I’ve just received an e-mail from a concerned parent whose children are being taught Shakespeare badly at high school. Here’s the text of the relevant part of the e-mail. My reply follows.

 

Good morning Mr. Pearce. I am an avid listener of Catholic Answers, so I knew where to come for my question.

 

My niece is also a student at Ave Maria University, but I am unsure if she has taken your class, yet.

 

I am hoping you would be willing to answer some questions for me about Shakespeare.

 

My two children attend public school and I also work at the school as an Associate. Our school is very small, so occasionally I sit at lunch with one of our high school English teachers and we talk. Last week she caught my attention by talking about Shakespeare. I do think she is a good English teacher in the respects that she enjoys teaching and is interested in her students learning. My daughter will be entering college in the fall, majoring in English. She hopes to become a book editor and work for a publishing company She loves books and reading and so has read Shakespeare in her previous class with this teacher. My daughter is also helping out this teacher as a TA. This teacher is the 9th and 10th grade english teacher. This teacher made the comment that Shakespeare was trying to reach the “Common Citizen” of his time, and so his plays are geared to their mindset. She made the statement that he was very interested in sex and that whenever he makes a statement like “Unsheath thy sword”, he is really making a bawdy attempt at connecting with the common people of the time. She said he meant that he was unsheating his genitals. So now, all the 9th graders are totatlly interested in Shakespeare because this teacher is presenting him with a sexual content.

 

I have not studied Shakespeare for a very long time, since high school, and my teacher certainly did not speak of these attributes of Shakespeare,

 

Can you answer my question and tell me if she is correct? Since my daughter is her TA, she is hearing this version of Shakespeare and I don’t agree with the teacher. My son is currently in 8th grade and will be entering her class in the fall, so I’m very concerned about the way she is teaching Shakespeare.

 

Was he just trying to connect with the people of his time? I will probably direct her to your website and your discussions about Shakespeare, but I’m pretty sure after hearing her speak about other issues, that she is so mainstreamed and against religion that I won’t get far. I will still try.

 

What other information do you have regarding Shakespeare that other educational professionals can look at?

 

Thank you for taking the time to read my email. I would GREATLY appreciate any comments you have.

Thank you …

 

And here’ my reply:

 

It is true that Shakespeare uses bawdy humour and that phrases such as “unsheathing thy sword” contain sexual doubles-entendres. It is, however, a serious misreading of Shakespeare to pay too much attention to the use of such humour as light relief to the exclusion of the deeper religious and moral content. I suggest that you buy my two books, The Quest for Shakespeare: The Bard of Avon and the Church of Rome and Through Shakespeare’s Eyes: Seeing the Catholic Presence in the Plays in order understand the religious dimension at the heart of Shakespeare’s work. You should also purchase the Ignatius Critical Editions of Shakespeare plays such as Hamlet, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice and Julius Caesar. I particularly recommend that you buy the ICEs of the plays that your children will be studying with this teacher so that they can be forearmed against any nonsense that they might hear in the classroom.