Talking to the groundlings · Fri Sep 8, 21:32 by Eleri Straker
So, a new term begins.
My first class this year was year 11. The year 10s of last year, with Princess, now one year older. I have to admit that when I saw my timetable, my heart sank. Would this be last year all over again?
To add to my trepidation, I was planning to start Shakespeare with them.
I’ve said many times how much I enjoy teaching the Bard, but my experiences with Princess last year gave me pause. How would this group handle Shakespeare?
The play I’m teaching them is Romeo and Juliet, a play I know really well. So, I squashed all my qualms and went in.
When I first taught this play, I wasn’t particularly keen on it, as I’d only read it once and fallen into the usual trap of thinking that it’s just a love story. Of course, it isn’t. Shakespeare isn’t that obvious.
It’s a powerful story of the cruelty of fate, the destructive power of blind passion, the need for stability in marriage, the need for parents to talk to their children and the need for teenagers to think, -occasionally. There’s a lot more, but that’s enough to be going on with!
The class knew something of the story, mainly bits garnered from Baz Luhrmann’s superb film version of the play. They began reading with some trepidation, this was obviously going to be both hard and boring. So I dropped in a casual comment that Shakespeare, in an effort to engage the groundlings not only put in a lot of sword fights, but also rather a lot of dirty jokes…even in the first scene. I left it at that and let them carry on. Then, as they read, when they got to particular lines, I sniggered, which of course, got their attention. Why was I laughing? So I told them that the line being read was particularly suggestive. I gave them the meaning of particular words (seemingly innocuous words such as ‘thrust’ and ‘stand’ which in context are extremely iffy!)And all of a sudden, they were hooked! Even Princess was caught. She relished reading the role of Sampson when she got the gist of what crude jokes he was cracking. When the bell rang marking the end of the lesson, they were unwilling to stop! They wanted to carry on to see how crude Will could actually be, but I pointed out, with just the right note of regret, that there was no more time…
I’ve been told (not by present colleagues, I hasten to add) that I shouldn’t draw attention to the dirty jokes Shakespeare made, that this diminishes the Bard’s mystique. I actually believe that by pretending that Will didn’t ‘do’ blue jokes is to diminish him. Will knew what he was doing – he knew how to engage the intelligentsia and, more importantly, the groundlings. If dirty jokes caught the attention of his less educated audience, then I’m sure that it will do the same for my ‘groundlings’ too.
