Guest post from Andrew Cowie
Paul Edmondson blogged recently about the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Bible in 1611. So far this year we’ve already had a day of readings on Radio 4, a television documentary and numerous newspaper articles leading up to the anniversary date itself on 11 May.
The King James Bible was published the same year The Tempest was first performed so Shakespeare never read it during his sole-authored play-writing career. But the King James Bible was not a new translation, it was based on the Bishop’s Bible, itself a revision to the Tyndale and Geneva Bibles which preceded it. The similarities in form and language between Shakespeare’s works and the King James Bible have led to speculation that Shakespeare might have been one of its translators. There is even a theory that he inserted his name into Psalm 46! But the more prosaic answer is not that he wrote the King James Bible but that he read most of it in the Geneva Bible of his childhood.
The novelist, Jeanette Winterson, believes that reading the Bible aloud makes the language and rhythm of Shakespeare’s plays more accessible. But, as she notes in a recent article: ‘children are not brought up to read out loud any more, at home or at school. This is a new problem in the history of language development.’
Teachers worry about the widening gap in educational achievement but the oral tradition of Bible reading used to give working class children access to literature which has been lost. How then, in a secular culture dominated by visual media, do you reconnect young people with Shakespeare?
The Edexcel GCSE English Literature syllabus makes no reference to Shakespeare’s language. Instead it focuses on characterisation, stagecraft, themes and relationships. This approach is based on our contemporary post-Freud, post-Stanislavski psychological view of drama but it would have been entirely alien to Shakespeare himself and it demotes Shakespeare’s language from the primary object of study to a puzzle to be solved before you can reach the ‘real’ play hidden inside it.
The Royal Shakespeare Company’s Text and Voice Director, Cicely Berry, has for many years toured the world conducting workshops with young people to put language back at the heart of Shakespeare teaching. Children love words. They love the noise they make and the way they feel in your mouth, they love rude words and funny words, they love rhyming words and rhythmic words, all of which Shakespeare has in abundance.
We can’t turn the clock back and put Bible reading in the National Curriculum but Cicely Berry’s work shows it’s not too late to reconnect young people with Shakespeare through their natural love of language.
