Can this be serious? One Florida school system will only allow classroom study of excerpts from some Shakespeare plays in its high school curriculum because it is afraid they will violate the new state laws forbidding the inclusion of taboo issues in the curriculum. Is Shakespeare really regarded as too racy for the young people of Florida? Who has ever been corrupted by reading the plays and poems of the greatest writer in the English language? Do we want our professional teachers and librarians looking over their shoulders as they prepare to teach our children?
People have been inspired by reading Shakespeare. People have had the opportunity to wrestle with the great questions of Life by reading Shakespeare: love, friendship, marriage, death, jealousy, grief, loss, doubt, religious ecstasy, and more. Thousands of young people have decided to become writers, teachers, actors, set designers, and filmmakers after their exposure to Shakespeare. Reading Shakespeare has lifted people into a higher stage of human consciousness. I am one of those people.
I can understand why parents and other citizens are concerned about what our public schools teach. Education is one of the most essential things in a civilization, and parents surely have the right to express their concerns about course content, particularly what is age-appropriate. It would be a mistake to expect parents to shrug their shoulders about what their children are being exposed to, particularly young children.
Still, Shakespeare?
Instead of removing Shakespeare from school curricula, it might be more productive to wring our hands about the poor reading skills of high school graduates in Florida and elsewhere. In many cases, including in community college courses I have lectured in, students can no longer read Shakespeare with any facility. That, I believe, should set off national alarm bells. The problem with our educational system is not that it is corrupting our children but that it is failing to make enough demands of them. It is failing to prepare them for the mystery of Life.
It takes a bold politician to take on the greatest writer in the English language. Shakespeare is just the greatest of a pantheon of great writers that includes Emily Dickinson, Chaucer, Jane Austen, Milton, Thoreau, Melville, John Keats, Wordsworth, George Eliot, W.E.B. Dubois, Mark Twain, T.S. Eliot, James Baldwin, and a thousand others. If we cleanse the classics of what is perceived as prurient matter, we are in for a long process.
Is it possible to be corrupted by being exposed to Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and Twelfth Night? How, exactly?
Yes, of course, there is some sexual punning and sexual innuendo in Shakespeare’s plays, but most high school students struggle to understand Shakespeare’s basic plots and poetry. Most of the puns and innuendoes soar right over their young minds.
Thomas Bowdler and The Family Shakespeare
History is never kind to the censors. In the 19th century, a British man, Thomas Bowdler, decided Shakespeare was too risqué for young people and Christian families. The result was The Family Shakespeare, published in 1807, covering 20 of Shakespeare’s 37 plays. In 1818, he published an expanded edition of The Family Shakespeare, cleansing the rest of the plays.
Bowdler assured his readers that “those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a Family.” To this, Bowdler added, “My great objects in this undertaking are to remove from the writings of Shakespeare some defects which diminish their value.”
Bowdler’s misguided, puritanical, and righteous maiming of Shakespeare generated a new word in the English language: Bowdlerize. Here’s just one definition of Bowdlerize: “Remove material that is considered improper or offensive from (a text or account), especially with the result that the text becomes weaker or less effective.”
As a profound lover of the humanities, I hope we will all calm down and work harder at teaching young people how to read with pleasure and discernment and somewhat less on what to read.