Most important thing I learnt in two year studying English Literature .?
Table of Contents
Shakespeare was a genius. qnd the real thing.
Bit of a bee in my bonnet –
In ‘O’ level English – Shakespeare ruined for everyone – not an unusual occurrence, I’m afraid. Didn’t help that the set play was ‘The Tempest’ –convoluted plot and not a laugh in it – but teachers have to be blamed as well – learning speeches by heart, in what can appear to be a foreign language, does not reveal the joy of Shakespeare at all – in fact it buries it and replaces it with animosity – people end up just hating it all, for life and it’s their loss but not their fault.
Discovering this needed more than a teacher filling time. Luckily, me and two other prefects, one the Head Boy, and all three doing English Lit. were sort of adopted by the Assistant Head acting as a mentor.
He taught Physics – very well – which instilled a lasting interest in the subject in me. I still have a fascination with cosmology and the universe.
Teachers
It’s amazing what good teachers can do – and frightening what bad ones can do
Back to the point – Assistant Head – I’ll call him AH for short.
He spoke to us as equals – not common with grammar schoolteachers.
Turns out he has a love of the theatre and friends in both the Liverpool Playhouse and The Royal Court and attends every production.
He must have been a significant supporter of the theatres because, after he had a chat with us, and I assume with the English Lit. teacher, he arranges for some of the Royal Court acting company to visit the school and address the English Lit class.
Few weeks later -three of them in our main assembly room, with stage, and an audience of about fifteen. young men – the names of the two male actors have dissapeared over the years but the woman I will never forget – Morag Hood, who was beautiful and went on to many TV roles.
For a bit of interest, they did a couple of role plays including a staged sword fight and then we joined in – and she picked me to fence with – could have been the cow eyes – I let her win.
She never wrote, though.
Unfortunately, she died from cancer, quite young at 59 in 2002.
I raise it only because her last words are worth repeating.
Towards the end, she was visited, in her `London Hospice by her good friend Sian Philips, herself an award winning actor. who reported that Morag’s last words to her were –
“So that’s the dress (rehearsal) out of the way’.
A performer to the end.
Othello
AH then arranges a visit to the Wavertree 3D cinema to see a filmed version of Othello – we meet him at the Mersey ferry and then bus it to the cinema, and reserved seats – he paid for all of it.
Big curved screen and all-round sound – and Lawrence Olivier as Othello, Maggie Smith as Desdemona and Frank Finlay as Iago (the bastard) Really doesn’t get any better than that.
Olivier dropped his voice three octaves for the part and Maggie (a lot younger then, of course) whiter than white and blonder than blonde against the jet black Moor.
Just fantastic.
Bluecoat Chambers
A set text that year was Antony & Cleopatra. At the time, there was a TV version broadcast with Janet Suzman – and Burton and Taylor had done their stuff just three years earlier. But better still– AH comes up with tickets for an amateur production in the Bluecoat Chambers in Liverpool.
Small theatre and audience quite close to the stage – we were only a couple of rows back , very close to the action – and I really got it for the first time – it was, I I magine, like being stood at the front in the Globe theatre in the 1500s.
OK, it didn’t have the production qualities of TV or cinema, but it did have an innocent enthusiasm and an interaction between actors and audience, off the cuff from the crowd – some abuse, some encouragement, some cheering – and, when the drinking Roman soldiers started to dance we were close enough to see their M&S Y fronts under their armoured skirts (could have been worse!)
Try just whispering at the Old Vic and you’ll get, at the very least, dirty looks –regular coughing – escorted out – and your phone going off is a life ban.
The dancing is followed by a scene where the drunken soldiers are now, thankfully, sitting down, knackered. Some are just back from Egypt and discuss their first sighting of Cleopatra – and the best monologue in the whole play – and 0ften recognised as one of Shakespeare’s best anywhere- is given to a drunken soldier called `enobarbus., almost an extra – not even an officer or another lead actor – and the language, deliberately delivered in a gruff slur is still beautiful. Describing the first time that Mark Antony saw Cleopatra.
I never try to memorise this stuff, but I can repeat most of It to this day;
The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Burned on the water; the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person.
(OK – I had to Google for the last two lines!)
In just few lines you get the majesty and the wealth -the sound, and the heat – and I have been around there on holiday, and it’s bloody hot.
That’s the way to introduce young people to Shakespeare – take it back to the free for all and mayhem of the Globe, better than a pantomime!
In fact – if you decide to give it a go- see what local Am Dram productions are running and pick a comedy i.e.
All are a link to a brief introduction to the plot and cast.
Agreed! The teaching can inspire or destroy. Great links!