Read Online How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare by Ken Ludwig - Free Book Online
Authors: Ken Ludwig
Tags: General, Literary Criticism, Language Arts & Disciplines, Education, Shakespeare, Teaching Methods & Materials, Arts & Humanities
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make the memorization a game for your children. Chest tones, patty-cake, marching, shouting, acting, wearing hats and cloaks, contests, bets, painting on mustaches, bribery by chocolate, whatever it takes. My view was always a ruthless one: Anything I could do to help them memorize the passages was fair game.
Bonus Passage
Soon after giving the Willow Cabin Speech, Cesario leaves Olivia’s house. At that point, Olivia has a short dialogue with herself, a sort of soliloquy where she asks herself, in essence, “Where did this wonderful creature come from?” She realizes that she has just fallen in love, and she can hardly believe it. She says to herself: OLIVIA
Thy tongue, thy face, thy limbs, actions, and spirit
Do give thee fivefold blazon [stature as a gentleman]. Not too fast! Soft, soft!
Unless the master were the man. How now?
And then she says a line so clever that your children should memorize it right now:
Even so quickly may one catch the plague?
“Even so quickly may one fall in love?”
Olivia is one of the wittiest women in all of Shakespeare, and by likening love to the plague, she deepens the metaphor and makes it more than trivial. Plague was serious business in Shakespeare’s time, and it came on quickly. In 1564, the year of Shakespeare’s birth, when an outbreak of plague swept England, the death rate in Shakespeare’s hometown of Stratfordwas about ten times higher than normal, with an infant mortality rate of about two-thirds.
Even so quickly may one catch the plague?
The line has a gentle irony and shows Olivia making fun of her own self-imposed gravity, for which we like her the more.
Even so quickly may one catch the plague?
The Final Bribe
Finally, as your children get close to memorizing the whole passage, make them an offer they can’t refuse: If they get it down cold, you’ll tell them the biggest surprise in the whole play, one so amazing that it will blow back their hair. So here goes. See if they can recite the passage by heart: CESARIO
If I did love you in my master’s flame ,
With such a suff’ring, such a deadly life ,
In your denial I would find no sense .
I would not understand it .
OLIVIA
Why, what would you?
CESARIO
Make me a willow cabin at your gate
And call upon my soul within the house ,
Write loyal cantons of contemnèd love
And sing them loud even in the dead of night ,
Hallow your name to the reverberate hills
And make the babbling gossip of the air
Cry out “Olivia!” O, you should not rest
Between the elements of air and earth
But you should pity me .
OLIVIA
You might do much .
If they nailed it, you can now tell them the surprise. Are you ready?
Cesario isn’t a boy at all. She is a young woman disguised as a boy. Her real name is Viola. So the Countess Olivia has just fallen deeply in love with a feisty young woman and wants to marry her.
Who wants to hear the rest of the story?
CHAPTER 12
The Viola Plot
W ith Twelfth Night we reach one of the absolute peaks of Shakespeare’s career. It was written about 1601, around the time of Hamlet , and it runs the gamut of emotions: Some moments in it are genuinely hilarious and others are deeply moving. As usual, I think we’ll discover how and why it is such a great work of art by memorizing several passages of it together. Before we continue, however, let’s look at the story, which has two almost independent plots, one centering on Viola, the heroine, the other on Malvolio, Olivia’s steward, or butler.
The Viola Plot
The Viola Plot opens with a rich bachelor named Orsino who is in love with that beautiful Countess Olivia whom we met in the last chapter. As we saw, Orsino has had no luck wooing Olivia, so he has sent his servant Cesario to give it a try. Unbeknownst to Orsino, his clever new servant is not really a chirpy boy; he is a young woman named Viola who was recently shipwrecked on the shore of Illyria, the country where the play is set.
In many ways, it is Viola’s heart that makes the play
Bonus Passage
Soon after giving the Willow Cabin Speech, Cesario leaves Olivia’s house. At that point, Olivia has a short dialogue with herself, a sort of soliloquy where she asks herself, in essence, “Where did this wonderful creature come from?” She realizes that she has just fallen in love, and she can hardly believe it. She says to herself: OLIVIA
Thy tongue, thy face, thy limbs, actions, and spirit
Do give thee fivefold blazon [stature as a gentleman]. Not too fast! Soft, soft!
Unless the master were the man. How now?
And then she says a line so clever that your children should memorize it right now:
Even so quickly may one catch the plague?
“Even so quickly may one fall in love?”
Olivia is one of the wittiest women in all of Shakespeare, and by likening love to the plague, she deepens the metaphor and makes it more than trivial. Plague was serious business in Shakespeare’s time, and it came on quickly. In 1564, the year of Shakespeare’s birth, when an outbreak of plague swept England, the death rate in Shakespeare’s hometown of Stratfordwas about ten times higher than normal, with an infant mortality rate of about two-thirds.
Even so quickly may one catch the plague?
The line has a gentle irony and shows Olivia making fun of her own self-imposed gravity, for which we like her the more.
Even so quickly may one catch the plague?
The Final Bribe
Finally, as your children get close to memorizing the whole passage, make them an offer they can’t refuse: If they get it down cold, you’ll tell them the biggest surprise in the whole play, one so amazing that it will blow back their hair. So here goes. See if they can recite the passage by heart: CESARIO
If I did love you in my master’s flame ,
With such a suff’ring, such a deadly life ,
In your denial I would find no sense .
I would not understand it .
OLIVIA
Why, what would you?
CESARIO
Make me a willow cabin at your gate
And call upon my soul within the house ,
Write loyal cantons of contemnèd love
And sing them loud even in the dead of night ,
Hallow your name to the reverberate hills
And make the babbling gossip of the air
Cry out “Olivia!” O, you should not rest
Between the elements of air and earth
But you should pity me .
OLIVIA
You might do much .
If they nailed it, you can now tell them the surprise. Are you ready?
Cesario isn’t a boy at all. She is a young woman disguised as a boy. Her real name is Viola. So the Countess Olivia has just fallen deeply in love with a feisty young woman and wants to marry her.
Who wants to hear the rest of the story?
CHAPTER 12
The Viola Plot
W ith Twelfth Night we reach one of the absolute peaks of Shakespeare’s career. It was written about 1601, around the time of Hamlet , and it runs the gamut of emotions: Some moments in it are genuinely hilarious and others are deeply moving. As usual, I think we’ll discover how and why it is such a great work of art by memorizing several passages of it together. Before we continue, however, let’s look at the story, which has two almost independent plots, one centering on Viola, the heroine, the other on Malvolio, Olivia’s steward, or butler.
The Viola Plot
The Viola Plot opens with a rich bachelor named Orsino who is in love with that beautiful Countess Olivia whom we met in the last chapter. As we saw, Orsino has had no luck wooing Olivia, so he has sent his servant Cesario to give it a try. Unbeknownst to Orsino, his clever new servant is not really a chirpy boy; he is a young woman named Viola who was recently shipwrecked on the shore of Illyria, the country where the play is set.
In many ways, it is Viola’s heart that makes the play
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