Vortex - speaking as someone who is a hardcore procrastinator, hit 'em where they live. Otherwise they'll end up like me.

email has been sent to boss.

Call me a heathen, especially since I work in theatre, but I think Shakespeare is overtaught.

no, I don't think that you're wrong. but it's so beautiful!

I think all other drama is undertaught.

I won't quarrel with you, ND -- especially on the "so much left out" point. Shakespeare also presents the hurdle of Elizabethan slang -- and that a lot of school districts would likely not approve of a lot of Shakespeare's unbowdlerized lines.

Appreciation of Shakespeare at that age also depends a lot on the teacher's style. My freshman English teacher had a "Bow before the greatness of Shakespeare!" attitude that ruined MoV for me -- it wasn't until I took a Shakespeare class in college that I realized it was a comedy.

I don't have a quarrel with your POV; in my specific case, I'd have to point at my undergrad training. I got LOADS of Shakes -- two specifically Shakespeare classes, plus Sh. plays in Intro to Lit, 17th c. Lit in undergrad, then I was a GA for an undergrad Shakes. class in grad school. It's the drama I am most familiar with.

Hell, I think the only other plays I've had to read for my degrees were a couple of O'Neill plays. I've never even read an Ibsen play!

(Feel under-read right now. But I was focusing on medieval and Rennaisance lit. Wait, wait -- I've read Goethe and Marlowe!)

I was a theatre major, so of course, I read a shitload of plays. I forget that most people don't get that exposure.

I was an English lit major, but I realized very soon that, O'Neil aside, the length of most plays was circumscribed by the tolerance of most playgoers butts. So I usually selected period plays over period novels when given the option. Restoration drama was lots of fun.

There are other classics like Moliere and Lorca that get left out, but there's also contemporary plays that get left out. Modern writers like Durang, or showing how Sondheim help reshape musical theatre and his use of tough social commentary.

Don't get me wrong, I love Shakespeare, but I think he's put up on too much of an altar to the detriment of other dramatic works and it's impact on society.

And I think one of the reasons that Sh. is taught so much in high school --aside from the overweening opinion that he is "art" and therefore infallible -- is that there are so many allusions and words in Western culture that spring directly or indirectly from Sh., and that a hs education is, necessarily, directed at providing an extremely broad foundation to all graduates.

Edited for repition. I rubriced myself. I need to get back in a classroom.

Note bene: I do NOT think Sh. is infallible. And he certainly was not altarized as "high art" (god, let's not start a discussion on high vs. low art, puh-leeze, cause I don't care all that much) in his lifetime.

ND and I have had this argument before. I completely understand where he's coming from, but from a regular English lit perspective, no other playwright is as entrenched in the British and American lit and popular culture that followed Shakespeare. Students need to know at least the basics of the major plays in order to catch these allusions. I'm sure I'm missing other things because I don't have as thorough a background in Moliere and Lorca and so forth, but the difference is that my professors in college didn't expect me to know them, whereas they did expect me to know my Shakespeare. So while I agree that he may be overemphasized, it is a reality that my high school students are better served by at least getting the major tragedies before they go off to college. I am constantly wishing there was more time to teach more lit.

ETA: Or what Erin said (we x-posted):

And I think one of the reasons that Sh. is taught so much in high school --aside from the overweening opinion that he is "art" and therefore infallible -- is that there are so many allusions and words in Western culture that spring directly or indirectly from Sh., and that a hs education is, necessarily, directed at providing an extremely broad foundation to all graduates.