Talks on Teaching Literature

by Arlo Bates

VI

Once the play has been read as a whole the way has been prepared for more careful attention to details. For each recitation the parts should be assigned beforehand for oral reading, three or four pupils being assigned to each part so that in a long scene opportunity is given for bringing a number

of the students to their feet.[180:1] It is well to prepare for this second reading by selecting the central motive of the play, and having the class discuss it. In the case of "Macbeth" it is easy to select ambition as the main thread. In some plays a single passion or emotion is not so easily detached, but it is generally needful to remember that if children are to be impressed and are to see things clearly, they must be dealt with simply; so that even at the expense of slighting for the time being some of the strands it is well to keep to the principle of naming one and holding to it with straightforwardness until the work is tolerably familiar.

The children should be made to say—not to write, for contagion of ideas is of the greatest importance here—what they understand by ambition, how far they have noticed it in others, and perhaps how far felt it themselves. A wise teacher should have little difficulty in making such a talk personal enough to enforce the idea without letting it become too intimate. It can be brought out that the test of ambition is the extent of the sacrifices one is willing to make to gratify it. The ambition already spoken of to excel in class, to be at the head of the school baseball nine or football team, to be popular with friends, and so on for the common ambitions of life may seem trifling, but it belongs to the language of the child's life. Here and there the teacher finds pupils who might seize the

conception of ambition without starting so near the rudiments, but most need it; I am unable to see how any can be hurt by it. It is much more difficult to get a conception vividly into the minds of twenty pupils together than it is to impress the same thing upon a hundred separately, and I should never feel that I could afford to neglect the humblest means which might be serviceable. The talk, moreover, does not stop here. It is to be led on to what the boys and girls would wish to be in the world; and from this to historic instances of what men have done to gratify their ambitions. The assassination of the late King of Servia is still so recent as to seem much more real than murders farther back in history, and it lends itself well to the effort to make vital the tragedy that is being studied. I am not for an instant urging that literature shall be treated in too realistic a manner, as I hope to show before I conclude; but I do not feel that there is any fear of making it too real to the boys and girls with whom one must deal to-day in our schools.

It is perhaps well, too, that some comment should be made at this stage on the supernatural element. A class is likely to have had geometry by the time it has come to the study of Shakespeare, and most children can with very little difficulty be made to understand that in "Macbeth" and "The Ancient Mariner" the existence of the supernatural is the hypothesis upon which the work proceeds. When this is understood it is not amiss to develop the

idea that Shakespeare perhaps introduced the witches as a way of showing how evil thoughts and desires spring up in the heart. The class will easily see that the ideas of ambition, of the possibility of gaining the crown, which little by little grew in the heart of Macbeth can be better shown to an audience by putting the words into the mouths of the witches than by means of soliloquies. This giving of reasons why the dramatist does one thing or another should not be pressed too far and should be touched upon with caution. It is often better to let a detail go unremarked than to run the risk of confusing the mind of the pupil. The witches, however, are almost sure to be remarked upon, and they must be considered frankly.

In this second reading such obscure passages as have been glided over before are to be taken into consideration. If the pupils have, as they should have, texts unencumbered with notes, they may be given a scene or two at a time, and told to use their wits in elucidating the difficulties. Often they show surprising intelligence in this line, and the bestowal of praise where it is deserved is one of the most effective as well as one of the pleasantest parts of the whole process. What they cannot elucidate alone, they may be if possible helped to work out in class, or, if this fails, may be told outright. If they have tried to arrive at the true meaning, they are in a condition when an explanation will have its best and fullest effect.

Passages in the first act of "Macbeth" which

I have thus far passed over deliberately, to the end that the pupil be not bothered over too many difficulties at once, are such as these:

Fair is foul, and foul is fair,—i, 11.

Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky

And fan our people cold.—ii, 49, 50.

Nor would we deign him burial of his men

Till he disbursed, at Saint Colme's inch.—ii, 59, 60.

Ten thousand dollars.—ii, 62.

If, as is likely to be the case, the greater part or all of the class have passed the word "dollars" without notice, that fact serves to illustrate the need of care in reading. That they should pass it, moreover, illustrates also how the anachronism might pass unnoticed in Shakespeare's time, when historical accuracy was the last thing about which a playwright bothered his head. The teacher may well here refer back to the idea of considering literature as the algebra of the emotions, and remind the class that as the poet was not endeavoring to write history or to tell what happened in a concrete instance, but only to represent the abstract principle of such a situation as that in which Macbeth and his wife were involved, a departure from historical accuracy is of no importance so long as it does not disturb the effect on the mind of the audience or reader.

No more that thane of Cawdor shall receive

Our bosom interest.—ii, 63, 64.

I'll give thee a wind.—iii, 11.

The supposed power of the witches to control the

winds and the superstitions of the sailors about buying favorable weather from them may be taken up in the first reading; but it seems better to leave it for the time when the effect of the play as a whole has been secured, and the interruption will be less objectionable.

His wonders and his praises do contend

Which should be thine or his: silenced with that.—iii, 63.

That, trusted home.—iii, 120.

Poor and single business.—vi, 16.

Like the poor cat i' the adage.—vii, 45.

It is not necessary to continue this list. Its length is decided by the one fixed principle to which is no exception: it is too long the moment the teacher fails to hold the interest of the class in the work which is being done. No amount of information acquired or skill in passing examinations can compensate for the harm done by associating the plays of Shakespeare in the minds of the student with the idea of dulness or boredom.

Textual explanation, however, is of small importance as compared to an intelligent grasp of the office and effect of each incident and each scene in the development of the story and of the characters of the actors in the tragedy. At the end of each scene, or for that matter at any point which seems well to the instructor, the students should in this second reading be called upon to comment orally on what has been done in the play and what has been shown. I have much more faith in the

genuineness of what a boy says on his feet in the class room than in what he may write at home. A teacher with the gentlest hint may at once stop humbug and conventionality when it is spoken, but when stock phrases, conventional opinions, views imperfectly remembered or consciously borrowed from somebody's notes have been neatly copied out in a theme, no amount of red ink corrects the evil that has been done. The important thing is to get an appreciation, no matter how limited or imperfect it may be, which is yet genuine and intelligent.

With the matter of disputed readings, I may say in parenthesis, the teacher in the secondary school has no more to do than to answer doubts which may arise in the minds of the pupils. Personally I should offer to the consideration of the class the conjectural reading of the line

Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself.—vii, 27.

Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps its selle (saddle);

because it seems to me so plausible and because it is likely to commend itself. For the most part, however, I should let sleeping dogs lie, and if nobody noticed the possible confusion of the text, I would not risk confusion of mind by calling attention to it.

The personal opinions of the class upon the actions and the acts of the characters are not difficult to get at in this way, and often will be the more fully shaped and more clearly thought out if the

pupil is constrained to defend an unpopular view. I am not introducing anything new, for this sort of discussion is carried on by every intelligent teacher; it is mentioned here only for the sake of completeness in the process of treating a play in the class-room.