< previous page page_11 next page >

Page 11

Probably the most vigorous trading in Shakespeare’s cultural capital still goes on in schools and universities; and despite the intransigence of institutions, the promise of small-time Shakespeare, specifically as an antidote to the ills of big-time Shakespeare, lies within the educational system. Students have always found a way to circumvent the reigning wisdom. Back in 1887, The Girl’s Own Paper sponsored a contest, asking its young readers to submit essays about “My Favorite Heroine from Shakespeare.” In reporting the results, the contest organizers admitted that Portia, “the lady Lawyer,” was hands-down the girls’ own favorite. To their chagrin, Shakespeare’s “exquisite” tragic heroines had far fewer partisans (“Essay Writing’’ 1888:381). Should it come as a surprise that young girls would vote for long life, success, and happy marriages over an early death and a gold commemorative statue, which is the fate of Shakespeare’s Juliet? The contest organizers also complained about the number of essayists who strayed from the topic, using Portia as a pretext for feminist pronouncements. This, however, is the kind of activity that Martha Rozett (1994) calls “talking back to Shakespeare,” a pedagogical practice that takes shape as both a challenge to tradition and a conversation among peers.

Shakespeare and Appropriation takes as its premise the usefulness of talking back to Shakespeare. It includes students as well as Shakespeareans in the audience that it attempts to reach, and either grounds its discussion in texts that we hope will remain readily available or makes available texts and readings to which students would probably lack access. References to Shakespeare’s plays are marked in the essays and generally keyed to the Norton Shakespeare, which is rapidly becoming the classroom standard for post-secondary Shakespeare courses, at least in the United States. As Martin Orkin’s (1998) recent essay on Shakespeare’s continued influence in the educational system of South Africa might suggest, we not only need to talk back to Shakespeare, but also to widen the conversation to include more discussants from beyond the shores of England and North America.

The importance of Shakespearean appropriation in the classroom, perhaps the smallest of small-time Shakespeare, is suggested by Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman’s Shakespeare in Love (1998). There are some jokes aimed at Shakespeare scholars, but others that anyone who has survived the ninth grade in the United States can enjoy. Gwyneth Paltrow’s nurse seems to have stepped right out of Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, which despite its brief

< previous page page_11 next page >