Shakespeare at Key Stage 3: Problems with 'The Tempest'

The story so far...

'I have suffered with those that I saw suffer.'

This term I helped teach The Tempest to Y9. It is a popular choice at this level, largely because it used to be the core text for the now defunct SATs which means English departments have plenty of copies left over. I suspect (though I have not heard anyone say explicitly) that many teachers reckon the subject matter - magic and exile on a strange island - is the kind of thing the pupils could engage with. My other suspicion is that it is a suitable option because it is weightier than a comedy, lighter than a tragedy and, crucially, because it requires no prior knowledge and stands alone, unlike the history plays.

The problems with The Tempest

All of these things are fair enough. However, I could not help but feel that there was something missing. It is possible this be because I have never truly loved The Tempest myself. Certainly it is charming entertainment with lovely moments but it tends toward the realm of ephemera, which I think is visible in the debt it owes to the ephemeral genre of the masque, popular at the time in James' court but forgotten ever after. It just succeeds in pulling back from such an abyss in its handling of the thorny question of colonisation and legitimate authority, but these concepts are difficult and abstract for the literal-minded thirteen-year-old growing up in a stable democracy.

It is also oddly un-poetic. I confess I am overtly treading on the subjective here, and aesthetics are difficult to turn into more than matters of personal taste. However, there is a practical measure to my objection. The first is that aesthetics - sheer beauty - can have a mesmeric effect on the pupils. Such moments as Caliban's speech - one of two poetic high points - had the pupils captivated either when I recited it myself, or when I called upon trusty old Gielgud to do it for me. Moreover, those plays in which Shakespeare more carefully observes the rigours of meter are thereby more fertile plains for teaching iambic pentameter (plus other styles), which besides anything else is something pupils need to know for the poetry and Shakespeare components of the GCSE.

On genre

'Those are pearls that were his eyes.'

Finally, on the matter of genre, there is quite a practical problem with The Tempest: it is a 'romance', not in the Mills & Boon or Hugh Grant sense of the word, but in the ancient (and still current) genre into which we place medieval knights, James Bond and Eliot's The Wasteland. I have not the time (you are not likely to have the patience) to get into details save one feature: romance is characterised by a sequence of minor episodes, each with a minor climax, threaded together by the constant motion of the meandering story. Just think of 007, how many fights and car chases he engages in along the way, how many flights he takes to new and exciting places, how many women he meets as he goes, how many villains...and now compare that with a handful of separate parties scattered across an island, each bumbling along until the final scene. Think of the tempest itself, or Caliban swapping Prospero for Stephano, or Anthonio and Sebastian attempting to murder Alonso, or the two youngsters falling in love, or the masque, or Ariel's banquet, et cetera. Charming entertainment, indeed, and in different guises romance would work wonderfully at Y9, but illuminating the plot for the children is problematic here.

So what?

So I have some issues with using The Tempest in Y9. So what? And I know why I have those issues. Who cares? For surely this is an idle discussion. The department bookshelves have plenty of copies of this play, not so many copies of the others and small prospect of funding for any expansion on unproven, less well known plays, which means I had better buckle down and just work on doing the best I can with The Tempest next year and the year after, et cetera. Right?

Well, maybe wrong. The new KS3 curriculum goes live in September of this year. It stipulates the teaching of not one but two Shakespeare plays. Some departments may already have plenty of copies of something else but which may not be entirely suitable for the 11-13 age bracket, whilst others may not have another play ready to use at all. As a result, it is meet that one reflect upon the strengths and weaknesses of the current core text in deciding where to go with a potential second. Suddenly, the 'so what?' has become a 'now what?'

And I think I have an answer, which I shall share with you another day...