Hang on. Are they cancelling Shakespeare?
Not quite. Nothing less thrilling than (deep breath) “A National Council for Curriculum and Assessment report on consultation for the new Leaving Cert English draft specification” has raised questions about the need for Shakespeare’s works to remain compulsory for higher-level students in English. Some waffle about “the limitations this placed on the experience of the students”.
“Thou sodden-witted lord! Thou hast no more brain than I have in mine elbows!
That’s Troilus and Cressida, right? Calm down. At time of writing, it looks as if the Department of Education still supports the current curricular advice that “at Higher Level a play by Shakespeare must be one of the texts chosen”. A spokesmen for the department explained the Swan of Avon’s work should “remain a compulsory element of the curriculum given the central importance of his works”.
Well, duh!
Is that Henry IV Part II?
On reflection, maybe the objectors have a point. Isn’t Shakespeare too white, too male and too dead?
“If the day ever comes when Shakespeare is no longer acted, read and studied, quoted and loved, Western Man will be near his end,” JB Priestley wrote in 1960. “No bad thing,” some of the revisionists might respond. This strain of the argument has been bubbling since the rise of postcolonial studies during the postwar years. On the other side, Conservative commentators such as Katharine “UK’s strictest head teacher” Birbalsingh have feared that Priestley’s projected erasure really is imminent. “I’m worried about the trend in America that is now influencing what’s happening over here, where eventually we will do away with cultural icons like Shakespeare,” she said.
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Well, I don’t want that. But maybe Shakespeare belongs in the theatre not in the classroom
Theatrical royalty agrees. “I don’t think Shakespeare should be taught in schools,” Helen Mirren said in 2020. “All young people’s [first] experience of Shakespeare should be … watching it in the theatre.” Well, that’s fine if you live near one of the great reparatory theatres. Besides which, the language has literary value in and of itself. You may as well teach English without Shakespeare as teach physics and omit Newton’s Laws of Motion.
But what relevance do the activities of a 14th-century Danish prince or a bewitched Athenian mechanical have to a young person in 21st-century Ireland?
Funny how people who make this argument rarely mention the alien humanoids and sentient drones in Star Wars.
Anyway, what does this have to do with Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley?
Nothing directly. But those two Irish actors have received raves on the festival circuit for their turns as William and Anne “Agnes” Shakespeare in Chloé Zhao’s adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet. Buckley is already an unbackable favourite for the Oscar. Expect school groups to flock when it opens in January.
