Paola Sanchez

9th Grade Humanities

Ms. Britt

May 4, 2017

Shakespeare at Peace

William Shakespeares first play was written 426 years ago in a Elizabethan era that has

few similarities to modern days society. Shakespeare is known to be one of the world's greatest

writer. Shakespeare is still the most produced playwright in 1990s America, and in England he

was recently voted in one BBC poll the Briton of the Millennium. Shakespeare should stop

being assigned in school because his language is complicated to understand, contains

inappropriate content and we could use that time to learn about other cultural perspective.

The english language itself is already complicated and for us to understand the early

modern english is complicated enough. Dana Dusbiber stated And not only do I dislike

Shakespeare because of my own personal disinterest in reading stories written in an early form of

the english language that I cannot always easily navigate. As just stated, Shakespeare language

is complicated enough as well as useless and out of date. Students have to take time to examine,

summarise and translate Shakespearean language to English. If one does not understand

Shakespearean language it becomes complicated and boring to them. Shakespeare language is

complicated enough for students and some of his content is inappropriate.

Romeo and Juliet is a perfect example for some of shakespeare's inappropriate content. I

don't believe that not viewing Romeo and Juliet Or any other modern adaptation of a

Shakespeare play will make my students less able to go out into the world and understand
language or human behavior. Ms. Dusbiber. Romeo and Juliet is one of many Shakespeare

plays that promotes sex, violence, drugs and suicide at such a young age. Juliet was only 13

when she lost her virginity in addition she stabbed herself to get out of a marriage and go with

Romeo. Hamlet is another perfect illustration of violence. Hamlet plan is to kill his uncle

Claudius because he murdered his father and married the wife. Hamlet stabs Claudius and makes

him drink the poison. Before that Claudius plan was to make Hamlet drink the poison but the

mom drinks it and dies and Hamlet gets stabbed. Not only is his content unsuitable but it's also

not culturally diverse. The time spent on Shakespeare could be used to learn about other cultural

perspectives. What I worry about is that as long as we continue to cling to ONE (white) MANS

view of life as he lived it so long ago, we (perhaps unwittingly) promote the notion that other

cultural perspectives are less important. Ms. Dusbiber.

Not everyone can relate to what Shakespeare says or writes. Schools should focus more

on different cultural perspectives because schools are really diverse and if they teach a lesson

that only of the class can relate, students might feel left out in the conversation or they might

think it's just boring. Therefore Shakespeare should stop being assigned at schools. Shakespeare

is a great poet and his sonnets are really beautifully written, he does inspire a lot people to create

writing and to create movies. Shakespeare should stop being the main focus for writing at

schools. Let's let Shakespeare rest in peace, and start a new discussion about middle and high

school rite-of-passage reading and literature study. Dana Dusbiber.