How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare by Ken Ludwig - Excerpt

7/28/2019 How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare by Ken Ludwig - Excerpt

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http://www.crownpublishing.com/https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Ken_Ludwig_How_to_Teach_Your_Children_Shakespeare?id=FLdCodLHzrMC&feature=nav_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwyLDNdhttp://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/stat?id=VD9*lkiWNd8&offerid=146261&type=3&subid=0&tmpid=1826&u1=How+to+Teach+Your+Children+Shakespeare-EL--ScribdCrown-9780307951519&RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fitunes.apple.com%252Fus%252Fbook%252Fisbn9780307951519%253Fmt%253D11%2526uo%253D4%2526partnerId%253D30http://www.indiebound.org/product/info.jsp?affiliateId=randomhouse1&isbn=0307951499http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?EAN=9780307951496&cm_mmc=Random%20House-_-How+to+Teach+Your+Children+Shakespeare-HC--ScribdCrown-9780307951496-_-How+to+Teach+Your+Children+Shakespeare-HC--ScribdCrown-9780307951496-_-How+to+Teach+Your+Children+Shakespearehttp://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307951499?ie=UTF8&tag=randohouseinc5443-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0307951499


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Copyright 2013 by Ken Ludwig

All rights reserved.Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the

Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.www.crownpublishing.com

CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging- in-Publication data is available upon request.

ISBN 978-0- 307-95149-6eISBN 978-0- 307-95151-9

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Photo credits appear on pages 347348 as an extension of the copyright page.

Book design by Jennifer Daddio/Bookmark Design & Media Inc. Jacket design by Christopher Brand

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

First Edition


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o be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether 'tis noble

e mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous for

r to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing

em? To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say wehe heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That esh is

, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sle

o sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in t

eep of death what dreams may come When we have shff this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect

akes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whip

corns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's co

ely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The inso

f ofce and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy ta

When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bo

ho would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary

ut that the dread of something after death, The undiscov

ountry from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the

nd makes us rather bear those ills we have Than y to o

at we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards

Part One_


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C H A P T E R 1

Passage 1Learning the First Line

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows

N ine words. Each word has one syllable. Nine syllables.

Thats all it is.It isnt hard to learn this line of poetry. Its from the play A

Midsummer Nights Dreamby William Shakespeare, and Ill bet your son or

daughter can memorize it in less than a minute.There are two keys to memorizing it:First, say it aloud.Second, repeat it.So lets do it together: Say this aloud:

I know a bank

Now say it again:

I know a bank

Now say it four times in a row. No kidding. Just do it and promise methat youll do it aloud:

I know a bankI know a bankI know a bank


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4 KEN LUDWIG

Did you say it aloud? Because if you didnt, this wont work, I assureyou. In order to do it properly, you have to go to a place where you wont

be embarrassed. Just pick a room and close the door. Then sit down withyour son or daughter and do it together. Say it aloud four times. If youvedone this honestly, as Ive described, youve now got it in your brain, andyoull never forget it.

I know a bank

Now do the same thing with the second half of the line. The wordsare more complex but not difcult at all. Have your child say them aloud:

where the wild thyme blows

Now say them again:

where the wild thyme blows

Its important when you learn Shakespeare that you understand everyword youre reading or memorizing. Your children should understand thata bank is a mound of grass on the side of a stream or river, and that thyme is a owering plant with a strong smell. It is less commonly known thatblow in Shakespeares day meant burst into ower. So what the speakeris describing is a mound of grass, probably near a stream, where the wildthyme is blowing in the breeze and bursting into ower.

Now lets go back to the words. Say the second half of the line again,four times, out loud:

where the wild thyme blowswhere the wild thyme blowswhere the wild thyme blowswhere the wild thyme blows

If youve said these words aloud, you and your child can now put the wholeline together without difculty Do it Say it aloud:


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HOW TO TEACH YOUR CHILDREN SHA KESPEARE 5


Say it again, and really enjoy saying it, because its good for the soul:


One last time, and this time say it in a hushed tone, painting a picturewith the words, describing a place of great beauty and depth:


And now you and your child have memorized some Shakespeare. Be-lieve me, it will stay with both of you for the rest of your lives. And it willchange your lives.


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C H A P T E R 2

The Reason for the Book

Lets pause for a moment so I can give you some background. When Imnished, well dig right back into the rst passage.

Ive been teaching Shakespeare to my children since they were sixyears old. Im a bit of a Shakespeare fanatic, and it occurred to me when

my daughter was in rst grade that if there was any skill any single areaof learning and culture that I could impart to her while we were bothhealthy and happy and able to share things together in a calm, focused,pre-teen way, then Shakespeare was it.

I began the process by teaching her lines from my favorite Shakespearecomedies; and as I continued with this method and expanded it to includemy son, I became convinced that the way into the subject the way tointroduce someone to Shakespeare for the rst time so that it doesnt feeldaunting and yet has real integrity is to memorize it. First a few lines,then whole speeches.

With Shakespeare, memorizing is the key to everything.

A great deal of this book will involve memorizing speeches from Shake-speares plays. Along the way well discuss other important aspects of Shakespeare the stories, the verse, the imagery, the characterseverything that you and your children should know in order to understand


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Two good questions arise right away: Why Shakespeare? And whymemorize it?

Why Shakespeare?The answer to the rst question is that Shakespeare isnt just one of themany great authors in the En glish language; Shakespeare is, indisputably,one of the two great bedrocks of Western civilization in En glish. (The other

is the King James translation of the Bible.) Not only do Shakespeares playsthemselves contain the nest writing of the past 450 years, but most of thebest novels, plays, poetry, and lms in the En glish language produced sinceShakespeares death in 1616 from Jane Austen to Charles Dickens, fromUlysses to The Godfather are heavily inuenced by Shakespeares stories,characters, language, and themes. As Falstaff says in Henry IV, Part 2 :

I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men.

Shakespeare is not only creative in himself he is the cause of creation inother writers.

For many of us, Shakespeare has become a kind of Bible for the mod-ern world, bringing us together intellectually the way religious serviceshave traditionally done. For more than ve thousand years, Moses, Jesus,and the other towering gures of the Old and New Testaments were the

archetypes of our consciousness. In modern society, Hamlet and Mac-beth, Juliet and Ophelia, have been added to their number. To know someShakespeare gives you a head start in life.

Also, Shakespeares powers as a writer simply exceed those of everyother writer in the history of the En glish language. Here is an excerpt fromthe diary of the distinguished En glish novelist and essayist Virginia Woolf,who speaks here for every writer I know:

I read Shakespeare directlyafter I have nished writing, when my mindis agape and red and hot. Then it is astonishing. I never yet knew how


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8 KEN LUDWIG

utterly outpace and outrace my own, seeming to start equal and thenI see him draw ahead and do things I could not in my wildest tumult

and utmost press of mind imagine. [T]he words drop so fast one cantpick them up. . . . Why then should anyone else attempt to write. Thisis not writing at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpassesliterature altogether, if I knew what I meant.

Why Memorize It?As for memorization, Im convinced that it unlocks the whole world of Shakespeare in a unique way. In order to memorize something, you haveto be very specic and very honest with yourself. You have to work slowly,and you have to understand every word of what youre memorizing. Therewas a time not long ago when memorization was considered to be one of the basic tools of an academic education. Students were expected to learnhundreds of lines from the Greek and Roman classics, then, later, frompoetry in their native tongues. This tradition has faded from our lives, andsomething powerful has been lost.

That said, Shakespeare can be difcult to read, let alone memorize,without some help. Most people who pick up one of Shakespeares playsand try to read it for pleasure end up putting it down after the rst fewpages because they nd it confusing. And this is true for adults, let alone

children.There are several reasons for this. First, many of Shakespeares words are

unfamiliar to us. When Hamlet, in the most famous speech in the En glishlanguage (To be or not to be), refers to something called a bodkin, most of usjust scratch our heads and want to give up. (A bodkin is a dagger.)

Second, Shakespeares sentence structure often sounds odd to our ears.This is partly because Shakespeare wrote his plays more than four hun-dred years ago and partly because a substantial portion of his plays arein poetry. Thus hes frequently saying things like Conceal me what I aminstead of Disguise me


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Third, Shakespeare frequently writes in metaphors. His mind was solively and cunning, so profound and imaginative, that he was always tell-ing us how something was like something else, and it often takes someeffort to puzzle out his meaning. For example, in one of Shakespeares mostfamous speeches from Romeo and Juliet, he has Romeo compare Julietseyes to stars in the night sky. He has Romeo say that the real stars have tohurry away, and they (the stars) have asked Juliets eyes to take their place.

Then Romeo adds that Juliets eyes would in place of the stars shine so brightly that birds would start singing because theyd think it was daytime,not nighttime. Heres what he actually says:

Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,Having some business, do entreat her eyesTo twinkle in their spheres till they return. . . .

Her eye in heaven

Would through the airy regions stream so brightThat birds would sing and think it were not night.

Hamlet at the Royal Shakespeare Company, with Toby Stephens as Hamlet, hold-ing a bodkin


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This is obviously a complex piece of writing, yet my son won a recitation

contest with this speech when he was eleven years old.The point is that Shakespeare is like a foreign language. In orderto learn it, we need to understand every word, then practice until wefeel comfortable. If your children memorize one line at a time, then ashort speech, then a longer speech, theyll become self- assured and thenuent. At that point, Shakespeare will become part of their literaryvocabulary.

The Value of Knowing ShakespeareKnowing Shakespeare in depth has profound implications for your chil-dren. It means that they can begin to view life through a Shakespeareanlens, using the questions that Shakespeare raises in his plays as a pointof reference as they learn to form their own opinions. What does Twelfth

Night tell us about the relationship between brothers and sisters? Whatdoes Hamlet tell us about the anxiety we feel when a parent dies?

The movie Romeo + Juliet, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes


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In addition, Shakespeare articulates emotions that help children un-derstand the stresses of their daily lives. When children hear Juliet say:

Give me my Romeo; and when I shall dieTake him and cut him out in little stars,

And he will make the face of heaven so neThat all the world will be in love with night

or they hear Macbeth utter:

Lifes but a walking shadow, . . . It is a taleTold by an idiot, full of sound and fury,Signifying nothing.

they are likely to feel that thoughts of longing, death, and hopelessness areless alien to them.

From the beginning, I had a number of additional goals in mind in

teaching my children Shakespeare. One was to give them the tools toread Shakespeares works with intelligence for the rest of their lives. Onthe simplest level, this will enrich their lives and give them a lifetime of pleasure.

Another goal was to expose them to literature of such universal depthand worth that it would inspire them to want to achieve great things asthey marched forward into maturity. I have staked my life as a writer onthe proposition that the arts make a difference in how we see the world

and how we conduct our lives how we view charity to our neighbors andjustice to our communities and Shakespeare, as the greatest artist in thehistory of our civilization, has worlds to teach us as long as we have thetools we need to understand him.

From a very personal standpoint, the course of Shakespeare studiesoutlined in this book also provided me and my children with hundredsof hours of one- on-one time together that we never would have sharedotherwise. These hours spent together have made our family stronger andmore tolerant of one another.

On a practical note I had another very specic goal in mind: to teach


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12 KEN LUDWIG

my children at least twenty- ve passages from Shakespeares plays so thatthey could have the lines at their ngertips and spout them whenever the

occasion presented itself. The occasion might be citing a literary referencein an En glish essay, or it might include making an intelligent point in con-versation. These uses, frankly, open doors for our children, which is whatwe as parents are always trying to do.

Being uent in Shakespeare from an early age imparts one last advan-tage that has a signicance all its own: It gives my children self- condence.It gives them the tools, as Falstaff might say, to be witty in themselvesand be proud of it. As a father, this is one of the best parts of the wholeexercise.


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How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare by Ken Ludwig - Excerpt