Shakespeare has been compulsory at Leaving Cert higher level since the Irish State was formed. He is the only writer to be afforded this honour. Is it time to remove this privilege for the Great Bard? Is it time to let him be just another option, demote him from his God-like status and place him among the groundlings?
An NCCA (National Council for Curriculum and Assessment) report on the consultation for the new English Leaving Cert draft specification mentions that some teachers questioned “the necessity” of having Shakespeare as a requirement at higher level as it was seen to impose “limitations” on the “experience of the students.”
The new Leaving Cert English specification or syllabus was recently published without any mention of Shakespeare at all. In the draft specification and the curriculum being taught, he appears in the requirements section as being “compulsory” for higher levels.
But, now, nothing.
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Where has the Bard gone?
Shakespeare is acknowledged by many as being the high point of literature, the one writer with such cultural significance and artistic merit that he bestrides the narrow world like a colossus.
Harold Bloom, the American writer, in his book Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, insists that William not only “wrote the best poetry and the best prose in English, or perhaps any western language” but also went so far as to invent “the human as we continue to know it”.
If only Shakespeare were around now, he might be able to help us out with artificial intelligence.
But do we even get to teach Shakespeare appropriately?
Students read his plays in utilitarian, grey-walled classrooms rather than watching several vibrant, lively performances during senior cycle.
Many students are overwhelmed with notes on everything from plot, to characters, to language, to specific words, to how Elizabethan culture would have reacted to the historical context of the plays.
His inclusion was to demonstrate one of the wonders of literature, but the reality is that few students come out of a class on Shakespeare with a sense of wonder.
This point isn’t made to denigrate teachers, nor to imply teachers don’t love Shakespeare, but it is what happens when you are trying to prepare students for a high-stakes exam; love and passion for your subject are discarded and replaced by a more utilitarian approach.
But should Shakespeare still be compulsory?
An NCCA report on the role and selection of prescribed texts points out that we carried over from the English system “an imperial cultural ideal” as well as “the transmission of standard English”.
From the start this meant, for us, the inclusion of Shakespeare, a man who Farah Karim-Cooper, in her excellent The Great White Bard: How to love Shakespeare While Talking About Race, says is now “the unassailable beacon of English identity”.
The Bard’s permanent position in our English classroom line-up has, in some way, allowed other voices to be heard and studied. Shakespeare’s work can be difficult for students. His language is archaic, his imagery multifaceted, his themes complex, and his characters reveal themselves in different ways with each reading. Studying Shakespeare requires a rigour that other texts don’t demand.
In this way, Shakespeare becomes the load-bearing writer, the one who ensures a depth of analysis required for a higher-level English student. He’s like having Roy Keane in the centre of midfield, ensuring high standards.
What would happen if he became optional; if, instead of having to study Shakespeare, we could opt to study another writer?
That would depend on the other options. You can study Shakespeare as a primary text, all on his own, or as part of a comparison with two different texts. Due to the time it takes to get through one of Shakespeare’s plays, and the critical thinking the study of his plays requires, most study him as a primary text. But there are other options.
At the moment, if you didn’t want to study Othello as your main text, the other options are: Marina Carr’s Girl on an Altar; Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet; F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby; and Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Not all of the above require the same level of engagement as a Shakespearean play demands. A new text list would require greater balance.
Shakespeare is compulsory in three other countries: England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. He is optional in Scotland, as he is in several different English-speaking countries, like Canada and Australia.
Have we become conditioned to believe that it is impossible to study English literature without the inclusion of this one particular English man?
Jonathan Bates, in The Genius of Shakespeare, talks about Shakespeare’s contemporary, the Spanish writer Lope de Vega and asks us to “picture an alternative world in which Spain triumphed over England. Lope would then have triumphed over Shakespeare and I would be writing a book called The Genius of Vega.”
Raising one writer above all not only feels outdated, counter to artistic integrity, but also a dangerous concept to exist unchallenged in our education system.
It’s time for William to join the rest of his colleagues on a long list of options, a place the historical figure was familiar with.
- Conor Murphy is an English teacher at Skibbereen Community College, Cork
