By Jennifer Burek Pierce
American Libraries Columnist
Assistant professor of library and information science, University of Iowa, Iowa City
youthmatters@ala.org
March 2008
Downloading the Bard
What will spark teen’s interest in Shakespeare?
Beware the Ides of March.
Or, as the staff at Spark-Notes, who produce the No Fear Shakespeare series, rewrite the Soothsayer’s warning to Julius Caesar, “Beware of March 15th.”
It’s a less dramatic change than some of the company’s other revisions of Shakespearean lines. For one, Romeo’s love-struck attentions are rendered in flatly contemporary terms. The immortal cry “But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?” becomes “But wait, what’s that light in the window over there?” in hopes of making Renaissance theater make sense to 21st-century young adults.
The No Fear Shakespeare edition of King Lear was one of the books in my luggage following the ALA Annual Conference in Washington, D.C., last June. For months now, the paperback has occupied a corner of my desk. While its rhyming brand name provoked an amused smile, its paired pages of Shakespeare’s scripts and modern English translations have left me puzzled. These line-by-line outlines may convey a sort of meaning, but will they encourage further reading and ignite passion for the wonders of language? Do they help teens pass a test, or do they prompt insight into webs of words and phrases that have stood the test of time?
No Fear Shakespeare texts are available without charge online (making my decision to carry yet one more book around even less logical), sponsored by advertising. As I scrolled through the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet, a dark-eyed young woman whose curls fell to her shoulders advised from screen right, “Now’s the time: Help guard yourself against cervical cancer and genital warts.”
Was this ad for Gardasil intended as further opportunity for young readers to understand irony as a literary device? Was it a warning to young would-be lovers to protect their reproductive health before admitting the object of their desire to their chambers? (Please understand, these are merely rhetorical questions.)
This ad wasn’t the site’s only commercial pitch; a page for educators contained both the assurance that No Fear was an aid to, rather than a replacement for, reading the original plays, and a 20%-discount Barnes and Noble offer for those registering with SparkNotes.
Shakespeare, of course, sold his plays to earn a living, and in the 19th century, Charles and Mary Lamb wrote Tales from Shakespeare: For the Use of Young Persons to encourage young readers’ understanding and to ease their financial straits. Even Harvard graduate students may find themselves working outside the academy, but the oddities of quasi–product placement amid learning tools for teens seem far from quaint.
Juxtaposition is all
I don’t make these complaints because I believe in innate, unaided genius. There is no shortage of guides and reference tools in my work spaces. I depend on PDF directions to explain grant application procedures, French dictionaries to fill the yawning gaps in my translation abilities, noted essayists to enhance my understanding of the texts that I teach and research, and editors who prevent my missteps from making their way into print.
There’s also my old copy of Piping Down the Valleys Wild: Poetry for the Young of All Ages. Its pages include the poems of William Blake and Christina Rossetti, even a snippet from The Tempest labeled “Ariel’s Song.” A less-familiar verse by Yuan Mei ends the volume:
Only be willing to search for poetry,
and there will be poetry:
My soul, a tiny speck, is my tutor.
Evening sun and fragrant grass are
common things,
But, with understanding, they can
become glorious verse.
Beware, then, of soulless tutoring. Read glorious verse.