Macbeth in the East End · Wed Apr 19, 19:16 by Eleri Straker
Anyone else out there seen the similarity between the villains of the TV programme Eastenders and Macbeth? No? Me neither, until recently.
You’ll have gathered by now that I like teaching Shakespeare. It’s both a challenge and a joy. But to understand literature and Shakespeare in particular, you need a certain amount of empathy. So how do you go about teaching literature to someone with no empathy at all?
This is a problem I came up against recently when I discovered that I had an autistic student in my class.
After coming to terms with the obsessive behaviour, the need for everything to be of a certain colour, the terror of reptiles (reptiles?) and rage if someone swiped one of her ‘treasures’, I then had to find a way to get her to understand enough Macbeth for her to get anywhere in her SATS. Bit of a challenge that, as lack of empathy is often one of the problems associated with autism.
I spent many frustrating hours trying to get through to her and worrying about her with her helper. Then one day her helper told me that she had spent the previous lesson listening to her charge going on about last night’s episode of Eastenders. She apparently knew everything there was to know about each and every character and the plot (which often leaves me completely confused) was as clear as day to her. So I had a brainwave.
I changed the names of the characters in Macbeth to those of the characters in Eastenders and when I asked the student questions about the play I’d say something like, “So if Phil (Mitchell) realises that his secret is about to come out, what do you think he’d do to this guy (his best friend – aka Banquo)?”
There was a moment’s pause then she replied that Phil would almost certainly have his friend killed – if he didn’t do it himself. So I’d carry on with questions that I’d normally ask about Macbeth, like, “Do you think Phil (Macbeth) would feel any guilt about what he’d done?” And so it went on, as long as I placed Macbeth into a familiar environment (in this case, Albert Square) she could understand the play. If ever I forgot and reverted to Macbeth, Banquo and Macduff and placed them in Scotland, she would completely lose the plot altogether.
It was a fascinating learning experience for me and I hope for my student too. It reminded me that not everyone thinks the same way and that as teachers we have to keep finding new ways to get through to our students.
That particular student is no longer at the school, but I am reminded of her every time I teach the ‘Scottish’ play and have to hide a grin as I imagine the Bard’s words in the mouth of a fictional Eastend thug.
The purists might object that using popular TV ‘soaps’ is somehow ‘cheapening’ the work of the world’s greatest mind, but I don’t care and certainly don’t agree. Shakespeare used loads of different techniques to get through to his very mixed audience, so I don’t think he’d mind. And I can live with that.
