Shakespeare and Classical Education

Mr Pearce continues his classical literature syllabus for high school with a look at the junior year, emphasising Willia Shakespeare.

From The Imaginative Conservative

By Joseph Pearce

Those who fail to share my profound admiration for William Shakespeare will no doubt query my apparent obsession with one author to the exclusion of all others, as I propose an ideal classical curriculum for the freshman and sophomore years of high school.

In last week’s essay I presented the texts that I would include in an ideal classical curriculum for the freshman and sophomore years of high school. The freshmen would study the pre-Christian classics by Homer, Sophocles and Virgil, and the sophomores would study medieval literature (Boethius, Beowulf, Dante, Chaucer and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight). In this week’s sequel, I’d like to present the texts for what I would consider to be an ideal literature curriculum for high school juniors. We will conclude with the selection for the senior class next week.

Continuing with the chronological approach, the juniors would study early modern literature (1500-1800). With respect to this period, I will confess a desire to spend the whole year, or at least most of it, on Shakespeare. Alongside Homer and Dante, Shakespeare is a member of the triumvirate of literary giants which straddles the centuries, the tremendous trio forming a collective colossus whose presence is the hub and heart of the literary heritage of civilization. His absence would be unthinkable. The only question is the extent of his presence. Ideally, the students should read Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar in the first semester, perhaps squeezing in Antony and Cleopatra for good measure. The first of these three plays highlights the dangers of allowing passions to overthrow reason and virtue; the second highlights the use and abuse of rhetoric in the pursuit of power; the third connects the other two in sharing the cautionary theme of the first and the historical context of the second.

In the second semester, The Merry Wives of Windsor, my personal favourite of all the comedies, would offer light relief while continuing the theme of the necessity of reason and virtue as the antidote to the poisonous consequences of reckless passion. This would be followed by the reading of Hamlet and Macbeth, two plays which should really be taught side by side because one is the dramatic inversion of the other.  Hamlet begins in the slough of despond, temperamentally tempted to suicide, but grows in wisdom and virtue through the employment of rational circumspection, eventually laying down his life for his friends and countrymen, thereby purging Denmark of the “something rotten” which had poisoned it. Macbeth begins as a war hero lauded by his peers and rewarded by his king but plummets into the murderous abyss through the reckless pursuit of self-empowerment, aided and abetted by his equally power-hungry wife. Hamlet sacrifices himself for others, the true proof and practice of love; Macbeth sacrifices others on the altar erected to himself, the true proof and practice of pride. Macbeth is, therefore, the anti-Hamlet.

Even this might not be enough. I would even recommend the inclusion of one final play, King Lear, which is, me judice, Shakespeare’s greatest. At its core is the essential philosophical conundrum raised by questions of sanity and sanctity. Why does the world see holiness as foolishness? Who, in their right mind, would follow Saint Francis in stripping himself naked in order that he might wed Lady Poverty? Does Lear go mad or does he come to his senses? These are great questions with which high school students should grapple.

Should there be room for anything else in the junior year, I would recommend the inclusion of the Metaphysical Poets. This would begin with the poetry of St. Robert Southwell, especially “Upon the Image of Death” and “Decease Release”, the former of which is intertextually present in Hamlet and the latter in King Lear, thereby enabling students to connect Southwell’s poetry as being inspirational to the Shakespeare plays that they are reading. The other poets to be studied would be John Donne, George Herbert and Richard Crashaw.

Admirers of the great Spanish classic, Don Quixote, might raise their eyes quizzically at its conspicuous absence from the curriculum. It’s not that it doesn’t warrant inclusion; it’s merely that prioritizing Shakespeare necessitates its exclusion. It’s so large that half a semester or a whole semester would be needed to do it justice. This would mean the omission of several or all of the Bard’s plays. Perish the thought!

Those who fail to share my profound admiration for William Shakespeare will no doubt quibble or query this apparent obsession with one author to the exclusion of all others. In squeezing in so much Shakespeare, others have inevitable been squeezed out. We have lost Bunyan and Swift and, perhaps most controversially, we have lost Milton’s losing of Paradise. These few, these unhappy few, are absent so that Shakespeare can be present. In presenting him to the people, I echo the words of Pontius Pilate. Behold the man! “What I have written, I have written.” And I wash my hands of those who hold me responsible for any sins of omission.

The featured image is a sculpture of William Shakespeare (1870, cast after 1910) by John Quincy Adams Ward. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.