Why Read the Classics? (1986)
I had to visit the Shakespeare festival in Ashland, OR many times as a kid. My parents didn’t push attendance on me, but nor did my dad explain why Shakespeare is so great. “It’s classic literature.” “How? What makes it better than Isaac Asimov or the Hardy Boys?” “It’s just great literature.” I found this frustrating and started telling people that Shakespeare should be taught as a second language (a joke one of my college professor friends likes to repeat even now).<p>Fast forward 35 years. I have come to enjoy reading Shakespeare on my own.<p>(Why is it great literature? Incredible prose, insane plot lines, and way way underrated comedy. Some of the best comedy I have ever encountered is in Shakespeare’s so-called tragedies, a situation that very much matches my own tragedy-marred life. Reread “Hamlet”, “Richard III”, and “MacBeth” for a barrage of hilariously inappropriate one-liners.)<p>Anyway, a decade and half ago wife wants to take the kids, ages 7 & 9, to the Ashland Shakespeare Festival. I tell them they don’t have to see any of it. I tell them I didn’t enjoy anything but the comedies as a kid but that the staging and costumes were always good. No pressure at all; they are welcome to hang out in the hotel room with iPads or to watch TV, a luxury they lack at home.<p>They go see everything, including histories and tragedies. And they totally get it. Apparently my children don’t know they’re not supposed to understand the antiquated English, because halfway through their first play (“Merchant of Venice”) I am sometimes having to ask them what’s going on, and my 7 year-old patiently and correctly gives me the 411. They attend pre-play lectures and, when asked by the lecturer, read better than most actors. We go many more times in the ensuing years and it’s now among my most cherished memories.<p>To this day they quote Shakespeare accurately and mumble “Exeunt” under their breath when they want to get out of a boring situation.