One of the things I loved about teaching both French and English was the opportunities I had to delve into each subject and create imaginative bulletin boards for my students. Back in the day I collected many many bits and pieces sure to attract those amazing teenagers and help them develop the same love for my subjects as I had.
One of the bulletin boards centered around the bard in preparation for my grade eleven class beginning Shakespeare’s Macbeth, or the Scottish play as those superstitious actors always call it. I had large posters and personal pictures of my visit to Stratford-on-Avon with my husband. We had walked in Shakespeare’s actual house so that on my wall play covers and actors danced around the Globe Theatre recreating Shakespeare’s time.
Our classes were 75 minutes long. On the first day studying Macbeth I announced a witch contest. I got the usual groans and resigned looks but I acted out the whole scene for them complete with three different witch voices and the students got into the mood. Fun to laugh at your teacher! They divided into groups of 3 and began to plan their presentations of the opening scene. You remember it:
Macbeth
ACT I SCENE I
A desert place.
[Thunder and lightning. Enter three Witches]
First Witch
When shall we three meet again
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
Second Witch
When the hurlyburly’s done,
When the battle’s lost and won.
Third Witch
That will be ere the set of sun.
5
First Witch
Where the place?
Second Witch
Upon the heath.
Third Witch
There to meet with Macbeth.
First Witch
I come, graymalkin!
Second Witch
Paddock calls.
10
Third Witch
Anon!
ALL
Fair is foul, and foul is fair:
Hover through the fog and filthy air.
[Exeunt]
Save
It was great fun and the kids had a ball. From there jumping into the rest of the play was easy. Already the kids had memorized their witch parts complete with their individual witch cackles and crackly voices which they loved to use out of the blue. Sometimes I’d even hear them in the hall.
In Grade 9 we studied Merchant of Venice with our classes. That was the first Shakespearean play I taught and I assigned my students Portia’s speech, “The quality of mercy is not strain’d”, to memorize. The hard task of memorizing that strange language helped them to understand it better and the more the students practised in groups the more I heard that understanding in their voices. And I could ask them more interesting test questions based on those few lines they knew.
That first year of teaching my dad asked me what play I was doing with the kids. Immediately my 55-year-old father, whose days in school had long since faded to distant memories, recited flawlessly Portia’s magnificent speech. What a gift! To me, certainly, but also to him that his schooling allowed him to do that and still know it all those years later.
King Lear was the play I studied in Grade 13 (back when we still had grade 13!) and I loved it. Those three daughters just came alive as did Lear’s ridiculous idea of equating empty words with actual love. Cordelia was such a strong character.
And then I took an extra English credit to increase my teaching qualifications. Fourteen Shakespearean plays. Not the way to study them. To this day I know all the titles and most of the plots but the rest is a blur. Hamlet, though, just shone. The thing that most surprised me was all the lines I already knew from that play without even realizing where they originated. I guess a few others thought it was fabulous, too! Here’s a list of famous quotations from Hamlet.
If you were vigilant you probably saw references to Shakespeare’s birthday and death day over the last few days. They are reported to be April 23 but only the death day is known for certain. His baptism was April 26, 1564 leaving scholars to assume he was born three days earlier but no one knows for sure. Of course he died April 23, 1616, having lived and written through the Elizabethan age with Elizabeth I and her defeat of the Spanish Armada.
What I most adore about Shakespeare’s story and those of countless other writers is their contributions to their world and to the worlds forever after. Here we are all these years later still learning from Shakespeare, Hemingway, Twain, Potter (Beatrix), Dickens, Austen, Christie, Angelou, Poe, Rand and thousands of others. As I do my daily writing I pledge to remember how important our writing is, not just for today but for all the days to come. Won’t you join me in that thought?
The Loyalist’s Wife, The Loyalist’s Luck, The Loyalist Legacy
Of course we all know about the Ides of March, forever popularized by Shakespeare in his play, Julius Caesar, but there’s much more to think about for us mere mortal writers!
3 Striking Events Which Occurred on this date:
The Ides of March was Caesar’s death day and as such was a turning point in Rome’s history. The Republic was over. Hundreds of years later Shakespeare’s play immortalized both Caesar and “Beware the Ides of March.”
Czar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate his throne in Russia on this date in 1917 bringing about the start of events which led to the Communist takeover in the U.S.S.R.
On this date in 1939, Germany occupied Czechoslovakia as the Second World War began to ramp up.
We could go on and on with examples of bad things which happened on March 15 (check out the link above for a few), but the point is without the wily William Shakespeare, the Ides of March just wouldn’t be a “thing”. We wouldn’t be making lists of happenings on this date because such an antiquated expression would have passed into near oblivion along with Caesar’s language–Latin–and his death date, too.
But a writer over four hundred years ago chose to have his whole play revolve around “Beware the Ides of March”. Because his writing was so erudite yet spoke to the people all those years ago and amazingly still does today we know about the word “Ides” and its place in the Roman calendar in Caesar’s time. Pretty cool.
What a lesson in word choice for us writers! Think about it. If Caesar’s line had been “Beware March 15th!” would it have had the same punch? Would it have pricked our curiosity and made us wonder just what it meant? No. We would have understood immediately and moved from that line to the next.
Instead, our brains stop and notice that expression. Many of us immediately look for its meaning but even those who don’t realize it’s something different. It’s part of the supernatural aura of a soothsayer or person who understands the supernatural who is warning Caesar. We notice.
We writers need to chose our words with the same thoughts about just what difference our choices can make to our stories. Even those who are not writers in the professional sense can make the same magic by picking words not just because they’re easy or because everyone else uses them, but rather because they underline our points, they invoke emotional responses and they stick a notion to our readers’ subconscious mind where it can be nurtured and grow. Oh, words can be so powerful!
As you read through this excerpt from the back cover of The Loyalist Legacy, pick out the words–verbs mostly–that have the most effect in painting the story. I think there are three or four that show the fear and futility of William and Catherine’s uncertain situation.
After the crushing end of the War of 1812, William and Catherine Garner find their allotted two hundred acres in Nissouri Township by following the Thames River into the wild heart of Upper Canada. On their valuable land straddling the river, dense forest, wild beasts, displaced Natives, and pesky neighbors daily challenge them. The political atmosphere laced with greed and corruption threatens to undermine all of the new settlers’ hopes and plans. William knows he cannot take his family back to Niagara but he longs to check on his parents from whom he has heard nothing for two years. Leaving Catherine and their children, he hurries back along the Governor’s Road toward the turn-off to Fort Erie, hoping to return home in time for spring planting.
Here is my list. Did you choose them? Others? crushing, allotted, wild, laced, threatens, longs, hoping.
This isn’t a right or wrong quiz but as writers we must look at each word we use and make sure it has the appropriate connotation for the feelings we are looking to create in our readers. “Fat” has a negative connotation and “plump” is more positive. They both describe the same condition but one is more palatable.
So today as you go about your busy life, think about Shakespeare and his word choice. Worked for him, why not for the rest of us? And beware the Ides of March!
The Loyalist’s Wife, The Loyalist’s Luck, The Loyalist Legacy
One of the things I loved about teaching both French and English was the opportunities I had to delve into each subject and create imaginative bulletin boards for my students. Back in the day I collected many many bits and pieces sure to attract those amazing teenagers and help them develop the same love for my subjects as I had.
