Международный научно-исследовательский журнал
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№ 5 (95) ▪ Часть 3 ▪ Май
58
Indeed, the historical as well as the cultural context is very much unlike our own, which poses a double challenge to Russian
speaking students. The most probable way they will respond to the plays is as 21-century readers studying the language for
practical purpose rather than for being able to read Shakespeare in the original and the teacher must take this fact into
consideration by using integrative approach and teaching Shakespeare through the prism of activities enhancing reading,
listening, speaking and writing skills development of ESL learners.
On the other hand, this very “exotic” nature of the plays may spark the interest to the unusual (1) and prove a powerful
stimulus to re-examine and reassess our present-day attitudes (2) thus giving Shakespeare’s words a straight and broad path to
the students’ hearts.
(1) For instance, it is interesting to observe a number of superstitions in Mercutio’s “Queen Mab” monologue about the
nature of dreams: from the lines “Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat, / Not so big as a round little worm / Prick'd from the
lazy finger of a maid” we get to know that girls tend to get worms under their nails if they keep lazing about. Having read “O'er
ladies ' lips, who straight on kisses dream, / Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues, / Because their breaths with
sweetmeats tainted are” we are amused to find out that women who eat too much sugary stuff risk having swellings on their lips
as a kind of punishment for their extravagant indulgence. And the lines “This is that very Mab / That plats the manes of horses
in the night, / And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs, / Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes” inform us about the
origin of clotted hair and the misfortunes that may follow in case one untangles it (Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Sc. IV) [9].
(2) Katharina Minola’s monologue about a wife’s duty to her husband effectively concluded with her advice to wives to
“place your hands below your husband's foot” (The Taming of the Shrew, Act V, Sc. II) [11] provokes thought about gender
issues and the woman’s role in society. Does Katharina’s convincing speech illustrate her genuine transformation and
overcoming her moral defects or is she being flexible and adaptive, capable of pretending and playing the role expected by
society? And what kind of speech would she give today? Could it be along the lines of the 1999 teen flick
10 Things I Hate
About You
monologue? And what are the value and effect of setting a play in a modern historical period, into our contemporary
world?
In discussing the plays students’ keen attention is drawn not to the intricacies of the plots and their peculiarities but rather
to the generalizations – the issues of common concern: the conventions of the arts and the elaborately examined function of
human imagination in the prologue to
Henry V
: “For it is
your thoughts
that now must deck our kings, / Carry them here and
there; jumping o'er times, / Turning the accomplishment of many years / Into an hour-glass”(The Life of King Henry V, Act 1,
Prol) [10]; the influence of human appearance on one’s life and actions in
Richard III
, featuring a “deformed hunchback”,
“curtail'd of this fair proportion”, “cheated of feature by dissembling nature”, “deform'd, unfinish'd”, “so lamely and
unfashionable” (King Richard III, Act 1, Sc.1) [12] whose immoral nature is determined by physical deformity and the lack of
human connection; striking the right balance between studying, being dedicated to hard work and hands-on experience of life,
connecting with the world around you in
Love's Labour's Lost
; the fluid and ambivalent nature of love and hate in
Romeo and
Juliet
; the effect of religious prejudice in
The Merchant of Venice
and racial discrimination in
Othello
; or in
As You Like it
the
tension between finding your own way in life and fixed social roles cynically described by Jaques in his monologue “All the
world's a stage,/ and all the men and women merely players”( As You Like it, Act 2. Sc. VI) [13]; the betrayal of friendship for
the common good in
Julius Caesar
; the issue of identity in
Hamlet
; hypocrisy vs sincerity, family dysfunction and the perils of
aging, dependence and helplessness in
King Lear,
the pursuit
of power and happiness that brings nowhere in
Macbeth
, life which
is “a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing”, full of ambitions resulting in nothing but “dusty death”(
Macbeth, Act V, Sc.V) [8].
These are all poignant inescapable human questions which emerge sooner or later in everybody’s life. According to Michael
J. Collins “[t]he questions Shakespeare’s plays raise are those that students, like all of us, must face in their own lives, questions
about death and separation; love and lust; loyalty and betrayal; the competing claims of justice and mercy; the acquisition and
use of power; one’s relationships and responsibilities, both public and private, to others; the passing of the time and changes –
for good or ill – it brings with it [1, P. 253]”. And reflecting on these questions we are inevitably brought to consider how
generous, grateful, merciful, forgiving and unprejudiced we ourselves are asked to be. With all these questions asked about our
life Shakespeare is still our contemporary. Shakespeare and modern culture are synonymous and the Bard is part of youth and
popular culture – long before the issues of anti-Semitism, racism, youth rebellion, fluid gender roles became all the rage in the
modern society, Shakespeare had raised them in his plays.
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