Talks on Teaching Literature

by Arlo Bates

VIII

I have carefully and intentionally omitted all mention of the study of the sources of the plot, the probable date of the play, and things of that sort which interest thorough Shakespearean scholars, and which are the chosen subjects of pedantic formalists. Metrical effects and subtilties are beyond any pupils I have ever encountered in secondary schools. I do not believe that students in the secondary schools should be troubled with any study of this sort. The teacher should of course be

prepared briefly to answer any questions of this nature which are put, and to show the pupils where in books of reference information may be found. The great principle is, however, to include in the study nothing which does not enhance the impression of the play as a work of imaginative literature, and to omit everything which can possibly be spared without endangering this general effect.

The danger of overshadowing literary study with irrelevant information is great and constant. The amount of special knowledge which a child must acquire to appreciate a play of Shakespeare's is unhappily large in any case; and the constant aim of the teacher should be to reduce this to a minimum. It is far better that a pupil go through the work with imaginative delight and fail to get the exact meaning of half the obscure passages than that he be bored and wearied by an exact explanation of all of them at the expense of the inspiration of the work as a whole. My painful doubts of the wisdom of our present scheme of insisting upon the study of literature in the common schools arises largely from the unhappy necessity of having so much explained and the too common lack of courage to do a sufficient amount of judicious ignoring of difficulties.