alt Hacker NewsReading these comments about Shakespeare makes me think that most of you had terrible teachers of Eng. Lit.
Plays, all of them not just Shakespeare, are written to be performed. If your teachers didn't have you perform plays and also watch professional and amateur performances they were derelict in their duties as teachers.
Performance isn't just rote recitation.
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Frankly, Shakespeare is one of the few things I enjoyed reading in school. It was classic American novels I couldn’t stand. I couldn’t tell you why, but getting through something even as simple as Tom Sawyer was such a chore for me.
The teacher makes a huge difference. My kids teacher somehow made The Odyssey a page turner for them and when the movie came out they were able to critique and delta the way the movie and book portrayed Odysseus. I was pretty impressed, because like the parent, The Odyssey and Shakespeare was a form of torture when I was in school.
I guess I can't lump every English teacher into the same bucket, but in my experience, they aren't particularly skilled at explaining the context behind a lot of the stuff being taught.