Come In, Romeo, Your Time Is Up.

Shakespeare, that hardiest of the English curriculum perennials, will be taking centre stage in classrooms shortly as the new academic year unfolds. The debate may continue about the provenance of the texts or about removing the compulsory study tag, but English teachers will do their duty, step up to the plate, and attempt to deliver the Bard to their students. It won’t be easy as we know there are multiple ‘barriers to learning’ when it comes to teaching Shakespeare. First among equals is surely the issue of relevance for 21st century high school students. Consider the image below.

An idyllic scene and a beautiful setting – if we ignore the English rain! What’s this got to do with making Shakespeare relevant you may well ask. This is Stratford-on -Avon, nerve centre for Shakespeare’s cultural hegemony. And adjacent to the river is the Royal Shakespeare Theatre,  mothership for the performances of his plays – here’s a link – http://www.rsc.org.uk/visit-us/rst/ .

Well, despite the rain, Stratford was filled with visitors and tourists from all over the globe (no pun intended). The man sheltering under the umbrella was from Asia, spoke little English, yet had visited Shakespeare’s birthplace and had his ticket for the theatre. He was not alone. The bridge across the Avon was filled with Japanese teenagers in kagools while the cafes were brimming with visitors from Brazil. Even the current production of ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ directed by Iqbal Khan and starring Meera Syal and Paul Bhattacharjee, is given a Bollywood feel complete with swirling incense. The works of William Shakespeare are clearly still resonating around the world.

How then to ensure Shakespeare’s work resonates with the students in our classrooms? The commercial imperative is certainly important in Stratford-on-Avon. Even those boats for hire have borrowed their names from the collective dramatic personae – if you didn’t fancy rowing with Romeo, you could opt instead for Banquo, Lysander or Puck! Today’s high school students are certainly commercially savvy; the challenge is to ensure the dramatic and academic imperatives are brought to bear in the classroom with similar force and appeal.