Lessons from Shakespeare’s Classroom: Empowering Learning Through Drama and Rhetoric PDF
Preview Lessons from Shakespeare’s Classroom: Empowering Learning Through Drama and Rhetoric
LESSONS FROM SHAKESPEARE’S CLASSROOM This volume explores the relationship between the emphasis on performance in Elizabethan humanist education and the flourishing of literary brilliance around the turn of the 16th century. This study asks us what lessons we can learn today from Shakespeare’s Latin grammar school. What were the cognitive benefits of an education so deeply rooted in what Demosthenes and Quintilian called “actio”—acting? Because of the vast difference between educational practice then and now, we have not often followed one essential thread: the focus on performance. This study examines the connections relevant to the education offered in schools today. This book will be of great interest to teachers, scholars, and administrators in performing arts and education. Robin Lithgow was the first ever Theatre Adviser, and later the Director, of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Arts Education Branch. In that role she and her colleagues were the architects of the Elementary Arts Program, serving every one of over 550 elementary schools, with itinerate teachers in dance, music, theatre, and visual arts. She is the daughter of Arthur Lithgow, perhaps the only person ever to have produced every play in Shakespeare’s canon. She is the sister of the theatre and film actor, John Lithgow, who has kindly illustrated this book. Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies This series is our home for cutting-edge, upper-level scholarly studies and edited collections. Considering theatre and performance alongside topics such as religion, politics, gender, race, ecology, and the avant-garde, titles are characterized by dynamic interventions into established subjects and innovative studies on emerging topics. Rechoreographing Learning Dance As a Way to Bridge the Mind-Body Divide in Education Sandra Cerny Minton Politics as Public Art The Aesthetics of Political Organizing and Social Movements Martin Zebracki and Zane McNeill Notelets of Filth An Emilia Companion Reader Laura Kressly, Aida Patient, and Kimberly A. Williams Transcultural Theater Günther Heeg Lessons from Shakespeare’s Classroom Empowering Learning Through Drama and Rhetoric Robin Lithgow For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Advances-in-Theatre-Performance-Studies/book-series/RATPS LESSONS FROM SHAKESPEARE’S CLASSROOM Empowering Learning Through Drama and Rhetoric Robin Lithgow Cover image: John Lithgow. First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Robin Lithgow The right of Robin Lithgow to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-032-38406-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-38407-8 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-34491-9 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003344919 Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC This book is dedicated to The Elementary Dance, Music, Theatre, and Visual Arts Teachers of the Los Angeles Unified School District and to arts educators everywhere. Heroes. I was brought up at School under Mr. Mulcaster, in the famous school of the Merchant Taylors in London, where I continued until I was well instructed in the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin tongues. His care was to increase my skill in music, in which I was brought up by daily exercise in it, as in singing and play- ing upon instruments, and yearly he presented some plays to the court, in which his scholars were the only actors, and I one among them, and by that means he taught them good behavior and audacity. Sir James Whitelocke, Justice of the King James I’s Bench, writing about the 16th-century pedagogue, Richard Mulcaster CONTENTS Timeline ix Cast of Characters xi Acknowledgments xii Introduction 1 1 Time Travel 3 2 Engagement Before Information 8 3 Angels and Eaglets 16 4 Good Behavior and Audacity: The Training Up of Schoolboy Orators 22 5 Context: The Hatch and Brood of Time: A Brief History of the English Reformation 46 6 Erasmus’ Egg 54 7 The Delightful Mulcaster 75 8 Per Quam Figuram? 93 viii Contents 9 Erasmus Writes Colloquies 113 10 The Little Eyases: Professional Boy Actors 139 11 The Lego Snap of Learning 158 12 Conclusion 188 Appendix I: Performing the Colloquies in Latin and in English 191 Appendix II: Selection of Educational Drama Resources for Teachers 228 Bibliography 229 Index 236 TIMELINE Life of Erasmus: 1469–1536 1495–1499: Tutors English students in Paris and writes simple colloquies for practice in conversational Latin. 1599–1500: First trip to England, where he becomes friends with John Colet and Thomas More. 1500: Publishes first edition of Adagia. 1510–1515: Second trip to England. Teaches at Cambridge, deepens friendships, and meets Prince Henry. 1510: John Colet re-founds Saint Paul’s School in London and asks Erasmus to help him to design the curriculum. 1511–1512: Publication of De ratione studii and De Utraque Verborum ac Rerum Copia (de Copia) written as curriculum for Saint Paul’s School. 1518: Colloquia familiaria published, without permission, in Basel by the house of Johan Froben. 1522–1533: Colloquia familiaria augmented and published with permission, many times. Over the next century, tens of thousands of copies are purchased in England. Life of Richard Mulcaster: 1531–1611 1561–1592: Headmaster of the Merchant Taylors’ School in London. Creates a theatre in the school and regularly produces plays to be performed at court. Taught Thomas Jenkins and John Cotham. 1582: Publishes Positions. 1583: Publishes Elementarie. 1596–1608: Headmaster of Saint Paul’s School in London.
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