The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 18.0328 Tuesday, 8 May 2007
[1] From: Ike Rodman <
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Date: Thursday, 3 May 2007 12:12:32 -0700
Subj: Re: SHK 18.0317 Shakespeare Not
[2] From: Ike Rodman <
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Date: Thursday, 3 May 2007 12:12:32 -0700
Subj: Re: SHK 18.0317 Shakespeare Not
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Ike Rodman <
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Date: Thursday, 3 May 2007 12:12:32 -0700
Subject: 18.0317 Shakespeare Not
Comment: Re: SHK 18.0317 Shakespeare Not
"The Vanishing Shakespeare: a report from the American Council of Trustees
and Alumni," documents the lack of a curriculum requirement at many
colleges and universities for English majors to take a course on
Shakespeare, "one of the preeminent representatives of English language
and literature."
The report asks, "If reading Shakespeare is not central to a liberal
education, what is?"
Toward the end of the document, just before the Credits page, we find
Be not afraid of greatness:
some are born great, some achieve
greatness and some have greatness
thrust upon them
--Twelfth Night
Can there be any doubt that this quotation was placed there as an
admonition to educators to require Shakespeare?
Use of this often-abused quotation in this place would seem to demonstrate
that the people who put together this report do not know Shakespeare
themselves and are unaware of the irony implicit in their use of the
quotation.
The lines are used in the play, of course, to fool an obnoxious ideologue
into making an ass of himself.
These lines were once used (also, one would guess, by well-meaning people
who had found the quotation in Bartlett's or somewhere and had no idea
about the context in the play) to introduce Lyndon B. Johnson.
Does anyone on this list remember the place and the speaker of that
introduction of Johnson?
Ike Rodman
[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: L. Swilley <
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Date: Friday, 4 May 2007 08:51:53 -0500
Subject: 18.0317 Shakespeare Not
Comment: Re: SHK 18.0317 Shakespeare Not
As Matthew Arnold instructed us, we should be teaching the best of our
culture's past. With that as our guide, it is impossible to allow that
anyone presuming to be educated should not have studied the works of
Shakespeare.
But such a position would require us to prescribe a hierarchy of content
in every subject and a hierarchy of subjects in every school, every
university, a grading we are loathe to make, since we have no common
agreement on what is more or less important to know, on we are and what we
should be because of what we are.
In his essay, "The Crisis of Liberal Education," Allan Bloom makes this
related point:
"The problem of liberal education is a result of a fantastic growth of
specialization...because, in order to admit all these specialities into
the curriculum and give them equal status as they demand, all sense of
unity and hierarchy has had to be abandoned. The only principle visible in
this system is that of tolerance, each field respecting the rights and
dignity of the other. The only criterion for what should be admitted to or
excluded from the university is tradition, and the pressures of public
demand and foundation support can easily overcome that."
Each university subject/department has become a college unto itself, with
no need to acknowledge its greater or lesser place among the other
subjects/departments. And this principle redowns to the offerings in each
department: if there is no hierarchy among the disciplines, neither is
there reason for one among the courses to be offered by the department;
Shakespeare is no more than Judith Krantz.
L. Swilley
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Hardy M. Cook,
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