Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Short Studies of Shakespeare's Plots
The following studies of Shakespeare were originally delivered as popular lectures before a mixed audience. Their design is to be suggestive rather than exhaustive, and to call attention to a method of teaching Shake speare somewhat different from that which is now employed in colleges and schools. That method, which treats the plays of Shakespeare more as convenient collections of hard words and unusual idioms than as masterpieces of literature, seems to me to be in many respects extremely unsatisfactory. It is repellent rather than attractive to the student, and it teaches him from the very outset to pursue his studies by a wrong road. Under its in?uence, the play as a whole tends to be neglected, words are exalted to the exclusion of thoughts, and study is far too much on the lines adopted by the young lady who is said to have fastened down the text with a piece of elastic in order that it might not interfere with her learning the notes.
This method has been adopted partly because the teaching of literature in schools is for the most part in the hands of men who have been accustomed to study Roman and Greek authors from the philological rather than from the literary standpoint, and partly because of the manner in which modern teaching has been regu lated in accordance with the requirements of examina tions. Schoolmasters demand that questions should be set on points which are most generally taught, and examiners wish to elicit answers which are capable of being reduced to an arithmetical standard - in other words, which are easy to mark. The result is that teachers and examiners have fastened upon the philo logical and antiquarian side of Shakespearian study, and the unlucky schoolboy is likely enough to forget or never to learn that there is any other side at all. Indeed, I have seen examination papers for which the young lady' 8 method would supply a perfectly satis factory preparation. On the other hand, if the teacher tries to rise above this more word teaching, he tends to rush into the other extreme, and to cram his pupils with phrases culled from the works of Coleridge, or Goethe, or Dowden, which they can only imperfectly understand, and which they reproduce like parrots in answer to any manner of examination question.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
