Introduction and Rationale
Shakespeare never goes stale. And there are good reasons for that. Through the years, I have taught Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, Much Ado about Nothing, Twelfth Night, and Hamlet to high school students at various academic levels. When I handled these plays as a young teacher, I was more a learner than a teacher; but as my experience with the texts expanded, so did my understanding and appreciation of the author's work. With each teaching event, and after numerous experiences as a member of audiences, two features of Shakespeare's drama have emerged as focuses for this unit: various conceptions of human power, and how Shakespeare used the mechanics of the English language to elaborate those concepts.
Students will almost all have read Romeo and Juliet, as a large number of ninth grade teachers present it. Macbeth is already a perennial favorite of teachers and students in twelfth grade, and As You Like It will be an addition to the curriculum. I make the latter a choice for students to read independently in its entirety, because, after all, several longer works, usually novels, are required of them. The ambitious will choose to read it, but more will not; so I assign the retold versions of As You Like It and Romeo and Juliet from the Lambs' Tales from Shakespeare to all of the students—since, even if they have read the latter play in ninth grade, there is a three-year gap, and the Lambs' tales are literary gems in their own right.
The linguistic awareness I want students to develop in this unit centers on how Shakespeare's manipulation of language serves to construct characters, conflicts, and themes. The students are challenged to analyze Shakespeare's choices at the levels of word and phrase, and at a more abstract, figurative level, specifically in relation to how those word and phrase choices reveal power or powerlessness. In this regard, students have to focus on sound devices, such as alliteration and onomatopoetic phrasing, a range of metaphoric usage—chiefly metaphor, imagery, and symbolism. Technically, students do simple analysis of metrical features, such as iambic meter, rhythm and rhyme. One goal of the unit is to help students draw clear connections between the meaning one elicits from a text and how Shakespeare created that meaning stylistically.
The participants in this teaching unit are twelfth grade vocational high school students. In my school setting, an urban high school of approximately 900 students, the focus is on career preparation; but students must also complete studies in the standard curriculum of a comprehensive high school. They must study English, Social Studies, Mathematics, and three years of Science. Spanish is the only second language offered, and there are no fine arts electives.
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