Matthew S. Monahan
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If Shakespeare was in love in 1599, it was with words. What follows, then, is a
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writer's life: what Shakespeare read, wrote, performed, and saw published, and
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what was going on in England and beyond its shores that shaped plays which four
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hundred years later continue to influence how we make sense of the world
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(Shapiro xix).
1.1 Statement of Context
In the context of this unit we must operate under the assumption that we are all capable of producing "a heartbreaking work of staggering genius" – and we must not forget that our first order of business is to infuse the English curriculum with the f–word, fun. The current state of the senior curriculum has it all backward, asking students to find creative forms of expression to sum up their labors at year's end. Seniors need be creative in the fall, long before the onset of that dread disease senioritis.
The New Haven School District's English and Language Arts' curriculum is largely based on what it has termed "power standards" that hold particular relevance in relationship to CAPT (the Connecticut Academic Performance Test). Proficiency in all areas of the CAPT is a graduation requirement. The sun is to set on this particular battery of examinations by the 2014. In anticipation of a major shift in standardized testing practices, we are beginning to look at the Common Core Standards. Until the district catches up with this change the curriculum is made up of a series of significant tasks (STs).
ST 1 consists of both a personal philosophy of education and the personal statement. Although the personal statement as written is to be used as one size–fit all college essay, the modifications outlined in this unit will expand the task to include a four to five page autobiography. This will challenge Metropolitan's senior English students, provide me with ample opportunities to establish myself as an authority on students' writing, and establish the classroom as a place concerned with the "business" of writing. ST 2 is a poetry project. It is here that the Shakespearean sonnet slam
1
will naturally fit, for in addition to showcasing students' speaking and listening skills, the Shakespearean sonnet slam will create a learning environment that emphasizes fun). ST 3 is literary analysis. My aim is that the hum–drum five–paragraph theme, with its analyses of theme, allusion, figurative language and the like, will be kicked up a notch through the examination of supplementary materials that include, but are not limited to, excerpts from Shapiro and the 1998 film
Shakespeare in Love
).
Additionally the curriculum revolves around a number of essential questions that include "Who am I?" and "What may we learn about our own lives by examining the lives of others?" Although the existing curriculum asks this second question to students mostly in relation to their study of fictional characters, there is no reason that it cannot be more broadly applied.
Students are currently study a number of autobiographical works, mostly short selections that may, for lack of a better term, fall in the category of memoir; however, the formal study of biography is generally overlooked. As a teacher of secondary English for the past seven years, I am certainly guilty of such neglect; this seems to me all the more ironic when I consider my personal habits as a reader. The bulk of my nonfiction leisure reading falls into this genre.
Our study of biography need not be limited to the printed word. As suggested in the title, this unit does include the critical viewing of scenes from, if not the entirety of,
Shakespeare in Love
, the Tom Stoppard penned John Madden film that imagines the first public performance of
Romeo and Juliet
and its connection to Shakespeare's later work, specifically
Twelfth Night
.
There is a great challenge for filmmakers attempting to make something as interior as the writing process the least bit cinematic. Who would want to watch scene after scene of an individual producing parchment after parchment via a quill pen, or a bespectacled hermit crouched over a type–writer churning out something on par with Jack Kerouac's
On the Road
scroll?
The biopic often suffers from the same myopia as the traditional biographies Virginia Woolf skewered in her revolutionary novel
Orlando: A Biography
. They are often hamstrung by an over–reliance on linear chronology and the use of the purely cinematic device of montage, the overlapping of images in an attempt to represent the passage of time. One case in point that my students would no doubt be familiar with is Taylor Hackford's Academy Award–nominated
Ray
. Despite its lead performance, the film itself has as little substance as a television movie–of–the–week. Although this example comes from film, it is important to us both as the critical readers and writers of biographical works that students will become over the course of this unit.
These and other considerations lead us back to the essential question: genius. What is it? How is it best represented? Are mere mortals capable of producing works of genius? Is it possible to be a both a "one–hit–wonder" and a genius, or is genius determined and proven over the course of a body of work?
1.2 Descriptive Overview
Shakespeare in Love
will act as a primary text. Is it accurate in its depiction of the world premier of
Romeo and Juliet
nee
Romeo and the Pirate's Daughter
(according to the film)? Probably not, but in the words of Pulitzer prize–winning author John Gaddis, "If it's not [the way it happened], it should be." This is a guiding principle behind our approach to the central question, "How does one write the life of a genius?" One might ask what relevance the question has to senior English students at New Haven's Metropolitan Business Academy Inter–district Magnet School. Its relevance lies not only in our examination of literature, as readers, but in its relationship to us as both authors and as "global citizens."
As writers the question informs the way that we shade or fill–in the unknown, the way that we infer what is going on in interior private spaces and how this impacts what we know. According to James Shapiro in his book
A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599
, Shakespeare fully developed the soliloquy in his play
Hamlet
, which predates Freudian psychoanalysis by about three centuries.
What is it past curriculum authors meant when they coined the term "global citizens"? My interpretation bears close relation as to why we should question how to write the life of a genius, in that it begs the question how might we live the life of a genius? This is not to say that we will all be successful in creating our own "heartbreaking work[s] of staggering genius," but that through our attempts we may find ways to positively impact our communities. We all have in us something to contribute; through both self–examination and examining the lives of others, we will find ways to develop our talents and maximize these contributions.
Through critical viewing, writing, reading, acting and other means of creative expression, my students will gain confidence and hone their skills and abilities. They will view multiple interpretations of genius and the creative process; they will produce biographical writings that will inform their Personal Statements; they will read a variety of fiction and nonfiction texts that will further develop their critical thinking; they will have fun in the process.
