Being a human isn’t easy, even for a very lucky human like me, born in England in the twentieth century, having had some education and not having to work at manual labour and having food and warmth and house insurance and many other luxuries…being human isn’t easy. So it’s not surprising that people often want to stay on the surface in Shared Reading and not go too deep into sorrow. We’ve got enough of it already!
Yet the fact remains that for most of us, even wealthy third-worlders, life is hard, as the Book of Job (6th century BCE) asserts:
Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.
The implication – look at the picture – is, how should it be any other way? We are mortal. yet we live with powerful consciousness that feels immortal. There’s always death, pain, illness, breakages. Lots of the time, naturally, we want to keep whistling and pretend it is not so.
Yet the very best experiences in Shared Reading often come when we stop whistling and look up and listen to the crackle of the sparks and the silence behind them. You gotta go down to get up.
A Reader Leader developing a group has a tough job on, partly coaxing non-readers towards literature in the first place, then keeping a balance between the wishes of some members to ‘stay light’ (as one reader said to me, ‘we’ve got enough sorrow at home’ ) and the task of creating the intense experience that comes from sharing the most complex, and often sad or troubling, texts.
In groups I’ve run I’m always aiming towards the best and greatest, even if it might take a while to get there. For me that best and greatest is usually Shakespeare (other great writers are harder to share: I’ve only once read Dante and rarely Wordsworth, and never Milton in a normal weekly community Shared Reading group, though have read all of them on Saturday Dayschools. Would I try it? Yes probably, depending on the stability of the group). When I say best and greatest, I think I am talking about levels of complexity. Which writers use up the greatest proportion of my brain and heart?
And while there are many great Shakespeare works you might decide to start trying to talk your group into starting – I’ve read Hamlet, All’s Well , Macbeth and probably others that I’ve forgotten in Shared Reading groups – for me the play I love and would most like to share is The Winter’s Tale.
Starting The Winter’s Tale here is partly for myself – haven’t read it for a couple of years, so I’ll enjoy spending some time with it. But partly I offer my reading as an encouragement to anyone who can’t imagine reading a Shakespeare play in their Shared Reading group. And for readers who don’t run groups ( why don’t you?) I hope it will simply be a meditative joy to read some complicating deep stuff very slowly. Breathe! Breathe!
There’s an online text here, and you’ll find paper texts in libraries and bookshops everywhere. We don’t need a text with exceptional scholarship, though it’s fine if you have one.
How to start?
Talk them into it! Start talking about it long before – in the middle of run of short stories, or half way through Silas Marner. Sell it! Tell them how great it will be, and remind them it won’t be like school.
Some tips before you begin:
- If you can, watch it in a couple of different productions (I still like the 1981 BBC Shakespeare version directed by Jane Howell and starring the great Margaret Tyzack as Paulina.).
- Close your ears, now The Reader Quality team, but I’m not a great fan of prep for Shared Reading – I like to find my reading live and without a safety net. Of course I’ve been falling off that highwire for decades so I’m used to landing with a splat. But here I’d definitely recommend you working on the text in advance if possible, because you want to feel reasonably confident. Get a scene or so in advance of your group.
- Make sure your group know this is going to take a while: we’re not going to rush. Treat it like a poem, let every word, every phrase and sentence have its right amount of time.
- Be prepared to say, many times over, ‘I don’t know! I haven’t a clue!’
- Let discussion wander all over the shop but keep coming back to the text and asking everyone to think again or try to imagine it.
- To imagine it, build a little invisible theatre-in-the-round in the middle of your reading space and ask group members to visualise the play – try it with different sets, costumes, actors from the telly. Make it move!
- Know the story and be able to tell it to entice your more reluctant group members towards the play – be ready with translations into modern-day life – who do we know who is like this? Have you ever seen a person do this?
- Ask one of your group to keep a list of characters (and clues to who they are) which could be pinned up in the room as you read – people new to Shakespeare will really struggle with the names in the this play. (Polixenes= King of Bohemia, boyhood friend of King Leontes / Mamillius= son of King Leontes, aged about 9 or 10. / Paulina= wife of courtier Antigonus, speaks her mind).
- Beware the academic – no fancy talk. Your job as Reader Leader is to keep it real – this is not an old studied for A level play, it’s a piece of our heart.
Ah, run out of time now. But here is the opening scene, which I’ll pick up next time.
ACT I
SCENE I. Antechamber in LEONTES’ palace.
Enter CAMILLO and ARCHIDAMUS
If you shall chance, Camillo, to visit Bohemia, on
the like occasion whereon my services are now on
foot, you shall see, as I have said, great
difference betwixt our Bohemia and your Sicilia.I think, this coming summer, the King of Sicilia
means to pay Bohemia the visitation which he justly owes him.Wherein our entertainment shall shame us we will be
justified in our loves; for indeed–Verily, I speak it in the freedom of my knowledge:
we cannot with such magnificence–in so rare–I know
not what to say. We will give you sleepy drinks,
that your senses, unintelligent of our insufficience,
may, though they cannot praise us, as little accuse
us.Believe me, I speak as my understanding instructs me
and as mine honesty puts it to utterance.Sicilia cannot show himself over-kind to Bohemia.
They were trained together in their childhoods; and
there rooted betwixt them then such an affection,
which cannot choose but branch now. Since their
more mature dignities and royal necessities made
separation of their society, their encounters,
though not personal, have been royally attorneyed
with interchange of gifts, letters, loving
embassies; that they have seemed to be together,
though absent, shook hands, as over a vast, and
embraced, as it were, from the ends of opposed
winds. The heavens continue their loves!I think there is not in the world either malice or
matter to alter it. You have an unspeakable
comfort of your young prince Mamillius: it is a
gentleman of the greatest promise that ever came
into my note.I very well agree with you in the hopes of him: it
is a gallant child; one that indeed physics the
subject, makes old hearts fresh: they that went on
crutches ere he was born desire yet their life to
see him a man.Yes; if there were no other excuse why they should
desire to live.If the king had no son, they would desire to live
on crutches till he had one.
Exeunt
readerjanedavis 
This couldn’t have been better timed. One of the groups I lead read Twelfth Night at the end of last year. It was the first encounter with Shakespeare for most group members. They really enjoyed it and want to read another play….cue today’s blog post!
We watched the BBC production from 1980 when we’d finished reading. It was a great experience.
Really brilliant to hear this, Heather! Enjoy!
Been meaning to answer this for aeons but such is life if not chaotic actually all came back to me reading this little bit although actually the winters tale is one of the few plays that have not tackled my self !!! maybe got it in my head belongs to u !!!
speaking from personal experience may not suggest that it is going to be great or it is wonderful reminds me of a person asking me why dont u like cherries they are gorgeous well to me they make me sick !
I asked someone i knew very well to come to the reading grp with the reply ” i hate shakespeare dont get it and its for brainy people , which my reply was ” well not been to my reading group give it a go and if dont like it i will leave you in peace for ever and a day .
so she came and liked it and that was years ago although she dips in and out but yer just give it ago
We have read the vast majority of them and the ones that have really gone down well are the obscure ones like two gentlemen of Verona and Cymbeline ( honestly ) as u say it is sometime it is good not to prepare to much so then u can all say in unison I have not a clue .
It takes confidence to read Shakespeare aloud ( as u know ) but alot depends on how well the group knows each other and to know that it is ok to say dont get this its doing my head in as u know i dont care how people pronounce words you somehow get the gist and will say thingy wotsit if got an unusual name although nothing worse than someone telling u the correct pronunciation ( i can feel u cringing))
Stating the obvious he wrote plays so to see a production of what reading really helps as all comes together especially the comedy’s as we may utter a titter of laughter nothing more think the more you read of him the easier it gets although he is annoying as tend to do the same formula with alot of the comedy’s so yer know going to be a mix up and dance off into the moonlight at end ( sos spoiler alert ) sorry !!
Today people still think u got be posh and got loads of qualifications to read the bard but no way people tense up when you start reading it instead of relaxing like on a tv quiz ask the contestant “who the queen is wed to and they fall apart and say charles an it haunts them for the rest of their life but the reason dont know is the pressure so just relax as someone said to me the other day helps if knows your language louisespeak if learnt one thing from u and the reader be yourself as noone else can be the end corrie is on !!