact, much more virtuous than he.

From “Much Ado about Nothing” comes the idea of sworn enemies turned lovers. For the first half of the play, the characters of Beatrice and Benedick are constantly flinging insults at one another in a “kind of merry war” of wits. Beatrice serves as Shakespeare’s depiction of the unruly woman, chastised by her uncle for her brash speech and harsh manners. Although she and Benedick share unwillingness to marry, the other characters trick them into falling in love with one another and Benedick proposes at the end of the play.

A theater director who visited our class recently spoke about a production of “Hamlet” he had once directed in which the climax of the play took place at a rave party where all of the other characters were on drugs, save Hamlet.

The magic of Shakespeare’s work, as the director rightfully pointed out, is that words in Shakespeare’s works, which were written nearly 500 years ago, remain relevant today.

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