Books I Have Taught: Macbeth

The Books I Have Taught series is a personal reflection on the books I have taught in my classes. Their experiences often reveal interesting truths, not about the themes necessarily, but more about the outcomes and interactions I had with my students and the various paths it led me down. I hope you enjoy my reflection on the books that I have taught.

Now, I know Macbeth by William Shakespeare is not a book, but a play, but I did not wish to do a separate series for the three plays that I have taught so far in my teaching career, so I am lumping them all in here over the next three weeks. I am starting with Macbeth because of the three plays (I will reveal the other two in the next two weeks), it was probably my favourite to teach. The unique factor when teaching plays is that it is not a book, so the teacher does not just stand up the front and speak, there are roles and having the students, or forcing them to, read out the roles is an engaging tactic. They put on Scottish accents or apply their own twist to the character, make it a little bit theirs. It also saves my voice and makes the play feel more alive. Now, obviously for a class of combined 9/10s I used a simplified version of the play and lots of act and scene summaries from YouTube to help with understanding, but the reading out and making the character their own was still achievable for them. I even used a Manga version of the play for the students who needed further differentiation (click on the image at the beginning and it will take you to it). I think they also enjoy the element of death and murder, it makes it engaging. I think what I love most about Shakespeare’s plays is that despite the order of words being unnatural for the modern reader, we all understand the point. We get the basis of the story and can follow it even if we do not understand all of the individual lines. That is a standard of writing that I would love to emulate, that I could write a story now and, in the future, once our language has adapted to a new environment, the story still makes sense, and it still holds true. I don’t want to write something that is trendy, that is relevant for a moment and then gone the next. I would hope that someone would read it in four hundred years, and they could get something from it, but how does one do that. I don’t have the answer, honestly, maybe one day I will. For now, though, it is simply something that I aim for. I love teaching Shakespeare probably because I myself enjoy the plays. I know it can be hard to build enthusiasm for it as many students decide they hate it before they fully engage with the text, but I believe that it is worth it. There are many tools that exist to help students understand the rich concepts and studying a play gives opportunity for more students to read aloud. For my own practice, I will continue to strive to write in such a way that it transcends time, and when I find out, I promise that I will let you all know.