Shakespeare on Toast: Getting a Taste for the Bard Read Online Free Page B

1600s.
    ----
    But would an Elizabethan have analysed the plays as we do now? (It’s highly unlikely – would you analyse an episode of a soap opera?) They would have accepted them much more at face value, and we can learn a great deal by looking at Shakespeare’s plays with more of an Elizabethan head on our shoulders.
    The way we’re used to receiving the plays, in classrooms and practically under a microscope, couldn’t be further away from their experience.
----
    A few Shakespeare-coined phrases, still very much in use today …
    all that glitters is not gold ‘All that glisters is not gold/Often have you heard that told’ –
The Merchant of Venice
, Act 2, Scene 7, line 65
    as dead as a door nail ‘If I do not leave you all as dead as a doornail, I pray god I may never eat grass more’ –
Henry VI Part 2
, Act 4, Scene 10, line 38
    blinking idiot ‘What’s here? The portrait of a blinking idiot’ –
The Merchant of Venice
, Act 2, Scene 9, line 54
    fair play ‘O. ’tis fair play’ –
Troilus and Cressida
, Act 5, Scene 3, line 43
    into thin air ‘These our actors,/As I foretold you, were all spirits, and/Are melted into air, into thin air’ –
The Tempest
, Act 4, Scene 1, line 150
    set teeth on edge ‘I had rather hear a … a dry wheel grate on the axle-tree,/And that would set my teeth nothing on edge/Nothing so much as mincing poetry’ –
Henry IV Part 1
, Act 3, Scene 1, line 127
    slept a wink ‘Since I received command to do this business I have not slept one wink’ –
Cymbeline
, Act 3, Scene 4, line 99
    to thine own self be true ‘This above all: to thine own self be true’ –
Hamlet
, Act 1, Scene 3, line 78
    tower of strength ‘the King’s name is a tower of strength’ –
Richard III
, Act 5, Scene 3, line 12
    too much of a good thing ‘Can one desire too much of a good thing?’ –
As You Like It
, Act 4, Scene 1, lines 112–13
----

Scene 6
    A classroom
    T he last 200 years have seen Shakespeare go from being a largely forgotten Elizabethan poet to being voted Man of the Millennium (admittedly by a poll consisting solely of BBC Radio 4 listeners, but still …). He’s the most referenced, the most cross-referenced, the most analysed, the most written about, the most performed and the best-known man to grace the planet, religious figures aside.
    And with that fame has come a respect, a trend to deify him, to make his plays sacrosanct. The six official commandments of Shakespeare:
    You Cannot Change Any Of The Words
    He Must Not Be Translated
    He Must Be Performed A Certain Way
    He Must Be Spoken A Certain Way
    He Must Be Spoken Of In A Certain Way
    We Will Celebrate His Birthday As If He Were Royalty
    Alright, I just made those up. But you’d be surprised how many people deem every word absolute truth. And he’s just a playwright. Or is he now a literary messiah?
    I know now why I used to hate Shakespeare so much. It was this kind of ‘holier than thou’ opinion, compounded with the approach to teaching Shakespeare that is still prevalent: sitting down, reading or writing about the plays, or speaking them out loud without really knowing what it is that you’re saying … It takes them so completely out of context. It’s like trying to appreciate the fun of driving a car or flying a plane by reading the engine’s instruction manual.
    My Gran tells me her Shakespeare classes were like that in her day, and 60 years on, she still doesn’t understand Shakespeare. Who can blame her? But when you do see Shakespeare on stage and acted, something changes.
    You read Shakespeare in school and you think it’s rather boring as a rule. It’s a lot of words … But when you take the parts and act it … then you begin to realise how interesting it is. And you realise how natural it is and how real. It doesn’t seem like that when you read it
.
    June Brown, who plays
EastEnders
’ Dot Cotton
    Of
course
Shakespeare will seem out of reach when his plays are presented so clearly