English Teacher Already Armed With Deadly Weapon Called Shakespeare

[ehrnst]

(From The Onion)

CHAMBERSBURG, PA—As the national debate surrounding school shootings continues with President Trump recently suggesting educators carry guns in the classroom, high school English teacher Mary Bacher told reporters Thursday that she was already armed with a deadly weapon called Shakespeare. “There’s nothing more lethal than the razor-sharp wit of the great Bard of Avon,” said Bacher, noting that when it comes to defense, she is “locked and loaded” with the devastating free verse found in the 37 plays and 154 sonnets of the late 16th century English playwright and poet. “His works have brought the great to their knees, and even the most heavily armored of hearts cannot withstand the penetrating insight and incandescent passion of his mellifluous sonnets. To wield the power of one of the greatest minds in history, I don’t need a concealed carry license—just access to his arsenal of high-caliber words.” Bacher confirmed that if she were in an active shooter situation, she would merely quote Henry V’s “St. Crispin’s Day” speech aloud to her students to give them courage and instill confidence that the pen is truly mightier than the sword.

https://local.theonion.com/english-teacher-already-armed-with-deadly-weapon-called-1823427645

[underpants]

1. If you want everyone to fall asleep

I hate Shakespeare

[Aristus]

2. Then you've never heard Shakespeare the way it was meant to be performed.

The fault lies not in yourself, my dear underpants, but in the stars who portray the Bard...

[OnDoutside]

15. That's so true, and a bawdy audience helps too !!! I once saw Macbeth in a theatre that was packed

with fellow students, and were primed to interject at time honored points like

LADY MACBETH

[...] I have given suck, and know
How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me.
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums
And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this. (1.7.62-67)

In unison they made the popping sound with their finger inside their mouth

The actors did really well to hold it together, but the point is that Shakespearean theater was like that.

[Mosby]

16. shades of rocky horror.

[OnDoutside]

17. Yes, definitely.

[ehrnst]

5. Shakespeare's plays are like sheet music

It was never meant to be read by anyone but a skilled, trained performer.

He wouldn't even give his actors full scripts - just their lines, and the four words preceding their lines as a cue.

See a good production by a good company.

And having been trained as such, I don't consider it children's theatre. Maybe Midsummer's Night Dream, but anything else, no.

Especially the history plays - his audience knew those people's stories like we know about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

[Leith]

6. Don't Read Shakespeare - Watch It

I had to read Julius Caesar in sophomore English. The lines of the play were on the left side, the explanation and translation to modern English on the right.

I hated it. C'mon! Making a joke with "awl" and "all" wasn't funny!

Then my teacher heard that the theater department of Wayne State University (Detroit) was doing the play and arranged for us to go see it.

Of all the field trips I ever took in school, this was the best.

Plays are not meant to be read. They are meant to be watched. After that, I made sure to see every movie made from a Shakespeare play that I could: Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Taming of the Shrew. Heck, you wouldn't judge Casablanca or Fiddler on the Roof just by reading the scripts, would you?

[ProudLib72]

3. Meh, more like The Upstart Crow.

Besides, everyone dies in Shakespeare, so he is not the best role model for children.

Anti-Semitism, racism, misogyny are all major themes.

[Hekate]

10. And yet, still great literature. Essay assignment!

Just joking -- but as an old Lit major, I can say it's a worthy exercise. I read a number of Yukio Mishima's elegantly-written books in translation back when, and concluded that yes, he was a great author, and no, I couldn't stand his themes. So there you have it.

[ProudLib72]

13. I recall reading an article about how Shakespeare set out to create a well rounded

Jewish character in Shylock but gave up in the end because he understood his audience wouldn't appreciate it. I can believe it. The rabble in the pit at the Globe would have harbored some anti-Semitic attitudes and would have loved the fact that Shylock was bested in the end (and by a woman no less!).

Zounds! Can you imagine having to create plays that would appeal to both the Queen and the deplorables?

[DBoon]

4. Never bring a Shakespeare...

... to a Beowulf fight

[Hekate]

8. My copy of The Complete Works must weigh 20 pounds & packs a wallop Grendel would envy.

Huzzah!

[ehrnst]

9. My first folio facsimile might take yours at 20 paces.

Riverside?

[Hekate]

11. Heh. Yes, the Riverside edition is still with me.

[ehrnst]

14. I still have mine

Filled with notes and highlighting.

Lugged that sucker across campus in undergrad school.

[Hekate]

7. Well-played Onion. But one quibble: Shakespeare never wrote free verse. nt

[cloudbase]

12. That's a BB gun.

The real WMD in literature is Dickens.