Who would want to study Shakespeare? That is the question that I have been asked many times over the last month and a half. My response is always, “Who wouldn't want to study Shakespeare?” Despite answer I understand where they are coming from. I have not always seen the importance of studying anything at all, let alone Shakespeare, but I have changed my thoughts. I believe that everyone should and can study Shakespeare. In this essay I am only going into the reasons why I believe that I should study Shakespeare. There may be as many reasons as there are people I am, but these are the ones personal to me.
The first that I will write about is new to me. I learned it last week during my first class on Shakespeare. That is that some of our modern words were words that Shakespeare made up to fit into his plays. The English Language is bigger and more complex by over 1000 words because of the things that he wrote. Learning this made me think about how my vocabulary grows. Without hearing language that is unfamiliar to me or more complex than I am used to it will always stay the same. Reading and watching Shakespeare will definitely stretch my vocabulary.
Shakespeare is a part of our modern culture whether we recognize it or not. The basic skeletons of many of Shakespeare's plays are found throughout our culture. Many of the movies produced and stories written today are in some way or another a telling of one of his stories. Studying Shakespeare will give me the ability to recognize this and know more about what I am seeing or reading than I otherwise would have been. There are also many phrases we use today that we may or may not know come from Shakespeare. The phrase, “It's Greek to me,” is a quote from Shakespeare, so is “all the world's a stage.” There are many, many other phrases we use all the time not knowing we are actually quoting the most influential English writer of all time. Knowing this may not only be helpful, but is also amusing.
While reading any literature, but Shakespeare in particular, I can learn about human relations. I can objectively look at how characters interact with each other, as well as see how they handle different situations. I can then truthfully ponder how I would have acted in the situations and how I would have liked to have handled it different than them or even change my behavior to be more in line with theirs. The point is that I don't have to experience all situations to learn the lessons.
Probably the most appealing reason of all of these to me is that I get insight into Elizabethan culture. I can see how people actually lived, thought, and acted. I will be introduced to many customs that were common then, but not so anymore. I can likewise learn about the traditions that they held dear. Another important aspect of this is learning that the people of that time were really not so different from those alive today than I thought. They loved, worried, made mistakes, and were heroic just like people today.
A final reason that I have decided to study Shakespeare is that it is entertaining. What better way to learn language, grammar, social studies, history and character study than by reading things that along with teaching make me laugh, cry, or even get angry, in short stir my emotions.
