One question that kept coming up in the Shakespeare in American Education conference was “Why Shakespeare?”. Why does this one author out of all of the other authors deserve such a place in the canon? Why spend valuable instruction time in school working on Shakespeare? Is Shakespeare useful in teaching other subjects, or is Shakespeare a topic worth studying in its own right?<\/p>\n
Can the answer be agreed upon in the same way as “Why arithmetic?” or “Why writing?” pretty much can be? Or is the answer to “Why Shakespeare?” too ineffable to be codified in that way. Can there ever really be an answer? And if there can’t, how can we justify teaching it?<\/p>\n
Of course, all of this begs the question, and you may choose instead to answer in the negative. Is Shakespeare’s popularity a result of a social and political construction, and not based on the merit of the work? Is there some grain of truth to the high school student’s suspicion that it’s all just a scam? Is there a more deserving candidate, or is the elevation of a single individual counter-productive to the idea of a canon?<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, I ask you…<\/p>\n
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