Collaborating with Shakespeare

The texts and the situations represented in William Shakespeare’s plays often seem at best strange and alien to their own language and experiences, if not completely cloaked and unrecognizable. In confronting each other-often in the cold and in the dark, so to speak, wary of an unfamiliar challenger-Shakespeare’s plays and students often seem to dance around each other, a little guarded, a little nervous, hoping that it will all turn out OK and no one will die from it. It goes without saying that teaching Shakespeare to students at secondary or undergraduate and MA levels are a remarkably varied experience, depending, of course, on the “composition” of the class. Two growth tendencies, first toward multicultural representation in curriculum and in population, and toward a consciously architected diversity in student and faculty populations representing a variously defined “America, " have brought about some curious reconsideration regarding the practice of and the reasons for teaching Shakespeare’s work.