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Originally Posted by Kevin8or
I'd like to hear your opinions on this one: Shakespeare in high school. Elizabethan English for teenagers? It wasn't so bad for me in college, but I think high school is too early. I wonder if I'll never love Shakespeare because it was forced upon me too soon.
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Back in the mists of time when I was at school, it seemed the teachers did everything they could to make Shakespeare as dreary as possible. But I had been lucky enough to go to a good production of "Twelfth Night" the year before I went to high school. So I KNEW Shakespeare was wonderful, however dreary the teachers made him.
And "Twelfth Night" is still my favourite Shakespeare play - I haven't seen all of them (or read all of them) but I have seen and/or read quite a number.
It seems to me that the way to introduce high school children to Shakespeare is to take them to see a professional performance of one or more of the plays - that's what grabs you and that's how they were meant to be experienced. Preferably ones with plenty of action, like "Macbeth".
And to add to the list of loathed books: "Crime and Punishment" which I had to read at University, where I was a mature age (well, in my twenties) student. I remember saying something about it to a friend who was herself a high school teacher of English, and she said "Just be glad you don't have to read "The Idiot"!" So Dostoievsky is definitely not on my reading list.