There is a simpler solution: Teach Shakespeare better. I have no trouble with Polonius's speech to Laertes, or with the passage from Chaucer (I have lately been re-reading The Canterbury Tales - and yes, in Middle English, which really isn't hard).
All languages evolve. Witness the obscurity of Old English (a bit of misnomer calling it "English"), the musical unfamiliarity of Middle English, the difficulties of Elizabethan-Jacobean English (witness the objections of undergraduates who complain that Shakespeare's plays and poetry are not written in English), and--finally--witness the ways in which the English language has been shifting (acquiring new words and eliminating old one; and tolerance for grammatical aberrations that would have been unthinkable half a century ago). Well, with all of that having been said, are we at the point where we need "modern" Shakespeare so that audiences and readers can "get it"? I hope that we will not arrive there in my lifetime, and I press onward in my literature classrooms with the Quixotic hope as I expose students to "old" works--Chaucer, Donne, Shakespeare, and even Milton (whose work is also too hard for new students). Eventually, though, Shakespeare will be "translated". And that is too bad.
All languages evolve. Witness the obscurity of Old English (a bit of misnomer calling it "English"), the musical unfamiliarity of Middle English, the difficulties of Elizabethan-Jacobean English (witness the objections of undergraduates who complain that Shakespeare's plays and poetry are not written in English), and--finally--witness the ways in which the English language has been shifting (acquiring new words and eliminating old one; and tolerance for grammatical aberrations that would have been unthinkable half a century ago). Well, with all of that having been said, are we at the point where we need "modern" Shakespeare so that audiences and readers can "get it"? I hope that we will not arrive there in my lifetime, and I press onward in my literature classrooms with the Quixotic hope as I expose students to "old" works--Chaucer, Donne, Shakespeare, and even Milton (whose work is also too hard for new students). Eventually, though, Shakespeare will be "translated". And that is too bad.
ReplyDelete