Using a consent form and interview questions ran by the professor, I contacted and followed through with an interview with the high school teacher (Austra Gulens) who taught me hamlet in grade twelve, and sparked my interest and inspiration in Shakespeare’s work. She was a memorable teacher who taught me the script in a way that resonated with me. Here is the transcript of our conversation:

Nov 9, 2020

Fiona: To begin our interview, which Shakespeare texts do you usually teach?

Austra: Usually for grade twelves it’s Hamlet, for grade elevens I teach Macbeth, and then for grade nines I’ve taught both Twelfth Night and Midsummer Night’s Dream. 

Fiona: Why do you choose those particular texts?

Austra: Partly it’s not my choice, it is what’s decided department wise, but within the choice we do have I definitely love teaching Hamlet for the grade twelves. It is just such a rich play that students can relate to on so many levels at that age in terms of plot, character line, and the things that Hamlet were going through are just so typical teenager; having issues with your girlfriend, issues with your parents, not knowing how you fit in and what you want to do. It’s something students can really relate to, and I love when I’m teaching Hamlet that we realize that Hamlet is so much not just in our vocabulary and expressions but is so much in how we think. I Actually just received an email this morning from a student who was at some-I don’t know what it was- some fast food chicken restaurant, and she opened the box, and it said “to dip or not to dip”. She sent me a picture to say Hamlet is everywhere. So I find that in learning Hamlet for the grade twelves, it has a huge impact on their confidence, when they learn they can understand such a challenging text. There’s so much of the world now that they can understand better because they understand Hamlet, including understanding yourself better. 

Macbeth we do for grade elevens, I think it’s a good choice because it’s short, and while it is very bloody and violent, it is surprisingly beautiful in its language, and it’s a really good way to get kids to start seeing those patterns and really understand how you can do something so beautiful with language. Because it is shorter and yet super dense, it also really gives them a chance to be able to grasp and understand it and to gain that confidence, so that when they get to Hamlet in grade twelve, which is so much longer and more challenging, if it’s done right the year before, then they have the confidence to tackle Hamlet. 

For the grade nines, I love that they are doing comedy. I go between Midsummer Night’s Dream and Twelfth Night to change it up for myself but also I find that I have started teaching Twelfth Night more because I have better stage and film versions to show. It’s a play, not a book, so being able to see it rather than just read it to me is paramount. That is also why I love teaching Macbeth and Hamlet, I have so many great versions I can show them which totally bring them alive.

Grade tens, I haven’t taught grade tens in forever, but they do Romeo and Juliet, one of my least favorite to teach. And that’s a tragedy, I think two years of comedy and two years of tragedy would be better, but that’s not what we do. 

Fiona: I definitely felt that Hamlet resonated with me as a teenager in grade twelve.

Austra: Yeah, like who doesn’t get him? 

Fiona: What typical attitude do you see in how students approach Shakespeare?

Austra: to be frank it totally depends on what has happened in their classes in previous years. If they have had a teacher who has approached it as a play, and allowed the students to really engage with the text, understand the text, experienced the text, and has built that amazing confidence, then they come in to class eager to find out. Sadly I find that a lot of students, if they haven’t had that experience, and they’ve just had the very old-school, read it like a book, do a quiz, do a test, and they end up understanding nothing. Of course when you understand nothing, you hate it as well. Those students come into the class dreading it, with very strong preconceived notions, that I always end up turning around for them. 

My favorite was last year, when teaching Macbeth, to my grade elevens. We’re just halfway through the first class, and one of my smartest kids interrupts in the middle of the lesson, raises his hand and says “who knew”. I’m like “what?” , and he says “this is really good, who knew that Shakespeare was so great?” I’m like “everybody!”. His experience was somebody who taught them that it was awful, that he couldn’t get it, and that it’s useless so why bother. So for a lot of them it’s an eye-opening surprise for them that it’s really good and they love it. It’s similar to math anxiety where students have math anxiety and that stops them from getting it, I think it’s the same with Shakespeare anxiety. If you’ve been taught that you can’t possibly understand it, that’s how you start it, and that’s what your experience will be too. 

Fiona: Speaking of anxiety, are there any strategic methods that you use to teach Shakespeare and overcome that?

Austra: Yes definitely. A lot of these things are things that I have taken from workshops I’ve done, and I either take these methods or do my own modifications of that, but one of the things that comes from the Folger Library, which has an amazing Shakespeare program called “tossing lines”. I always do that in the beginning, where students just pick these random lines that I have on little pieces of paper. I tell them if they don’t like it they can pick another one, and if they have a questions on what it means they can ask me. So we start with everyone sitting in their seat, and I tell everyone to say their line, just whisper it. We all whisper it at the same time, so nobody understands anybody. Then I tell them to say it again a little louder, say it is if you’re angry, say it as if you’re sad. Then we walk around the room, and that’s where the tossing lines comes in. You walk around the room, and whoever you pass you just say your line. Sometimes it’s pretty hilarious, and the person who responds to you ends up having the perfect comeback, other times it makes no sense. So we do this, walk around, have a bunch of fun, and then they put the piece of paper back, and go back to their seats. This is when I say “everyone say their line again”, and they all do, so I look at them like “oh wait a minute I thought Shakespeare wasn’t possible to understand and impossible to memorize, and to yet you guys all just understood with no context, your line”. They kind of get that sparkle in their eye of like “oh, I do get it!”. 

So I always do that, and my whole approach is of it being theatre not literature. Whether we’re doing a lot of things as physical activities or just the understanding of what the text is about, the characters, the dialogue, the interaction, when you see it from that perspective it helps. 

I don’t know if when I taught you we were doing the top five lines for Hamlet?

Fiona: No, I don’t remember that.

Austra: So it’s something that I do now, a lot and it’s something I came up with. It’s something that I started and it turned into one of the kids’ favorite things to do. In fact, when we had to end early last year because the pandemic my grade twelves were saying “ugh, we didn’t get to do the top five!”. The top five is this thing I do, like for Hamlet we do it at the end of act one, and then we’ll do it at the end of the play. Students have to come up with their top five lines, get into groups, decide on the top five lines, and put them on the board, so we now have four or five groups with their lines on the board. They then have to defend them, so I stand there with the eraser, and since you know me you can imagine what that’s like, and I say “hey, if that’s a dumb line (I’m kidding) I’ll erase it”. So they have to defend it, and their competitive nature comes out, you know, nobody’s going to have their line erased by Ms. Gulens. 

If I ask them to sit down and write an essay with three good reasons why this is an important line, they could do it but it becomes analysis. This activity just lets them argue it out and stop my hand from erasing. It’s so much fun and sometimes they’ll end up going “you know what go ahead miss erase it, here’s a better one”. It takes as an entire class and they can’t wait for it because the idea of being able to defend in a way that is like an argument, they don’t feel like they’re analyzing it. They realize “man, I do have things to say, I do understand this, I can contribute, and I can say things that this teacher hasn’t thought of before” so how great is that?

Fiona: that’s really neat! 

Austra: Yes! As you can see I get kind of excited when I’m talking about teaching Shakespeare.

Fiona: Yes, and that’s awesome, you’re exactly the person I need to talk to for this project! Do you recommend any specific aids or resources to help them learn the old English?

Austra: not really, in fact we often start with talking about how, we’re looking at technically, like, Shakespeare actually is modern English. Middle English ends in the 1450s, so he in fact is modern English, and depending what source you look at, between 8-10% of our vocabulary was in fact attributed to Shakespeare inventing those words. I find more than anything that, it’s that whole concept of Shakespeare anxiety. I’ll often start with the opening line of Hamlet, which is “whose there?”, and I’ll ask “okay, what does that line mean?”  and set it up as if it’s deep and difficult. Kids look stumped, and some kids will nervously raise their hand and say “doesn’t mean like they’re wondering who’s there?” and I’ll say “yeah! So you see how much of this actually you can understand!”. 

The parts that we can’t understand, we look at it, you can use your notes in the scripts, but more than anything, thinking about what the characters thinking and feeling, do you understand what’s going on for the character, then you understand what the lines mean. Also it’s important to know that you don’t have to understand every word. I sometimes use comparisons like when you go to the movie and there’s a funny scene and you and your friends laugh so hard, but at the end, you turn into each other and say “what did they say?”. Even if you didn’t hear it you laughed anyway because you got the gist.

Fiona: So I’m guessing that you don’t think the language should be translated to modern-day English.

Austra: No, not at all. It’s the beauty of language, and the power of how he uses the words that is what makes his plays so outstanding. When it’s done right and you used productions that are great, the kids get it. In 2012 when I did a field trip to Stratford to see Hamlet, it was Ben Carlson performing. He was so amazing in that role, and I will never forget at intermission having seriously heated arguments with a bunch of my grade twelves because they were convinced that he wasn’t doing the script. They thought it was improv, and most of it he’s not doing the lines. I said “he is, but when it’s done right, that’s what it sounds like, like somebody just talking”. I told them to really pay attention and they couldn’t believe that that is what it could be like, and if it’s done well, that’s what it can be like. 

And then there are times that maybe the odd word should be changed when it is truly a word we no longer use or adaptations of Hamlet that are modernized, like instead of saying my “rape” they say my “gun”, and that’s fine because it make sense for the props they have. But if his words we’re meant to be translated in modern English to be understood, then we would not have all the productions we have all over the world still to this day. In the last decade every year in Toronto there are more companies that are doing Shakespeare. Every year. If it was too hard to understand, it just wouldn’t happen.

Fiona: Good point, a lot of kids in my class are telling me I should translate it so that’s a different take on it. 

Austra: Yeah, no, and if you’re translating then I don’t see the point, and that suggests that it can’t be understood. It can be. We had this one woman Mary Hartman, whose been a Shakespeare educator for decades, and she even said at the last workshop I did “I’ve been teaching how to teach Shakespeare my entire life, so I know this inside out and backwards”. For a recent thing she was doing she had to read Antony and Cleopatra, and she said “I couldn’t believe I had never actually read it, so I sat down to read it, and it was really hard”, she’s like “that’s the whole point that you should not sit down and read it. It’s a play”. So you have to either watch it to understand it or you have to do it to understand it, but if you’re just going to sit and read it, yeah it’s going to be really hard. Gestures, expressions, movements is where such a big part of the meaning comes through, and is meant to come through.

Fiona: what aspects of Shakespeare’s plays are the most important takeaways for students?

Austra: I would say for one the beauty and power of his language that you learn, how you can use the smallest words so effectively with such an impact, and 400 years later they are still as powerful. This leads me to the second thing which is how incredibly relevant it still is. It really is timeless in its themes and motifs. I think the third point would be how incredibly he has captured the human experience, you know, as you were saying how much you related to Hamlet. You can look at these characters and it doesn’t matter who they are or what culture you have, we can all understand because he’s so beautifully delved into so many of those parts of what it means to be a human being like love, hate, forgiveness, all of these things that you can’t watch and just think, well that’s 400 years ago it doesn’t apply today. It does. Sadly it feels like more and more every year it does apply.

Fiona: Definitely. I just have one more question, I know you are busy. If you could design a class material of a script for Shakespeare, what would that look like?

Austra: Actually, I love really what you said there, you called it a script, not a text, that’s really important. It would probably be something that delves into character. So it might be something that is, you know it has the script on one side and on the other side would be some sort of chart that has elements, maybe of analysis, but really of more like a director’s Handbook that, as you’re looking at that script, what would you be telling your active to do? What would you be telling him to wear? What props to hold, what sets to use so that you’re really envisioning what’s going on in this scene? What is this character thinking, what is this character feeling, and if you can understand that, that means you can understand the language. 

Fiona: Right, so kind of like blocking.

Austra: Yeah, and so it would be blocking but also you would do things like highlighting the most important lines, explaining why they’re so important, that’s where, I’m asking you to decide as a director or actor, and that’s your literary analysis. If you pick out that line that so important then how would you deliver it, or what’s the most important word in this passage, how would that shape your decision of how you would approach it as performance? 

You know this quadmaster is in a bazillion ways, an absolute impossible nightmare, but the worst part is when teaching Shakespeare. First of all we have no time, and second of all we can’t do any of those interactive things where you’re getting up and working with partners because you have to be six be apart all the time. That’s the real challenge of how can I still bring the text to life without that? So what we’ve done is that it’s more about watching the versions than the kids getting up and doing stuff themselves. For me it’s a huge loss, but right now with the pandemic there’s so many huge losses, we just have to do the best we can.