How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare (21 page)

Exterior of the New Globe Theatre
(photo credit 21.5)

1590–1594

The first period of Shakespeare’s work stretches from about 1590 to 1594, and these early plays include:

•
Henry VI
,
which is actually three plays in all, referred to as
Parts
1, 2, and 3. Here Shakespeare virtually invented the idea of the history play. While these plays are difficult to read, filled as they are with politics and battles, they can be effective onstage
.

•
Richard III
,
an exuberant study of evil that is surprisingly funny and enormously entertaining. Richard kills everyone who gets in his way to achieving then holding on to the throne of England, but you can’t help admiring him for his panache and eloquence
.

•
Titus Andronicus
,
which is full of gory doings, like a modern horror movie but with better lines
.

•
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
,
the least successful of Shakespeare’s comedies, but the first time he has a woman dress up as a young man. It also includes good roles for a dog named Crab and his master Launce
.

•
The Comedy of Errors
,
about two pairs of identical twins—one pair of masters and one pair of servants—who inadvertently confuse an entire town
.

•
The Taming of the Shrew
,
Shakespeare’s first comic masterpiece, about a bawdy, rambunctious reprobate named Petruchio who marries a shrew named Kate for her money, then comes to appreciate her
.

1594–1601

During Shakespeare’s second period, from about 1594 to 1601, he wrote many of the plays we associate with his greatest genius, including, among others:

•
Richard II
,
a study of kingship in which a rightful king is deposed. (When Queen Elizabeth’s throne was threatened in 1601 by a former favorite, the Earl of Essex, this play was revived by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, apparently to the queen’s displeasure.)

•
Love’s Labour’s Lost
,
a comedy about four noblemen who swear off women for three years in order to study. Almost immediately four desirable women, led by the Princess of France, arrive, and the men start changing their tune. It is full of complex wordplay and joyously absurd characters
.

•
Romeo and Juliet
,
the tragic, lyrical romance that remains Shakespeare’s most popular play. Romeo and Juliet fall in love and marry despite their families’ hatred for each other, and it ends in death
.

•
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
,
Shakespeare’s tribute to the world of fairies, filled with the greatest lyric poetry ever written. A quartet of lovers flee to the forest, the fairy king and queen fight over a servant, a magic flower makes people fall in love, and a tradesman named Bottom becomes an ass. Along with
Twelfth Night
,
it’s the greatest comedy of all time
.

•
The Merchant of Venice
,
called a “comedy” when it was first printed, but not a comedy at all. Shylock, a Jew, is vilified by the Gentile community because of his beliefs. In revenge, he demands a “pound of flesh” as interest on a loan, and Portia, disguised as a judge, begs him to be merciful. It is shot through with sadness
.

•
Henry IV, Part 1
,
the play that introduced Falstaff into the world. Prince Hal, heir to the throne, is torn between duty, represented by his father, King Henry IV, and youthful rebellion, represented by the glorious old wastrel with the big belly. Hal’s nemesis is the warrior Hotspur, who is part of a rebellion against the monarchy. The play has claims to being one of Shakespeare’s three or four greatest
.

•
Henry IV, Part 2
,
a sequel that is knottier than
Part 1
and ends with Hal’s rejection of Falstaff. Falstaff’s reminiscences with his old friend Justice Shallow show Shakespeare at the height of his art. It is not quite the masterpiece that
Part 1
is, but Falstaff is equally remarkable
.

•
The Merry Wives of Windsor
,
a farcical comedy in which Falstaff tries to seduce two married women at the same time and has to flee from a jealous husband in a laundry basket. Falstaff has none of the depth he has in the history plays, but he remains a delight, and the play is rightly an audience favorite
.

•
Julius Caesar
,
a play about politics and Roman history. Caesar is murdered on the Ides of March, and the play is about the political aftermath. Leave this one to adulthood
.

•
Much Ado About Nothing
,
one of Shakespeare’s three great “high comedies,” in which he took his comic art to a new level. It features the warring lovers Beatrice and Benedick, who learn, in their maturity, that they adore each other. It also involves a villain, young love, a masked ball, and a dim constable named Dogberry. It is witty, hilarious, touching, and the most surefire comedy Shakespeare ever wrote. A masterpiece
.

•
As You Like It
,
another of the “high comedies,” this one set mostly in the Forest of Arden, where the gentle, spiritual countryside is contrasted with the bustling corrupt life of the court. Rosalind dresses up as a boy to escape a wicked uncle, and in this disguise she pursues Orlando, the man she loves. Rosalind is a self-possessed, good-natured, independent woman (Shakespeare created several such women), and she, along with Falstaff, is one of the wittiest talkers in all of Shakespeare
.

•
Troilus and Cressida
,
a bitter tale of love and betrayal set during the Trojan War. It is one of three plays known as “the problem plays,” so named because they raise difficult moral issues that are unhappily resolved. The other two problem plays are
All’s Well That Ends Well
and
Measure for Measure
.

•
Henry V
,
Shakespeare’s most famous history play. The eponymous hero was once Prince Hal from the
Henry IV
plays and has now grown into the warrior king who saves the English from the French. Over the centuries it has been considered to be a play about heroism, but more recently it has been interpreted as an antiwar play. It is full of theater metaphors and contains some of Shakespeare’s most rousing speeches
.

•
Twelfth Night
,
the last of the great high comedies. Viola loses her twin brother in a shipwreck and dresses as a boy, at which point the Countess Olivia falls in love with her. Meanwhile the pompous steward Malvolio tries to woo his mistress. And all the while, Olivia’s uncle, Sir Toby Belch, carouses with his foolish friend Sir Andrew Aguecheek. There are moments of hilarity and others of deep longing. Every part is comic perfection. For me, this is Shakespeare’s greatest comedy
.

1601–1608

The third period can be said to stretch from about 1600 to 1608 and includes all the major tragedies, including:

•
Hamlet
,
often considered the greatest play ever written. On the surface the play is about a prince of Denmark who is racked by knowledge of his mother’s infidelity to his father and is determined to avenge the murder of his father by his uncle Claudius. It may well be the richest play in our literature—on every reading it gets deeper and deeper
.

•
Macbeth
,
the quintessential study of the moral corruption of a man’s soul. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth murder their way to the throne of Scotland, but Macbeth is beset by conscience. It is dark, short, powerful, and frightening. (It also contains perhaps the only happy marriage in all of Shakespeare, that of the Macbeths. Ironic, I know.)

•
Othello
.
The tragedy here is so painful that watching it is like looking at a fatal car accident in slow motion. It is a study of pure evil in the character of Othello’s lieutenant Iago, who sets out to destroy a great man by making him mad with jealousy over his wife Desdemona. She is entirely innocent, but Othello ends up strangling her to death and then taking his own life
.

•
Antony and Cleopatra
,
one of the Roman plays, a study of power, age, and sexual desire between two great rulers of the world. It is told in a long series of short scenes and can be overwhelmingly powerful. Cleopatra is one of Shakespeare’s richest characters
.

•
King Lear
,
rightly considered one of Shakespeare’s three or four greatest plays, about a king who fatally divides his kingdom between his two vicious daughters, Goneril and Regan. He goes mad with grief, then recovers, only to learn that his third daughter, the one who loved him, has been hanged. Tremendously powerful and heartbreaking
.

1608–1613

The fourth and final period stretches from the end of the great tragedies to the end of Shakespeare’s writing life in about 1613. It includes four plays that show Shakespeare experimenting with yet another dramatic form, one that combines tragedy, comedy, and romance. The three best are:

•
Cymbeline
,
a fairy tale, with a wicked stepmother and her doltish son, as well as two noble princes raised in the wild by a kindly old man. Though respect for the play has ebbed and flowed over the centuries, the heroine, Imogen, was a favorite role of the greatest English actress of the late nineteenth century, Ellen Terry. I find the play magical and inspiring
.

•
The Winter’s Tale
,
a story of jealousy, death, resurrection, and redemption—almost
Othello
with a happy ending. A king, Leontes, becomes unreasonably jealous of his innocent wife, and his young son dies as a result. Sixteen years later he meets the daughter he cruelly abandoned; then the wife he thought was dead comes back to life
.

•
The Tempest
,
Shakespeare’s final play of startling greatness. It opens with a shipwreck, and the survivors take refuge on an island ruled by a powerful magician named Prospero. During the story, Prospero gives up his dreams of vengeance and comes to recognize the power of forgiveness. In the process, his daughter Miranda falls in love with his enemy’s son, and his servant Ariel, a spirit, is finally set free
.

As your children learn the passages in this book, you should make them aware of Shakespeare’s relative maturity when he wrote the play you’re studying. The object is to develop their ears for poetry so that they ultimately become acute to the distinctive sound of each phase of Shakespeare’s development. In
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
, for example, it isn’t hard to hear a youthful exuberance.

Captain of our fairy band
,

Helena is here at hand!

In
Twelfth Night
, on the other hand, written in the middle years, we hear a new seriousness, comedy tinged with gravity, a sense of sadness at the passing of time.

In delay there lies no plenty
,

Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty
,

Youth’s a stuff will not endure
.