Bard-Art

Sometimes before jumping into the physical art of performance, we like to explore other media with students to expand their discussion of Shakespeare. We’ve mentioned the myriad of ways students approach an Illumination Project in our High School Fellowship Program, shown you examples of “remixing” Shakespeare’s text with audio effects, tried our hand at animating scenes with free online programs, explored the crossover potential of Shakespeare with comics, and considered creative writing projects centered on Shakespeare’s plays (with or without Vampires)…

What else?

Students at St. Peter's create collages for Macbeth

Two of our Shakespeare Steps Out projects during the 8-visit program are visual art projects. In one the students draw a picture based on the Queen Mab speech from Romeo and Juliet of what they see in their imagination when they listen. The colorful and inspired images that come from this project never cease to amaze us. The second project takes place after the students have been cast for their festival performance – they are then given magazines and publications in which to find words and images they believe describe or represent their character. They have a lot of fun cutting and gluing – yes – but they also have to determine who their character is, what that character wants, what it is that defines them, in order to put it into pictures.

Art is a big part of the Folger’s collection, as well. Our Library has been collecting paintings, statues, and other renderings of Shakespeare and his characters from the last 400 years, and the variety of ways people imagine certain scenes or characters is worth the effort to study.

What is it about Shakespeare’s text that makes it so ripe for picturing? Besides Queen Mab, are there any passages that leap out at you for students to listen and create from?

Have your students created any artwork related to Shakespeare?

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Shakespeare…in other words

Why are there so many “modern” versions of Shakespeare’s plays?

There are plenty of great books that don’t need translated versions. We don’t look for easier versions of Dickens, Hawthorne, Melville, or Fitzgerald (or at least, I hope we don’t.) But re-doing Shakespeare seems to be a favorite sport of publishers.

In a way, we can trace it back to Nahum Tate in the 1680′s and Thomas Bowdler in 1818, but they had totally different agendas than today’s creators. Tate wanted happy endings and Bowdler wanted to clean up the naughty bits.[I'll talk about them in my next post.]

We at the Folger have a standard answer when someone asks us what we think of “modern” versions of Shakespeare’s texts:

“IF YOU’RE NOT GOING TO USE SHAKESPEARE’S WORDS, DON’T DO SHAKESPEARE.”

Why dumb down all those beautiful words and images for the sake of making it easier? We’ve found that if you’re teaching Shakespeare in an active, performance-based approach, the language becomes less of on obstacle.

It’s the words that matter. Here’s an example of a passage from R&J which I’ve written with an interlinear version with the No Fear version:

Shakespeare: Oh, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!

No Fear: Oh, she shows the torches how to burn bright!

Shakespeare: It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night

No Fear: She stands out against the darkness

Shakespeare: Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope’s ear,

No Fear: like a jeweled earring hanging against the cheek of an African.

Shakespeare: Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear.

No Fear: Her beauty is too good for this world; she’s too beautiful to die and be buried.

Shakespeare:  So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows As yonder lady o’er her fellows shows.

No Fear: She outshines the other women like a white dove in the middle of a flock of crows.

Shakespeare: The measure done, I’ll watch her place of stand,

No Fear: When this dance is over, I’ll see where she stands

Shakespeare: And, touching hers, make blessèd my rude hand.

No Fear: and then I’ll touch her hand with my rough and ugly one.

Shakespeare: Did my heart love till now?

No Fear: Did my heart ever love anyone before this moment?

Shakespeare: Forswear it, sight!

No Fear: My eyes were liars, then

Shakespeare: For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.

No Fear: because I never saw true beauty before tonight.

See the difference? Post your comments below as to the effect of the translation.

I almost hesitate to mention more of these, but they are worth discussing here. The following are for the print empaired student:

• If your students find reading Cliff’s Notes too difficult, Cliff has a better idea. They’ve boiled the plays down to 5-minute videos with ridiculous animation.
• The Shakespeare Made Easy videos boil the plays down to 2-minute versions, but are pretty awful.
• I do like the Folger videos that we’ve made, both the Insider’s Guides and the One-minute versions.

But back to print. Here are the candidates:

• Kent Richmond has created what he calls “verse translations” of several plays and shows why his versions are superior to what he calls the “dumbed down prose versions.”  Here’s his translation of the Prologue from R&J.
• No Fear Shakespeare is part of Spark Notes. Here’s their parallel-text version of the same Prologue.
• Barrons have moved on from their Shakespeare Made Easy series with the death of  their author, Alan Durband. They now have a series called Simply Shakespeare which seems equally bad.
• There’s also a series of Shakespeare Novels by Paul Illidge.  Here’s the opening line from Macbeth: “A summer storm moves on over the barren and deserted countryside of Scotland during the Middle Ages, leaving the rain-soaked fields cloaked in clouds of fog.” Oh my.

I won’t get into the manga and graphic versions of the plays, most of which retain the original language and are quite good.

One of my students recently said to me, “You have some strong opinions.” Yes, I do, but if you feel that there’s room for these translations in your class, I encourage you to post your comments below.

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Columbus Day

Teachers often ask me how to justify teaching a Shakespeare play in an American Literature class.

My answer is simple: Teach The Tempest. Many scholars believe that The Tempest was inspired by the real-life shipwreck of the Sea Venture off the coast of Bermuda in 1609 on its way to Jamestown. The account of that incident written in a letter by William Strachey  reached England in 1610. Scholars believe that Shakespeare wrote The Tempest soon afterwards. In addition, the plays deals with different views of Colonialism–a good stopic for classroom discussions.

You can hear Sam Waterston and scholars talk about the storm and the survivors in this Podcast from our series, Shakespeare in American Life.

There are plenty of teaching resources for The Tempest on our Play-byPlay section of the Folger Education site.

If any of you teach The Tempest, please add your comments below.

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