THE sheer volume of literature online could be diluting students’ ability to understand Shakespeare, a leading academic and writer claims.
Professor Willy Maley, of Glasgow University, says that while the Bard’s popularity and saleability won’t wane, a flood of choice and the temptation to water down the deeper meaning of his writings could result in much of the subtle sense being lost to many, with more recent adaptations also "playing fast and loose" with the story.
He said: "I was discussing with a colleague recently about whether students are having more difficulty with the Shakespearean language than they would have done 15, 20 or 30 years ago as undergraduates.
“What’s open to students is the utter amplification and multiplication and diversity of the texts that they have, especially online, now.
“They can access so much more but that might mean that they are more likely to dip than dig as we might have done in the past. I think there is an issue."
The professor, who runs the course Shakespeare and his Contemporaries: Playing with History, said: “If he begins to become difficult then that’s a warning sign for what other things might be lost.”
He went on: "So there’s that sense that there is other stuff out there and people being more aware of that and maybe that does take them away a little bit from the splendour that was associated with Shakespeare before, or the attraction.
"He is one of real myriad of writers that students can access very readily now and they are likely to."
Maley was speaking ahead of Shakespeare Week 2017, a campaign at the other end of the education spectrum designed to get primary school children engaged with the writer.
He said: "I don’t think there is anything wrong with the schooling. The students come here very well read, but I think part of that well-readness dilutes Shakespeare for them.
"If you can understand Burns and you understand Irvine Welsh then you really shouldn’t be struggling with Shakespeare."
Maley, Professor of Renaissance Studies (English Literature), said as well as being hugely popular around the world as entertainment, the depth of Shakespeare's works has been found to be useful therapy for prisoners and war veterans.
"In California they are getting people who are in for very long sentences to act out The Tempest, there’s so much in that that can speak to them and it can have a fantastic effect.
"It is true that Shakespeare engages people at all levels. He’s massively celebrated around the world, and now that Donald Trump is cutting the National Endowment for the Humanities budget they won’t get the $1million they got a few years ago to put Shakespeare on in military bases to great effect.
"There’s a tradition of American soldiers after various conflicts reading Macbeth as a story of post-traumatic stress disorder."
He said the legacy of Shakespearean language can be found across modern English.
"The only way of understanding its importance is to look at the Oxford Dictionary online, the big edition, and so many terms have entered into our language that we take for granted are sourced in Milton, Shakespeare, Spenser and these writers of that period because the language then was going through an enormous upheaval and change.
"We talk about 'sweet sorrow' or in Milton’s case 'splendour in the grass'.
"So we owe a debt."
At the other end of the academic scale work begins this week to bring Shakespeare, who died 401 years ago, to Scottish primary schools with 250 schools registering to take part in Shakespeare Week 2017, which provides teachers, home educators and families with free resources and ideas, including the Shakespeare rap introduction to poetry.
The rap gives children the chance to choose a Bard passage or stanza to put to a beat and perform before the class – performance is seen as a key element to engaging with and understanding Shakespeare.
Other Bard challenges that will stretch across the curriculum include a taste of Tudor cooking.
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