Shakespeare Messed Up Disability Representation For Everyone [CC]

[@resourceress7]

At my college, everyone called the intro Shakespeare course "Baby Shakes."

[@Abyss_Alyssa]

I just love referring to Shakespeare as Shakey Boy and Mr Shakes. Permanent additions to my vernacular

[@packman2321]

My Mum worked in the building they found Richard the III under at the time of the dig. Because it stopped them using the carpark, the archaelogists let the city council workers come for a tour and bring a guest. My brother was planning to apply to study history that year so he went down. Which is why my brother was at the dig site on the day they found Richard III (though slightly after and before they announced it, at the time his assessment was 'all the archaeologists seem really excited by their job!'). It's also why he got very frustrated by the Richard the 3rd society in general and the focus given to genetics in the news after that. I believe he was fond of telling people at time that 'If the DNA test came back negative, given the weight of other evidence that just means the people being tested aren't as related to Richard as they think they are.' Moving more relevantly this was a great video, I was wondering when I saw the title whether Narrative Prosthesis would be popping up, but I haven't read much Shakespeare analysis outside of that so it was really cool to get a wider perspective.

[@jennifermems1111]

JFC I love the "super unreliable narrator" take on Richard III. 😅

[@JRVan-ez4yi]

I've had history/English teachers who point out that Shaksboi couldn't be reliable on that play even if he wanted to, not talking smack about the enemy of the ruler's grandfather, given the death of which was how their family got the crowns could have very negative effects.

[@LaCafedora]

I love the idea of making Richard the only able-bodied character in a cast of disabled people! Episode 42 of The Twilight Zone ("Eye of the Beholder") did something similar, but I don't know the popular response to that at the time.

[@cybergimpmonkey]

I still can't get it out of my head how to sign Shakespeare in ASL. Also, it always baffled me that high school english teachers insist on teaching Romeo and Juliet to kids because they feel like they have to teach some kind of Shakespeare and it must be the most relatable play because it has horny, suicidal teenagers in it.

[@isabellalucia7820]

The choice that confuses me is midsummer night’s dream for primary or lower high school just because there are fairies in it. So many plots within plots within parallel plots to untangle… I find teens relate well to the friendship betrayal and racism if Othello and the violent ambitions of the Scottish play. Have also made twelfth night work with lower high school by looking at comic elements such as mistaken identity, cross dressing, innuendo, puns, witty insults etc (using the bob/Kate Blackadder to set them up!) and also by focusing on the ethics of malvolio’s comeuppance (is bullying ever warranted? How far is too far?).

[@addyshorhnr3544]

I despise Shakespeare, purely because of the fact I was taught Romeo and Juliet. Sorry my asexual-ness and logically natural, well to the point of if you are dead you can’t be with your boyfriend, brain does not get why any of this is happening. Have a talk you absolutely weirdos. I did mildly enjoy the other works we did but found them mildly boring and hard to follow because “murder is bad to teach children” considering it was the end of senior year most of us were legally not children.

[@CDKohmy]

In high school, I struggled with the classics, now I can't get enough. One factor that helped is that many, like Shakespeare and Homer, were meant to be performed, with music. On Richard III's disability, I watched a documentary focused on reconstructing his armor and the like, it was interesting to find that a medieval style saddle was more accommodating than a modern saddle for that disability.

[@sporks5000]

I highly recommend "Little Willie Wonder-Shakes" as an alternative name to use to reference Shakespeare

[@jaime9665]

Shakespeare nickname offering: Billy

[@jennifermems1111]

Eeeeee!!! You're stating a lot of the thoughts I had in high school, and makes me appreciate adaptations of Shak's plays more than the plays themselves because most of them update Ake's language to make it make more sense. Also, most adaptations of Mr Peare's The Taming of the Shrew are better than the original 😏👉.

[@isabellalucia7820]

My least loved play on account of the supremely toxic masculinity, and I let the yr 8 kids know I was only teaching it because it was set (for comparison with 10 things I hate about you)… Until one group (one of the tasks was to choose and act a scene) flipped the final scene: when Katherine bends to his foot, she flips him backward off his chair. A great illustration to me about how staging came rewrite an entire scene.

[@jennifermems1111]

@@isabellalucia7820 Yeah, exactly! And there is also that one movie version where he's giving his speech at the end, and everyone ignores him and moves on because he's an ego-inflated ass.

[@isabellalucia7820]

@@jennifermems1111 Oh, haven’t seen that. Which version is it?

[@Authentistic-ism]

The pivotal moment making shakespeare accessible to me was in high school drama club - we decided to do The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Abridged. We took the Hamlet portion to drama competitions. Our coach made it understandable and the script made it funny! I took away the message that it's okay to laugh at Shakespeare, which is a message sadly missed in most teaching environments.

[@kennethsanders786]

Shakespeare was not necessarily anti-Semitic in the way we think of it today. Some scholars believe that his dark Lady of some sonnets was a Jew. He did live cheek by jowl with the area in which Jews were resident, even though their presence was not legal until Oliver Cromwell made their return to England legal. His writings represent the social mores of his time and anti-Semitic tropes were expected. Unlike his pal Kit Marlow, Bill's representation of Shylock has redemptive features. Kit, in "The Jew of Malta" represented Jews as pure evil without redemption. Humanizing Shylock. "If you prick us, do we not bleed?", was daring for the times. Reread "The Merchant" and compare the characterization with "The Jew of Malta". I love Shakespeare so I am prejudiced, I know, but I think I have a valid point. He is always deeper than you think.

[@ronjaj.addams-ramstedt1023]

Ouch, did my comment get eaten? Anyway, I was raving about a pretty long RIII archeology & genealogy talk that I love, and this time, I will add a pointer below, just in case. * crossing fingers *

[@ronjaj.addams-ramstedt1023]

Okay, apparently KZbin won't let me include a KZbin link today. The title is: Solving a 500-year-old cold case and it is presented by professor Turi King.

[@disabled.autistic.lesbian]

Sometimes KZbin hides my own comments with links in them and I truly do not understand (: I will def check that out though!

[@oliverhetherington-page1925]

I tend to go with shakesy P

[@nataliatheweirdo]

‘So basically he was disabled and horny and sad!’ …i feel like describes men in most classics 😂

[@eevilauntie]

This was super interesting! I'm a disabled autistic queer person and I love Shakespeare but hate any kind of elitism associated with classics. Also the whole idea of the Western literary canon is just, ugh. Really outdated and, indeed, elitist af. As a sidenote it's important to keep in mind that Shakespeare isn't that big a part of curricula outside the angloamerican cultural sphere. I'm Finnish and us Nordics aren't that far from other European cultures, but even though I was a theatre kid we hardly touched on Shakespeare throughout my school years. The first time I had actual classes on Shakespeare was in University (and even then it was marginal compared to for example Chekhov or Tennessee Williams).

[@disabled.autistic.lesbian]

That's super interesting! When I studied abroad in Italy they talked about Shakespeare on the daily so I just kinda assumed it was consistent across most curricula

[@isabellalucia7820]

There seemed to be a fair amount of Shakespeare in Germany when I lived there thirty years ago. And it’s something my new English speakers almost all view with equal parts excitement and trepidation as the epitome of English lit.

[@Bendzh]

So much of this was completely new to me, but was Oswald Mosley really disabled? Do you have a source for that?

[@disabled.autistic.lesbian]

The majority (if not all?) of the articles/chapters I read about the film specifically mentioned it

[@isabellalucia7820]

Not to ignore the long history of conflating ugliness with villainy, but… Did other writers of his time ever try to show how it feels to be thus labeled? That opening feels like a powerful (if momentary) plea for empathy - like Shylock’s speech. Their villainy results (in my mind) from a discriminatory context and these monologues are a demonstration of internalised prejudice. At least that how I read them as a kid (I had a head start on the language cause KJV bible was the primary text of my childhood) without a teacher to tell me otherwise. If I were English teaching atm I’d do a representation unit using Shakespeare excerpts with Richard III for disability, Othello and Merchant for race and the Scottish play for women. It would work using the 1/2 hr BBC animations to watch the plays, or even something like a penguin ESL version of the play or kids’ short story version so we know the context of the actual excerpts. The Shakespeare lovers and other extension students could choose one if the plays to watch/read in its entirety without the others deciding that Shakespeare is completely incomprehensible. This would let me introduce various theories of representation (starting with feminist because it’s familiar) in a really accessible way. The final essay (well scaffolded throughout the unit) would be to choose one of the plays and take a side on the representation of race/women/disability. [yes, it works - I have a great unit on bend it like Beckham than I use to teach feminist, race theory and queer theory to low ability classes. And race is the obvious entry point to othello if your very multicultural class hates Shakespeare.] Someone please take this and run with it!

[@isabellalucia7820]

Oh course I started responding before I got to you pulling out the same point and, more importantly, to the productions. I hope some drama teacher gets students to write comparisons like this… Meanwhile I totally want to see how your version affects the physical staging. I saw a version of Queen Lear which I expected to be just a staging gimmick, but it revealed so much about the gendering of space and aggression. This would be a similar experience, I think.

[@gstone8255]

King Lears youngest Duagther is proabbly Autistic too. I just thought thst fit the subject.

[@HigginsObvious]

I like calling him pointy stick theater man😁Mispronouncing his name with the stress on the "speare" so its an iamb is also quite fun. For uh, a certain nerdy definition of fun.