Raggin' on Shaggy

I give Shakespeare a lot of grief, I admit it. Unfortunately, he often makes a good example when I talk about how not to teach English (don't spend 3 weeks discussing every detail of his life and asking students to do exact replicas of the Globe, right down to the butt imprints on the seats)and how he is often used to promote literacy practices that are becoming more and more ancient by the day.

This is sad because, I really like the guy. Or guys, if you go for the whole "Francis Bacon" multiple identity theories. I love the plays I've read, though I admit to being too rusty on too many of them, and I loves me a sonnet, Petrarchian, Spencerian, Shakespearean, or Flinstonian (a rare form with the rhyme scheme of Y-A-B-B-A/D-A-B-B-A/D-O-O. Don't tell this to college students, though, unless you want to see it written as an answer to a test question enough times to make you wish you'd majored in grocery bagging).

It's not his fault he's been so misappropriated. Indeed, he's good evidence for many of the ideas I espouse about multiple, multimodal and visual literacies, and I was glad to see this week's NCTE's Inbox mention several others who are seeing Ol' Shagstaff in those lenses as well.

To wit: In my travels, I have often encountered skeptics who ask me if students oughtn't be reading Shakespeare instead of learning this visual literacy stuff. Of course, I eat this up, because what texts could be more interactive, multimodal, and visual than the plays of Shakespeare? The very figure that so many traditionalists uphold as the pinnacle of literary quality is the same figure who might represent the pinnacle of the multimodal experience!

Shakespeare's plays aren't meant to be read dryly, but to be EXPERIENCED. Read, seen, heard, smelled, even. I recently attended a state-level conference where the new teacher of the year talked about needing no film versions or abridged texts to teach her students Shakespeare. By God, the original language was all they needed. But the language is so much stuff and nonsense on its own, as tedious as a twice-told tale without the visual and visceral experiences that were originally meant to accompany it.

What I wouldn't do to time travel with a video recorder and study not just a performance of King Lear or A Midsummer Night's Dream, but how the audience interacted with the story as they witnessed it....

We can't do that, of course, but we can at least acknowledge the visual and spatial quality of the texts without degrading their status as literature. Again, if it represents the apex of literary achievement, let us see that within the top of the form, visual elements must exist. Teach Shakespeare instead of visual literacy? It is visual literacy! Teach Shakespeare instead of comics? Why not Shakespeare-inspired plots or themes in comics, or Manga or other graphic adaptations of Shakespeare. The visual doesn't detract from the source material ,which innately was visual to begin with!

Of course, I know enough that the argument I've made herein will not make short shrift of many traditionalist's thoughts on my good friend Willy D. Shakes. But, at heart, I think Shaggy and I are on the same team, brothers never so vile, when it comes to his plays and visual literacy.

After all, if all the world's a stage, and we're merely players, and we're not supposed to enjoy seeing any of it and doing the active aspects that "playing" implies, what sort of sick joke is life? Lot of tripping over each other, I think. And a lot of not being able to see the forest (marching or otherwise. Hey, anyone else think that Macbeth should have included the line "Run, Forest, Run"?) for the trees for not being able to see the trees or anything else.