I was a theatre and an English Lit major, in college, and I did read a lot of plays for the English major as well, but it may be because I gravitated to classes that taught plays. In lower schools we read The Diary of Anne Frank, 3 Shakespeares, Our Town, and The Crucible, which was a pretty good selection, frankly. I would say that more modern and "harder" plays and authors got neglected equally in my school. Of course, I read a metric shit-ton of plays all on my own-- I was particularly fond of Shaw, Ibsen, Strindberg and, weirdly, JM Barrie.

ETA- I can't imagine most of my fellow students in high school going beyond thatany more than I would be able to go beyond precalc- It would be great if high school could actually succeed in teaching the foundations.

I did like it, even though we weren't reading the books at the time, when we discussed authors of different periods in social studies, because it is all connected-- why certain books an certain plays and certain art was created at certain times, and they seem so hard to separate.

I loved Shaw. And reading some of the plays that haven't survived the years can be pretty interesting, too. Yeats did a bunch of plays for the Irish Theater that are influenced by a combination of Noh theater and Irish mythology. (Plus contemporary politics, of course.)

In the class I would be teaching (if I get the job) it'll be all stuff outta a Glecoe text plus Elie Weisel's Night, which is fine, and Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, which kinda bores the fuck out of me. At least it's not The Pearl

I should go look up the Glencoe sophomore text, just to see. We had that text, but I never taught out of texts -- I would just copy the occsional story or poem out of them.

I'm talking sentence structure, 5 paragraph essay, letterwriting, the basics of plot, compare and contrast, elements of persuasion

I'd call some of these elements grade school work. But I see your point -- if high school English teachers are teaching basic writing skills, there isn't much room for mulitple plays.

On the other hand, English teachers, how much does the Elizabethan language interfere with teachability? Would a more contemporary play -- I'll just pick The Glass Menagerie to have a name out there, or a number have mentioned The Crucible -- go more quickly?

On the other hand, English teachers, how much does the Elizabethan language interfere with teachability? Would a more contemporary play -- I'll just pick The Glass Menagerie to have a name out there, or a number have mentioned The Crucible -- go more quickly?

Yes, but the language barrier can be overcome through exposure and (more importantly) teaching through performance. When the kids have to get their hands dirty with putting a scene together, they figure it out. (And then they run around trying to talk like Elizabethans, which is the cutest thing ever.)

On the other hand, English teachers, how much does the Elizabethan language interfere with teachability?

I admit, it certainly poses an obstacle to be surmounted. My last school, a high percentage of my students were ELL or from households were Spanish was spoken primarily. I would teach the beginning of the play using No Fear Shakespeare, which has the Elizabethen English on one page, and the corresponding vernancular English on the other page. It was like training wheels...they would slowly be responsible for reading more and more of the play in the Elizabethan, and key passages were always something they would have to be able to suss out the meaning on a test or quiz.

And then they run around trying to talk like Elizabethans, which is the cutest thing ever.)

Wrod! I always introduce a Shakespeare play by teaching them Shakespearean insults, and I always explain the naughty bits to them. "Harlot" and "strumpet" became popular epithets among my seniors this spring.

I can comfort myself with that, I suppose.

Yeats did a bunch of plays for the Irish Theater that are influenced by a combination of Noh theater and Irish mythology.

I read these , too, as well as Synge in an Irish Renaissance Literature class.

I think one of the difficulties in teaching English Literature in high school, maybe, is that the works that would be foundational to analysis and a certain kind of understanding are a)in a difficult language, b) not something that they students always find interesting to read and c) (at least in my school) would be frowned upon if they were taught. Add that to the fact that (again in my school) you could barely mention either religion or sex-- you were sort of left with not too much that was "safe to teach. So it would be helpful to have read Shakespeare, the Bible, many other cultures mythologies and The Odyssey before embarking on literature study, I doubt most high school students will do so, enjoy it or get much out of it.

And if you can swing a good (or even not so good) movie version of one of Shakespeare's plays, sometimes it helps the play seem more accessible. Heck, even Mel Gibson's take on Hamlet (something is blue-filtered in Denmark) kept some of the language and, for all it's faults, showed an energetic interpretation of the play. (Had a surprisingly good Ophelia, too.) Although the Bard according to Mel probably wouldn't be as much of a draw to today's teenagers. It would have been more effective back when he was in his Lethal Weapon stage, rather than his aging wackaloon stage.

I was really glad to have worked on a production of Mother Courage (speaking of Brecht). It's Quine the chewy play, and not so simple as to just be anti-war.