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Kyle StooshnovUBC SN: 57133084

ETEC 530 Section 65B

March 6, 2011

Situated Shakespeare:How 21 st Century New Media Makes Shakespeare More Accessible

In his review of James Shapiros biography, 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare ,

the author Nick Hornby writes that Shapiros work has to be the first port of call now for anyone teaching

or studying four of the plays mentioned in the biography. He also coins the phrase that later became

the title of his third collection of Stuff Ive Been Reading articles for the Believer magazine: Shakespeare

Wrote for Money, which is Hornbys fascinating and facile way of explaining why the playwright wrote his

plays. Much has been written about the plays, the poetry, the Renaissance and the enduring legacy of

Shakespeare, the majority of it aimed at academics like Hornby, a former English teacher who writes

about all his years devouring such biographies similar to (but less original than) Shapiros 1599 .

(Hornby, 2008) The coined phrase also reflects upon its authors own thoughts as a best-selling novelist

who is writing for money in the Believer ; and points towards the powerful cultural learning process

created by media, technology and creative capitalists being more instructive than traditional school

learning. (Gee, 2004)

As much as researchers have to write, and teachers have to teach, about the person William

Shakespeare, based on the centuries of evidence scholars have accumulated, there is still very little

known about the person who wrote the plays, but remains a mystery himself. Knowing that he could


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afford to keep a house and his family in Stratford-Upon-Avon while living in London provides answer to

the question of why Shakespeare wrote, yet the answer to how (as Hornby mentions) will always be

elusive. (Hornby, 2008) In learning about the works of Shakespeare, the students will have to

construct their own reason as to how he wrote them. It would be next to impossible to reproduce the

circumstances that brought about his work, however, they still inspire generations of writers to write.

Instead, teachers are currently investigating more contemporary ways of teaching the plays: using video,

the Internet, social networking and other new media to create new conditions for constructively

experiencing the plays.

Before continuing with the investigation of contemporary methods of teaching the play, another

question should be raised. Why is Shakespeare still taught at school? There are many answers

ranging from excellent storytelling skills to the permanence of English cultural colonialism, with diverse

strata of reasons for and against its inclusion in Language Arts and Drama curricula. On the positive

side of these arguments are such ideas that the plays are worthwhile and intrinsically good, while the

negative side considers the unwillingness to expand beyond outdated traditions and the teachers who

make it boring. Kolloff and Rahimzadeh mention the anxiety and annoyance faced by high school

students faced with studying Shakespeare before offering suggestions for innovative ways for teachers to

include on-line role-play learning. (Kolloff & Rahimzadeh, 2004) Their approach to introducing

Shakespeare is a synchronous on-line discussion with the playwright. Teaching the plays is a challenge

even for seasoned English and Drama teachers, whose adoration of the language of the plays prevent


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children from engaging with the stories (Spangler, 2009), and especially intimidating for less enthusiastic

teachers, who seek to get through the curriculum using the most available resources, such as dog-eared

editions from the schools resource centre. This essay will look into new and innovative ways of

teaching Shakespeare through the use of new media technology, and evaluate their effectiveness.

It is important to keep in mind, while evaluating the works of Shakespeare as literature, and the

predominance of textbooks and study guides of the plays, that their author was a playwright more

interested in getting bodies into the Globe Theatre and other theatrical venues than being on a

bookshops bestseller list. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare , often known as the First Folio

edition, was a project started by colleagues of Shakespeare soon after his death, and while there were

earlier print versions, known as Quattro editions, they were more or less bootlegged versions of the

popular plays intended to be a source of quick cash for the anonymous publishers. He wrote his plays

to be viewed by audiences, not necessarily read by anyone other than the actors. (Williamson, 2009;

Spangler, 2009) In the late 1970s, the British Broadcasting Corporation began their ambitious plan to

produce all thirty-seven plays of the Complete Works and broadcast them as a video reference. BBC

Shakspeare was followed in the next two decades by an increasing number of mainstream cinema

adaptation of the plays by directors such as Trevor Nunn and Kenneth Branagh. While various other

film and television productions depicted and adapted the plays, they still remained a passive resource,

less interactive than seeing the plays in their original setting, a live theatre. As early as 1994, during the

height of the filmmakers renaissance, scholars looked ahead to more interactive applications:


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In the not-too-distant future, students and teachers alike will be using

computer software to move in and out of different performances and

adaptations with ease, setting them side-by-side on screen with

written texts and producing their own collages and adaptations.

(Rozett, 1994)

Just another decade after this prediction, YouTube was available on-line, and the new media approach to

teaching Shakespeare had begun.

Christy Desmet writes about the phenomenon of the video-sharing website and its application

for teachers and students. While the Internet site makes thousands of scenes available for viewing, they

do require some hunting down to find applicable or teachable monologues or scenes: a search of the

famous soliloquy To Be or Not To Be brings up Ethan Hawke, Richard Burton and Laurence Olivier (in

that order), as well as Mel Brooks, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gilligan Island parodies. More

interesting and perhaps more instructive for students is the opportunity to create their own version of the

plays, either as their own digital film or a mash up using available video, pop songs, Lego bricks and

various other media to upload onto YouTube. Looking to Lawrence Lessigs creative appropriation and

reuse of existing material (Desmet, 2009; see also Shamburg & Craighead, 2009; Lessig, 2004, 2006)

for inspiration, teachers should encourage their students to adapt, modify, rip and remix the text and

images of plays. Joshua H. Cabat offers some appealing lesson ideas that make use of YouTube, as

well as other ripper softward like EasyDVD, HandBrake, iMovie and Garage Band for the Telegram


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Exercise and Yak Traks which allow student to condense the plays language and add commentary to

the plays. (Cabat, 2009) While Desmet and Cabats lessons provide innovative and engaging learning

for students, it is the process, not the product that is the rewarding aspect of the students work. Most

video that appropriate copyrighted material will eventually be pulled from YouTube, and those that remain

become a drop in the ocean of countless other amateur films.

Social networking has become an easily accessed resource for many students, and also

applicable for lessons on Shakespeares plays, so that uploaded video is not only viewed, but evaluated

by others, modeling nicely the peer review process that are often used for critical analysis (Desmet,

2009) of how well their classmates performed Shakespeare. Viewing of Shakespearean videos should

be thought of as more than a supplement to reading the text, but also requires discussion on its own.

While Williamson explains her in-class activity where she invites students to take a virtual seat

(Williamson, 2009) while watching videos of Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet , her idea could incorporate

student blogs and connect to other websites with information on the Elizabethan theatres and their

patrons. Her idea could also be carried further with the on-line platform of Second Life, which has the

Globe Theatre in the virtual environment.

Since its inception in 2008, staging plays has been sporadic, with only a couple of scenes from

Hamlet and Twelfth Night performed live on the web. (Centaur, 2009) Details of both the theatre and

avatars period costumes are well rendered, yet the few times I have visited the site it had been empty of


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other avatars, and full of advertisements. Showing students the insides of an Elizabethan theatre may

require programmers and software developers to design a more accessible Virtual Globe for classroom

use. For the time being, the movie Shakespeare in Love provides an excellent re-creation of the Rose

and the Curtain theatres, as well as the people who lived in Shakespeares era. While Second Life

offers the opportunity to stage specific versions of the plays, as well as offering a multitude of educational

options (as reported in Jaregi et al., 2011; Lu, 2010; and Dutton, 2009), the performance is still choppy

and limited in movement, as can be seen in Act 1 Scene 1 clip from Hamlet . The technology to

represent film-quality action on computer screens remains far off in the not-too-distant future.

Australian researchers have studies an innovative approach to Shakespeare which makes use

of digital age technology: mobile and specifically smart phones carried by most students. The country

itself has a long and rich history of producing the plays, as well as bringing them into school through the

State theatre companies and Bell Shakespeare (Clark, 2007), and it is no surprise that educators are

developing more modern lesson plans. The pre-text lesson described in Carroll and Camerons case

study may have lasted for 50 minutes, but the students use of smart phones SMS text messaging,

Internet and photo capabilities add more of a constructivist approach to learning about the themes of

mistaken identity inspired by the play Twelfth Night . (Carroll & Cameron, 2009) The teachers make the

play more applicable to 21 st century by including problems such as vague instant messages and

ambiguous social network content, both used by many as a quick way to send out information without too

much thought as to who will receiving and interpreting the message. Students receive text messages


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from Ces (Violas pseudonym, Cesario), read threatening posts by Andrew (Aguecheek) on Bebo social

networking site and recreate the image of Olivia by wearing a pink scarf in digital photos. Each of these

activities have the students attempt to interpret the plays meaning without any prior knowledge of the play.

The teacher makes use of the students affinity space (Gee, 2004) and even reaffirms the students

expert knowledge of technology, more than the adult teacher in some cases (Carroll & Cameron, 2009).

It would have been interesting to read the follow up to this case study, and see if such pre-text activity has

a qualitative effect on the students understanding of Shakespeares play.

It is often said that every generation gets the version of Shakespeare they deserve, and with

biographers and scholars unable to produce new evidence of the type of person the playwright was,

Shakespeare and his plays will continue to be open to interpretation. It is a situation very similar to the

indeterminate identity of students today, with the various labels that allude to but never accurately

describe the people who are the Net generation, digital natives, millennials or shape-shifting portfolio

people. (Tapscott, 2008; Prensky, 2001; Howe & Strauss, 2000; Gee, 2004) In studying the plays,

students should be learning how open to interpretation they are designed to be; not written in stone as

they were perceived by other generations, like 19 th century Bardolaters or 20 th century baby boomers.

While a person named William may have put quill to parchment to produce lines for a play, it was also the

actors of the Lord Chamberlains Men and others who co-created the plays on the stage, elaborating on

some speeches or truncating other scenes to meet the demands of the audience. When the First Folio

was coming together, it was the result of many years of player and playwright collaboration. One


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instance that shows the malleable state of the plays before publication is one of the earliest tragedies,

Titus Andronicus gaining a flying-killing scene based on the more mature language and themes of the

later tragedy King Lear . Shakespeare did write for money, after all, and knew what sells.


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References

Cabat, Joshua H., (2009). The lash of film: New paradigms of visuality in teaching Shakespeare.English Journal 99 (1). 56-57.

Carroll, John & Cameron, David, (2009). Drama, digitial pre-text and social media. Research inDrama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 14 (2). 295-312.

Centaur, Ina, (2009). Fourteen pillar fundraising campaign. Second Life Shakespeare Companywebsite URL: http://SLShakespeare.com/pr/14pillars.txt . Article retrieved on March 6 th, 2011.

Clark, John, (2007). Playing with Shakespeare . Putney: Phoenix Education Pty Ltd.

Desmet, Christy, (2009). Teaching Shakespeare with YouTube. English Journal 99 (1). 65-70.

Dutton, Catherine L., (2009). A qualitative study of educator experiences in a virtual world . Ann Arbor:ProQuest LLC.

Gee, James Paul, (2004). Situated language and learning: A critique of traditional schooling . NewYork: Routledge.

Hornby, Nick, (2008). Shakespeare wrote for money . San Francisco: Believer Books.

Howe, Neil & Strauss, William, (2000). Millennial rising: The next great generation . New York: VintageBooks.

Jaregi, Kristi; Canto, Silvia; de Graaff, Rick; Koenraad, Ton & Moonen, Machteld, (2011). Verbalinteraction in Second Life: Towards a pedagogic framework for task design. Computer Assisted Language Learning 24 (1). 77-101.

Kolloff, Mary Ann & Rahimzadeh, Kevin, (2004). Distance learning and role play: A web-bard pedagogy.Chicago: Association for Educational Communications and Technology , October 19 th-23 rd.

Lessig, Lawrence, (2006). Code: And other laws of cyberspace, version 2.0 . New York: Basic.

---, (2004). Free culture: How Big Media uses technology and the law to lock down culture and control creativity . New York: Penguin.

Lu, Lilly, (2010). Teaching 21 st-century art education in a virtual age: Art caf at Second Life. Art Education 63 (6). 19-24.


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Prensky, Marc, (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the Horizon . MCB University Press9(5). 1-6.

Rozett, Martha Tuck, (1994). Talking back to Shakespeare . London: Associated University Presses.

Shamberg, Christopher & Craighead, Cari, (2009). Shakespeare, our digital native. English Journal 99(1). 74-77.

Spangler, Susan, (2009). Stop reading Shakespeare! English Journal 99 (1). 130-132.

Tapscott, Don, (2008). Growing up digital: How the net generation is changing your world . New York:McGraw-Hill.

Williamson, Lynette, (2009). Virtual seating in the Globe theatre: Appreaching film adaptations of Shakespeares plays. English Journal 99 (1). 71-73.

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