Since Shakespeare is universally acknowledged as the greatest writer ever, every student should read and study Shakespeare. Evaluation of Shakespeare’s skill in story telling, in developing intersting characters, in structuring intricate plots, in using subplots and verbal or visual motifs to enhance his themes will help the student learner appreciate all kinds of literature and other arts. Critical thinking and expression can be learning using intersting and complex plays and sonnets.
The most important skill that any student can learn from her experiences in college is to be able to think critically about all topics and to learn how to teach herself content material through critical reading and thinking. Critical thinking involves being aware of one's own cultural biases and assumptions, looking at any issue from as many perspectives as possible in an open-minded fashion, and using logical reasoning in coming to conclusions. Critical thinking in literature also involves the ability to recognize and apply various schools of criticism (historical, psychoanalytic, sociological, reader response, marxist, structuralist, feminist, ethnic). The meaning of a literary work then becomes the most logical interpretation of the work, using details from the work as support, which the reader can understand. Great literature, Shakespeare’s in particular, is ambiguous and lends itself to many different interpretations, all of them valid if they are supportable. Class discussions involving the many possible interpretations of a play should help a student to develop his critical thinking skills. Writing about a work of literature will help a student learn to support her own critical interpretation about that work fully and logically.
Writing is a form of critical thinking. It is a skill which can be taught. But composition teachers do more than just teach students how to put down words on a piece of paper without making many errors, in some meaningful fashion, for some rhetorical purpose. The teacher should also be helping students learn how to think, recognize interesting and original thoughts, and express these thoughts in an effective manner, because then the resulting essays will be significant, relevant, meaningful, interesting, creative, and profound.
In this class we will read only a small sampling of plays in all three of Shakepeare’s modes: histories, comedies, and tragedies. However, the skills which are developed in this class should be applicable to other Shakespearean plays and to plays by other playwrights. We may try to evaluate the plays using any appropriate schools of criticism. The purpose of these discussions is not to discover one Truth about the play, but to identify many possible interpretations which are defendable and discuss the details in the work which would support each interpretation. From this discussion and further reading on the part of the student, he can come to his own conclusions about the meaning of the work and its relevance to himself.
The essays are individual learning tools which allow each student to explore one specific topic about the play and to develop her own argument/interpretation using logic and details from the play in support of her claims. The student may try to write a specific kind of criticism (using one specific school of criticism) or may combine two or more possible interpretations.
The creative project will allow a student the opportunity to explore one of our plays in a creative way. However, the creative project should illustrate in a non-verbal way a particular interpretation of the work of literature. For example, drawing a picture of one scene of a play would suggest that the scene depicted was a pivotal scene, or might illustrate the relationship between two characters. Putting one of the sonnets to music would illustrate how the student felt about that poem. A group of students might choose to act out a scene from a play.
The midterm and final will allow the student to demonstrate an understanding of the themes of the play, the importance of certain famous passages, and how the individual parts of the play work toward a unified understanding of important questions or themes. Though a study of only 6-8 plays will not give us full insight into Shakespeare’s world view, it will perhaps help us to understand why he is held is such high regard.
If I have done my job well, by the end of the semester, each student should have sufficient skills of critical thinking to be able to look for cultural, gender, racial, or generational assumptions which might influence a sense of meaning in interpreting one of Shakespeare’s plays and she should be able to develop in writing an argument about that play critically, clearly, and logically. If by the end of the semester, each student can think and write critically and logically on her own, then I have done my job well and made my own role in the learning process no longer necessary.
