by Brodie Erk, Junior

This Friday, November 21, the Junior and Senior classes had the opportunity to see a live performance of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, performed by PA Shakespeare Festival’s WillPower professional touring company. Most students are excited, but there are likely some who simply don’t understand why so much of high school education is dedicated to the works of one man. This is an understandable sentiment. I myself once felt similarly, even after reading Romeo and Juliet. But, then I read Macbeth.

You might believe that all of Shakespeare’s plays are boring, devoted entirely to romance and drama, but you would be wrong. Macbeth is thrilling. That is, if you consider stories containing witches, wars, assasination, prophecy, and insanity interesting, which I do. It’s also dark; darker by far than Romeo and Juliet, and much more engaging. While the things that make comedy and love compelling may have changed over time, insanity, greed, and war have always been the same, and so a tale showing how they change a heroic man into a monster is just as interesting now as it ever was. 

That should explain why the performance won’t be a waste of time, but perhaps it doesn’t explain what is ultimately a more important issue: people don’t think that Shakespeare is relevant anymore. I know this both because I have friends who agree, and because a lack of interest in classics is a common attribute of most teenagers. 

To those who question the relevance of classics broadly, I have simply one question: With what would you replace them? Modern literature has plenty of books worth teaching with, certainly, but you might be surprised to find that you don’t like the best of these any more than you enjoy the current selection. Often what people really mean when they say this is that they would rather read more, shall we say, low brow books (or none at all); mostly YA action and romance. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying these books (I’ve read some series like Percy Jackson five times over), but it must be acknowledged it is because they are so easily processed and unchallenging, that they cannot be used to grow a student’s mind. The same goes for ditching books entirely, although no serious person makes this argument. 

So if classics are going to stay, and they most certainly are, the question becomes: What makes Shakespeare good enough to be taught in nearly every year of high school English? It’s a fair point to make, after all, his plays aren’t even necessarily meant to be read in the first place (just one more bonus for the performance we just viewed), and there’s a wealth of other stories out there. While I’m tempted to declare that it is simply because Shakespeare was one of, if not the best English author ever, there is a more objective explanation. 

The Bard, in his genius, reshaped the very language in which he wrote, helping to make it the way it is today. Yes, that’s right, the very Victorian English of his works that many hate to read so much was modern compared to the mess of contradictory rules that existed at the time. 

Like the memes and brainrot of our modern internet, despite much of his language originating from nowhere but himself, it caught on and became officially recognised throughout the world. Unlike Brainrot however, the language he brought into the world had real value, and was recognised as an almost official standard by everyone from commoners to the creators of the first dictionaries.

Not only did he coin phrases, such as “what’s done is done”, “seen better days”, and “all that glitters is not gold”, he also created 1700 new words and phrases, and entire new linguistic actions, such as using a noun as a verb. 

Having a common language, even more than a common culture (which Shakespeare has helped to create) is what bonds people in a society together in a functional way. What’s the purpose of education if not that?

Sources:

Shakespeare’s Grammar Is What Sets Him Apart, Researcher Concludes – Communication Studies.

Shakespeare’s linguistic legacy | OUPblog.