School Days |
Shakespeare first arrived in America’s schools not as a playwright, but as the source of isolated passages that students memorized and recited, just like a Bible reading or a speech by George Washington. Plays and poems were not widely studied as literature until the late 1800s; when literature finally became an academic subject, however, Shakespeare soon took center stage. A century later, another trend emerged. Many American teachers began encouraging students to connect with Shakespeare by speaking his lines, getting them on their feet in exercises that emphasized learning Shakespeare by doing Shakespeare.