pedagogy of Shakespeare teaching. It was once thought that a book like Craik's English of Shakespeare, purporting to be a commentary on the Julius Cæsar, was a good gate to Shakespeare's mind. Within half-a-dozen years it seems to have been tacitly admitted that, in order to make Shakespeare work effective and inspiring, it is best not to begin with etymologies, or the philology of his Elizabethan English. We must know the meanings of his words, but we do not need to know, at once, the history of those meanings. That will not find the life in his pages, nor show us how he holds the mirror up to nature, nor make us understand the minds and characters that he has analyzed. To find out how he has analyzed them, and by what means he exhibits them to us, is to study Shakespeare's art. Whenever Shakespeare's art is discerned and his higher meaning compassed, the result is an immediate spiritual quickening. Students achieving this experience know that there is such a thing as literary art, and teach others so. They are quickened also in the interpretation of motives and men and life without. Moreover, when a mind has been thus energized, there seems small question of its spiritual future. It goes on to higher and higher culture of its own momentum. No masterpiece is adapted for first work with a pupil unless it engage his sympathies, his imagination. After this experience he will be easily induced to study the whole minutely. When we have seen a painting that arouses us, that we feel is grand or powerful, we are ready to give it days of scrutiny, that we may know it thoroughly. We never do this with a painting in order to be aroused by it, or to find its essential meaning. It was a common notion among college teachers not long ago that hardly more than a week or at most two weeks should be devoted to one of Shakespeare's dramas, or like literature of the same extent. I suspect we are beginning to realize that works of art of whatsoever sort must be spiritually enjoyed in some measure, before they can be made the subjects of exhaustive intellectual study. To be superficial in Shakespeare is most deplorable. To know one play thoroughly is equivalent to knowing Shakespeare. To have skimmed æsthetically all of the thirty-six plays is not to know him or them. We should as wisely attempt to study a picture gallery through in half-a-dozen visits. It will be well after the interest of the pupil is thoroughly aroused to set exacting reviews upon the meanings of Shakespeare's words and phrases. It will be well also to have the most eloquent and powerful passages committed to memory. Here seems also the time to study the meter and rhythm of the lines. A little experimenting might demonstrate that, were a merely intellectual understanding of the text aimed at, time would be gained by approaching it in this way. Also, unlimited composition work may be done upon the characters and incidents of the play. As for the Questions appended to this edition, those who are minded to have the student use them in preparation for oral exercises, and as a guide in shaping the interpretation of the lesson, should secure good results, though they are adapted to more exact and formal modes of work. Of course they are not intended to be answered in recitation. According to the completer plan the lesson assigned in the text is first studied out by the aid of the language notes and in the light and leading of these. analytic Questions. The Questions are then to be answered in detail, and the indicated meanings discussed with some fullness, in note-books devoted solely to this subject. These are severally handed in to the instructor before the regular class-exercise begins. The teacher then goes over the various points, not with reference to answering the questions as such, but, ignoring these, in a connected and running interpretation of the whole. Meanings left incomplete are then called for and cleared up, new inquiries are considered, and free discussions, so far as there is time or disposition, provided for. The note-books are examined after the exercise, credited, and placed accessible to the students, in time to prepare for the next meeting. At the end of each act, and of the play, special reviews are held. But the questions asked, while in part such as to insure attention to Shakespeare's language, and to explanations previously given of textual and other matters, are in general based upon new meanings left just beneath the surface in the instructor's interpretations to the class. There is no end of such meanings; each fresh reading of the play discovers them. Perhaps the best test of the student's culture is the readiness and zest and strength with which he will discuss new aspects of the play and of the author's art. Of course these modes of instruction consume more time and patience than certain others, and will in general require the services of an assistant. But education is fast ceasing to consist merely in knowing things, and in memory work. It is beginning to concern itself with the tastes, the sensibilities, with the soul itself; and it seems clear that much of what it is to bring to near generations of school folk must come from literature. If young minds are to be helped to the level of the best that has been felt and said by great men, it seems likely that as much care must be taken in administering the inspiration of literature as in teaching the sciences or mathematics. |