Overview
Introduction
Teaching Shakespeare’s plays may seem a monumental task. Indeed, it is a challenge for me, as a high school teacher, to select the most essential concepts and content from these plays that are bursting with opportunities for instruction. As a teacher of gifted students with a range of personalities and knowledge bases, I see countless occasions to enrich what are already very rich texts. However, time constraints and the varying needs of students demand that I be purposeful in creating a unit from which students can gain the most knowledge, skill, and enrichment from a given play. Admittedly, I tend to find several rabbit holes down which to plunge while exploring Shakespeare’s plays with my students. While these make for lively class discussion, they often permeate the unit and leave the students with few, if any, meaningful take-aways. The end result is a mile-wide, inch-deep examination of language, poetry, plot structure, characterization, theme, politics, and historical context. Simply put, we try to examine everything, and end up gaining very little.
The purpose of this unit is to focus the study of Richard III on the craft of characterization. Instead of attempting to address all of the many areas of inquiry that the play offers, we will endeavor to answer the question, Who is the literary Richard III? While acknowledging that he is an historical figure, we will approach the analysis with the understanding that the character in the play is a creation of a playwright. While there is ample information about the sources Shakespeare used and the context in which he wrote Richard III, we will not examine it before reading the play. We will confine our inquiry to the play’s text and look specifically at Richard’s first and last soliloquies, his seduction of Lady Anne, his interactions with the young princes, his conversations with Buckingham, and the epideictic orations of the female characters. An original soliloquy will be the culminating assignment for this line of inquiry. Students will compose a “deleted” speech in which the literary Richard justifies his actions in the play. The soliloquy should explore Richard’s motivations and rationalizations in poetic (blank verse) form. Students will have studied and practiced blank verse during their unit on Romeo and Juliet. Thus, they will be building on a skill already addressed, and only minimal supports should be necessary during this unit.
After the study of Shakespeare’s play, students will read Josephine Tey’s novel, The Daughter of Time, in order to complicate their understanding of Richard III. While Tey’s work is fiction, it specifically draws on multiple historic sources that provide additional information about Richard’s brief reign and his relationships with his brothers. It also elaborates on the character of Richmond, later Henry VII, the very one-dimensional savior in Shakespeare’s Richard III. Students will analyze this new information in order to answer the question, Who is the historical Richard III? There is an opportunity here to address the recent discovery of Richard III’s remains and subsequent funeral and reburial, both of which will depend on available instructional time. Given this modern interest in the subject, the culminating assignment for The Daughter of Time will be a eulogy for Richard. Students will draw from the novel and the sources cited in the novel to compose an appropriate tribute to the historic Richard.
Rationale
Every two years I teach 10th grade, in which Richard III is a required text for my advanced students. Within this group of high performers there is great diversity in personal background and skill level. In addition, they each bring a personal experience with Shakespeare, and unfortunately, these past experiences are generally negative. The dread that accompanies any mention of Shakespeare’s language is the most common form of apprehension with which students approach Richard III. Thus, I have endeavored to create a unit in which students have a singular objective: to examine all evidence concerning Richard’s character. By providing this specific focus, for a play in which the title character is so focal, I think students will more readily struggle through the language because they know what they are seeking.
But why concentrate on character when approaching Richard III? Surely we could discuss other literary elements or examine other aspects of the playwright’s craft. However, Shakespeare’s Richard is one of the most infamous of literary villains, and an ideal protagonist for intense characterization study. I think the idea of villainy is engaging to students. Exploring the nature of evil and the definition of a villain can attract even reluctant students because everyone can identify a fictional villain. In fact, many students have a favorite villain. This is interesting in itself. Why are audiences attracted to certain villains like the Joker in The Dark Knight Rises, Sue Sylvester in Glee, or Loki in The Avengers? Is it their charm? Intelligence? Persistence? Sometimes villains are just more interesting than their moral opposites. Shakespeare’s Richard, who has no rival for attention, absorbs our interest, and in some ways our admiration. He is impeccably crafted as the source and summit of evil, yet audiences can find him magnetic. One might expect Richard’s choices and actions to repel an audience, but rather, he captivates with his vitality, honesty, and wit. He brings the audience into his confidence. He is straightforward and self-aware when addressing us, making us complicit in his schemes. Indeed, his breaking of the fourth wall is reassuring.1 Without this interaction, audiences would perhaps become uncomfortable with the unpredictability of Richard’s actions, making him a more frightening villain. Richard’s engagement with the audience is a specific literary approach, critical to Shakespeare’s development of character. Thus, students can take away many lessons in the craft of characterization.
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