Introduction

The plays of William Shakespeare, or at least a small part of the Canon, have become staples in the English curriculum of American high schools. To call Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Julius Caesar, and Romeo and Juliet (among others) the crown jewels in secondary school literature study might not be carrying too far an evaluation of the Bard’s standing in the typical curriculum. Few English teachers pass through undergraduate training without being taught most of these dramas (sometimes more than once) either in high school or college, and most beginning English teachers think they are competent Shakespearean scholars simply by virtue of having been taught these plays.

Such confidence is often short-lived, however, when the new English teacher first tackles the job of instilling the love and appreciation of the Master into the minds and hearts of almost-always reluctant scholars. Finding a way to successfully interest high school students in the works of Shakespeare is a problem that has faced English teachers for almost a century. Although many teachers have developed their own methods for presenting the dramas to oppositional students with some degree of success, there have been few experimental studies which have yielded empirical data concerning the degree of success achieved with any one pedagogical approach.

Literature Review

There have probably been as many methods of teaching Shakespearean drama as there have been teachers of Shakespearean drama. That is a likely conclusion that one might draw from an examination of the prodigious number of journal articles, books, workshops, lectures, and conferences proselytizing followers for one teaching style or another over the past century. From the proliferation of such materials, one might conclude that teachers and professors have a stake in improving their instruction of Shakespeare’s plays. Perhaps the most overwhelming problem of teachers is motivation--getting students to overcome the ubiquitous and deadly "Yuk, Shakespeare" syndrome (McDonald, 1995).

A review of literature on the teaching of Shakespeare in both secondary schools and colleges indicates that, historically, most teachers have approached the works of Shakespeare primarily through lecture and teacher-led discussions. Although this pedagogical method is still quite popular, other styles have developed over time, especially in regard to technologically-facilitated learning.

Unfortunately, very few actual research projects exist which yield empirical data on the instructional effectiveness of lecture versus other pedagogical approaches.

This scattershot body of work is short on quantity, uneven in quality, and utterly fascinating. It is a literature woven almost entirely from the lives of teachers—autobiographical anecdote, individual points of view, some generalizable theory, and many contradictions. It was created chiefly by teachers—secondary-school and college-generalist variety—until about 1970, when scholars, directors, and others whose first interest was Shakespeare finally began to think about and to write about teaching (O’Brien, 1995).

Early Methodologies

The earliest commentaries on the teaching of Shakespeare in American high schools appeared around the turn of the century and had as their main focus the encouragement for the teaching of Shakespeare. Most enumerated reasons as to why the works of the Bard should be taught, and many heralded the importance of the teaching of at least some of the major works of the canon in the English curriculum of secondary schools (Abbott, 1916). Such plaudits continue to this day, even in reports of the most recent developments in technological pedagogy (Baines, 1997). There are many reasons why the works of Shakespeare should be taught—of that point, there is little debate among English teachers. It is the way in which his plays should be taught that has been the subject of some dispute.

Needless to say, there have been a number of teaching styles lauded in the writings of Shakespearean teachers, and many of them have been contradictory. Some showed extreme lack of creativity, such as the reading of the play line-by-line by the teacher while the students followed along in the text (Evans, 1966). Reports have ranged from calls for any energetic teaching methodology that broke with tradition (Matthews, 1916) to the urging of extensive scholarly analysis in which teachers "pull [the play] to pieces for educational use" (Granville-Barker, 1946). Heavy literary analysis usually assumed a teaching style that was "critical and scholarly and analytic" (Partridge, 1974), and many educators still believe that no scholastic stone should be unturned in the students’ study of Shakespeare. Even from the earliest times that Shakespearean plays have been taught in American secondary schools the performance of Shakespeare’s plays by students, has been proposed by some teachers (Bohn, 1916). A combination of reading aloud, acting in class, and a "stage-centered" study of Shakespeare has been recommended by only a few writers (Smith, 1922), (Blaisdell, 1930), (Hudson, 1954) in the first half of the century, but that number has exploded in the past three decades as more and more teachers have come to favor the dramatic approach. So, the idea of taking Shakespeare’s plays from the page to the stage was not really new (Bohn, 1916), (Cook, 1919), but it had few proponents until the late 70s, at which time the method gained support quickly (Barry, 1974), (Styan, 1974), (Goldman, 1975) (Ray, 1986).

"[T]he way of discovering [Shakespeare] is by playing him…; the true Shakespeare, and what is most honest and relevant in Shakespeare, emerges relentlessly" (Styan, 1974). "Performance makes students close readers and exact speakers. Aiming at coherence, they usually achieve detail, specificity, and even power" (Gilbert, 1984). The literary and analytical study of Shakespeare has had its share of denouncers (Watson, 1988), while a more constructivist approach which makes classroom activities student-centered has been advocated in more recent years (Parry, 1972). Charles H. Frey, among others, suggested that "those teachers who do release Shakespeare to their students’ own hands may sometimes discover untold rewards" (Frey, 1984).

Performance Teaching

Perhaps the earliest break from lecture and discussion teaching of Shakespeare’s plays was performance methodology. More recently, Halio has written,

Inevitably, the teacher of Shakespeare is pitched into a quandary. On the one hand, he recognizes that seeing Shakespeare’s plays staged or on film provides the utmost delight to audiences from all walks of life. …[O]n the other hand, in the classroom the teacher finds his students grappling arduously with the texts of the very same plays, stumped by the language, the long dramatis personae (especially in the histories), or the sheer complexity of ‘interpretation.’ If honestly answering, few students—or teachers, either—would admit that they read Shakespeare for pleasure. It is work, hard work; and though it has its rewards, most would rather see a play than study it (Halio, 1977).

Those teachers and professors who espoused the performance methodology recommended student interaction with the plays of Shakespeare (Mueller, 1964). Workshops with actors who performed Shakespeare were successful for some teachers (Maher, 1984), (Halio, 1977), (Swander, 1984). An expansion of the works normally studied in English classes (Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, King Lear) was recommended as student-centered endeavors (Newlin, 1984). Guides for the teaching of Shakespeare as group activities, including projects and class work, were published for those teachers who were proponents of cooperative learning (Adland, 1973). Role-playing and other drama curriculum techniques were also recommended (Bailey, 1985). Although performance methodology was promulgated by several educators, it was not accepted by the mainstream (O’Brien, 1995).

Performance-based teaching of Shakespeare eventually did gain in popularity, largely within the past ten years, however, as a number of new texts which focused on the student-centered performance were published. Among those texts were those published Washington Square Press, Bantam, Doubleday, Cambridge University Press, Harcourt Brace, and Longman (O’Brien, 1995).

One great advocate of the teaching of Shakespeare through performance was the Folger Shakespeare Library, which began educational programs for Washington, D.C. students and teachers in 1980 and later established the Teaching Shakespeare Institute for teachers of Shakespeare in junior and senior high schools across America. "The institute has a double focus: total immersion in scholarship and exploration of classroom techniques" (O’Brien, 1995). The Institute is still held annually and has been responsible for the development of many activities and projects that can be used in a performance-driven teaching style.

Technological Teaching

Prior to the mid- to late-1970s, there simply was not adequate classroom technology for Shakespeare’s plays to be presented in any form other than lecture/discussion, performance, or some combination of the two styles. The only audio-visual equipment available in most classrooms—both secondary and college—were film, filmstrip, or slide projectors and record players. These media usually offered dry, stilted background and biographical materials about Shakespeare and the Elizabethan period and vocal recordings of passages from the plays performed by various artists. In the late 1970s, however, the videotape revolution significantly changed the nature of nonprint materials.

In 1977 a collection of articles representative of teacher’s views at that time was published under the title Teaching Shakespeare (Evans, 1977) exhorting a variety of instructional methods for the teaching of Shakespeare. By that time, some distinguished pedagogues were either feeling threatened by or were eagerly anticipating the use of technology in the classroom. Even then a number of teachers were using sound recordings of the Shakespearean plays being read by vocal artists, a procedure such techno-phobic professors as Robert B. Heilman decried: "What was once done by the professor as vocalist or verse choir is now carried on by the professor as disc-jockey or, so to speak, as tape-worm."(Heilman, 1977). Bemoaning the replacement of personal elocution with electronics, Heilman did concede that "Shakespeare was meant to be heard rather than read," but denounced the use of technology in the classroom as taking away from critical study of the text:

Every hour that goes for records and tapes is taken away from orderly discussion…. The largest number of hours available in a term really does not allow ample time to get critically into even a few plays. If critical study, however oriented, is not going on steadily, there is little point in holding a Shakespeare class.

The Use of Film and Video

Even those professors who were willing to try something new often were reluctant to attempt the use of the new technologies of videotape and computers. D. Allen Carroll proclaimed, "Ideally the classroom lecture is an art form, with its special conventions, although, like a sermon, it is a minor one" (Carroll, 1977):

In the future we can expect that the teaching of Shakespeare will center not on the presentation of plays but rather on their actual performance, which change will alter seriously the teacher’s role. The new method will take one of two forms or some of both. First,…the ‘direct method,’ through which in workshop form students discover Shakespeare ‘by playing him’…. Second, through a form which exploits the vast potential of audio-visual technology, one whereby students experience in the classroom the best of recorded performances. With a flick of a switch we shall be able to offer Olivier as Hamlet and then Nicol Williamson for comparison and contrast. Here is an innovation devoutly to be wished.

There were reasons why Shakespeare could be taught by performance, according to Carroll, and there was also a place for the more modern conventions of film, but these innovations were not embraced by the professor:

We know the primacy of the aural and visual Shakespeare, and we know that performance, because it directly touches the senses, can hold and educate the imagination…. Shakespeare’s poetry, however well performed, nonetheless requires analysis; that specific scenes need to be fitted into large, sometimes abstract, structures which students cannot see without help; that getting at Shakespeare demands to some extent an Elizabethan perspective we ought to teach; and that his wide-ranging effect on Western culture it is our duty at the least to suggest. Until performance as such provides a discernible means to satisfy these needs most of us will feel little pressure for such a radical change (Carroll, 1977).

Without a great deal of foresight, Carroll added:

Not many universities will underwrite the cost of purchasing tapes and films (even should such be available), the cost of editing them as an individual teacher specifies for the needs of his course, or the cost of placing the appropriate equipment in his classroom. Their immense value must remain, for now, adjunctive, on the other side of the classroom door.

"They [students] expect to get to know Shakespeare through an authority in the traditional method, the lecture punctuated by questions and answers, which method, doubtless at some expense of spirit, they have adapted themselves to and learned to profit from" (Carroll, 1977).

Some teachers saw the vast potential held in the new technology of videotape but were still reluctant to adapt it for use in the classroom (Halio, 1977):

Thanks to the increasing availability of films, recent television productions, and touring companies, seeing Shakespeare’s plays is becoming more and more feasible for students and their teachers. To some extent, this new availability of films and performances threatens to supplant the old reliance upon a close reading of the text followed by lectures and discussions—the usual format for undergraduate courses in Shakespeare.

Halio voiced concern that the "study of Shakespeare could degenerate into entertainment without insight." His alternative to a purely lecture/discussion or an entirely technological/video based teaching style was student performance:

If they are truly to understand Shakespeare’s plays as plays, reading them or seeing them performed by professional troupes is not quite enough. They must get into the act themselves. There are some things that cannot be taught; they can only be learned. Granted it is a sink or swim situation, many students discover that swimming is not so difficult after all…. I know of no other way to impress students with the fundamental values of Shakespeare’s language and dramatic art than this technique. Analyzing a passage on paper in an essay or examination paper is one thing; analyzing it for performance is another—but it is directly related to the first (Halio, 1977).

At the same time that so many educators like Carroll and Halio were registering complaints about the use of films in Shakespearean classes, others were actively using the media with their students. At the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Professors Joseph Donohue and Jack Jorgens were teaching classes on "Shakespeare on Film". Jorgens lauded the methodology, saying "one useful result of seeing the plays in performance (always after having read or re-read them), was that the students were forced to deal with the plays as plays" (Jorgens, 1973).

One of the complaints of the foes of video at this point was that in film versions of Shakespearean plays, the complete text was seldom used. Bernard Beckerman of Columbia University pointed out that films:

must be judged on their intrinsic merits, their use or adaptation of Shakespeare, not their fidelity to an original script which, in fact, no longer exists…. Ultimately, it probably does not matter very much whether students see the plays before or after they read them, although it is true that the initial effect of the production or the text will be different according to which precedes the other. (I have not experimented adequately with the results of the different sequences to offer any meaningful data, but the matter might be worth exploring.) (Beckerman, 1977).

Jorgens used the cuts from, additions to, and alterations of the texts to his students’ advantage—"I did my best to urge them to notice not only what was done, but speculate about why. This led to some interesting discussions…." (Jorgens, 1973).

Even though the technology of videocassette players and recorders was slowly beginning to find its way into homes and schools in the late 1970s, it was not until the 1980s that the once prohibitive cost of the equipment had dropped to a point at which schools could readily afford the equipment. It was also in the 1980s that new, colorful, interesting programs were being produced on videotape for the educational market and that the rich resources which had already been created in the form of movie adaptations of a number of Shakespeare’s greatest plays were being transferred to videotape (see appendix for a listing of films available on Hamlet and Macbeth). That Shakespeare was a natural for film was no novelty—his works were among the first literary classics ever to be produced for the screen:

The appearance of Shakespeare’s plays on screen coincided with the birth of the film industry at the close of the 19^th century. The movie pioneers quickly discovered that Shakespeare could be a rich source for filmmaking. The "Golden Age" of Shakespeare on film, however, came later, after the advent of sound, with brilliant representations of the plays by such directors as Laurence Olivier, Orson Welles, and Roman Polanski. Meanwhile, directors also produced numerous filmed spinoffs, modernizations, and musical versions based on the canon. By the late 1930s, television presented new challenges, stimulating notable productions in Great Britain, the United States, and elsewhere (Rothwell and Melzer, 1990).

The video revolution has combined with emerging concepts in literary theory to give a strong rationale for the study in schools and universities of Shakespearean performance. The idea of a "performance text" as complementary to a printed text has encouraged teachers and scholars to think not only about texts on the page but also about those on stage and screen. At the same time dramatic advances in video technology have transformed what post-modernist critics have called "intertextuality" (the multiple ways that signs and words can interact with one another) from a theory into a reality. Students who have never seen a live Shakespeare production in a theatre can now approximate, though not replicate, the experience with their VCRs. The entire methodology for both teaching and studying Shakespeare will inevitably be reshaped by this relatively inexpensive tool for mechanical reproduction. It is a neo-Gutenberg phenomenon that pays tribute to the prescience of the late Marshall McLuhan (Rothwell, 1990).

As early as 1965, teachers and professors had found more and more audio-visual materials available to them in the classroom in the form of both films and filmstrips. Richard N. Albert, an instructor in English at Illinois State University, reported in his "An Annotated Guide to A-V Materials for Teaching Shakespeare" that there were at least 32 films on the plays themselves and 17 on Shakespeare and his age, 32 filmstrips on the plays and 24 on the author and the Elizabethan period, and 45 audio recordings of the plays, with 27 records about Shakespeare and his times (Albert, 1965).

By 1977 reports of experimental use of audio-visual technologies in Shakespearean classes were beginning to find their way into the literature. Robert M. Bender of the University of Missouri, Columbia "began to introduce a rather extensive use of media into the teaching of a large Shakespeare lecture course…." A portion of his teaching materials covered aspects of Shakespeare’s life and of the Elizabethan period in general—"slides depicting a bearbaiting, a combat in the lists, a victim of religious persecution stretched on the rack."

Bender was more interested in using slides showing performances of the plays themselves than in using them as background material. He found some available commercially, but wanting a more complete presentation, he used an Improvement of Undergraduate Education grant to film an entire production of Twelfth Night and amassed over eight hundred slides, which he then synchronized with a complete professional recording of the play. Bender reported:

The student response was highly enthusiastic. The students in fact became so excited by my approach to Shakespeare that they wanted to do their own media projects, projects which in many cases proved more educational for them than the traditional papers we have our students write. I do not claim to have found the only way to teach Shakespeare, but some of the techniques I have tried the past several years suggest to me that Shakespeare can be as alive and meaningful to our students as he is to us (Bender, 1977).

At the same time as Bender’s experiment, John MacPartland was conducting an experiment in which "the teacher remained with one class throughout the day to dramatize the whole play in one continuous session". This particular experiment was labeled a success, although no empirical data was given. Among MacPartland’s arguments for this teaching style were:

          (1) the author’s medium shows that he intends his work to be done, not merely read; (2) the voco-audio-visual aspect…is an essential ingredient of any play; (3) the life of the play must be seized in the action, or it is lost; (4) brief, necessary explanations can be given as the play progresses, "since the students are better prepared for lengthy research work on particular aspects after they have grasped the meaning of the play as a whole, and (5) present-day students enjoy participating actively, hence they are more likely to comprehend the meaning of ideas by doing them ("V-A-V Shakespeare Session").

In spring of 1974 a symposium, "Shakespeare, the Media and the Secondary School" was held at the University of Wisconsin, Parkside. During the symposium, a workshop on "Media Resources for the Study and Teaching of Shakespeare" was led by Ronald Gottesman and Andrew McLean. McLean gave a checklist of articles and books dealing with teaching Shakespeare. "Gottesman surveyed the rich media resources available to teachers, distributed checklists of useful materials, and indicated the surprising variety of little known pedagogical audio-visual materials available" (McLean, 1975).

A "Teaching Shakespeare Conference" was held at St. Andrews College in Laurinburg, N.C. in November of 1974 with about 70 high school English teachers attending. Betty Ann Kane, Head of Public Documents for the Folger Shakespeare Library, delivered the keynote address:

Kane emphasized the use of audio-visual materials in the classroom and illustrated her talk with slides (prepared by the Folger staff) which have proved popular with pupils in the Washington, D.C. school system where the Shakespeare in the Schools Program is in its third year. Two subjects of great interest to high school students are life in Shakespeare’s London and Queen Elizabeth. One effective use of slides developed by the program involves alternating scenes of sixteenth century urban life with scenes of modern urban life. Students also seem quite fascinated by sixteenth-century styles of dress (Jones, p. 12).

Clearly, the advent of new technology had created a revolution in the Shakespearean classroom, but there were still those nay-sayers who opposed not only technology, but cooperative learning, student-centered activities, and performance-based teaching styles. Some of the methods these pedagogues propounded including the rehearsal and performance of Shakespeare by teachers for their students (Burkman, 1978).

Not only were many educators opposed to the use of film or video in the teaching of Shakespeare, some other professionals voiced their dissent. Filmmaker Michael Roemer of Yale University blasted the teaching tactic both at the 1975 "Shakespeare on Film" seminar held in Washington, D.C. and in a report in the April, 1976 issue of The Shakespeare Newsletter. Roemer, who complained that as of that time no one had made a "marvelously persuasive Shakespearean film," objected that much is lost in the shift from stage to screen, that close-up intimacy with characters stifles the language which was intended for a broader, more distant viewing, and that the actor/audience relationship in a movie is not as great or demanding as that of the theater.

Roemer’s objections to Shakespearean films being used in the classroom received some support, but most educators who responded showed support for the use of film (Hodgdon, 1976): "I hope there will be more Shakespearean films—ones that will entertain us, ones that take chances, ones that seem "right" or "wrong," ones that may help to answer some questions…."

Eventually, even more teachers began to make use of videotapes in the classroom, combining them with their own unique teaching strategies. Film directors and actors brought the plays to life through their own unique interpretations of the original text, and some teachers would "direct the attention of …students to the ways in which a play comes to life on the stage, to the various choices it offers actors and directors, and to the effects their specific choices might have on an audience’s understanding of the play in performance" (Collins, 1995).

Perhaps the most judicious use of video in the teaching of Shakespeare was and is to allow students to compare two or more versions of the same play, or at least of various scenes from the play. Much of the opposition to videotape viewing lay in the fear that students might accept a particular version or interpretation as "the right one":

As many instructors realize, comparing two versions of the same scene not only helps tooffset this danger but also builds on the differences between students’ understanding ofplays from their initial reading and their understanding of scenes from viewing. Whetheronly one version is available on video or a number of alternatives can be screened, addingpublished versions of the screenplays for Shakespeare productions to the textual mix opens up a fruitful interpretive space (Buhler, 1995).

Despite the proliferation of articles about the use of film and video in the classroom, those advocating performance methodologies for the teaching of Shakespeare, and writings about many other various teaching methods which seemed to work for the authors of those particular articles, most teachers of Shakespeare agreed that, in general, the teaching of Shakespeare was a failure (O’Brien, 1995). Some, like Ivor Brown, put it very harshly: "Like most schoolboys, I had been sickened of Shakespeare by education" (Marder, 1963). "Shakespeare is a major disaster area in English teaching and always has been" (Paffard, 1985).

Surveys of college students asked to evaluate their secondary school experience in learning Shakespeare were less than complimentary of the teaching styles they had endured. They cited their lack of enthusiasm for line-by-line extrapolation and the foisting of the instructor’s own opinions and interpretations of the plays onto the students, who were then responsible for regurgitating them in testing situations. Original opinions were not usually appreciated by these instructors (Blinderman, 1975). There was a great need for yet another innovative teaching style and/or tool, and it would not be long until just such an implement would become available.

Computer Technology

As computer technology became more refined and affordable, the computer began to find its way into the classroom. It took several years for computers to be embraced as genuinely beneficial and permanent fixtures in the classroom, and perhaps one of the reasons more educators gradually accepted the new technology and the complications of having to learn how to use it was the development of wonderful programs suited for study in the classroom in almost all subject areas.

In the case of the English classroom and the teaching of the Bard’s works, a number of computer programs on disk and now on CD-ROM were developed. The complete canon has now been transferred to floppy disk and CD-ROM many times over. Some of these textual programs have built-in dictionaries to explain difficult terms or Elizabethan language peculiarities, and most of them can be manipulated by the teacher to transfer to a word processing program for making study guides, scripts, or tests.

Teaching Shakespearean plays has been made easier with the use of these online texts, as they can be easily edited by the performance-based teacher or, better yet, by students (LoMonico, 1995). The WordCruncher program enables students to do word searches within a single play or several plays. Examples of uses of such a feature might be an assignment in which students trace a word such as "darkness" or "blood" in Macbeth, along with similes, homonyms and homologues of the word. Essay assignments might be based upon such a word search.

"Using a computer (a paper concordance could also work, but not nearly as well), nothing gets between the students and the text. Students are doing pure textual research and never have to resort to reading literary critics or study aids." (LoMonico, 1995).

It would be impossible to list all of the computer programs on disks and CD-ROMS for teaching Shakespeare, for new titles seem to be released each month, with others in various stages of development. Just in the past few months new learning guides on CD-ROM have been released for Macbeth, Hamlet, and Romeo and Juliet. These have the color graphics, music, video clips, animation, and other features that make them popular with teenagers and adults alike. Among a few of the Shakespearean offerings currently available are Karaoke Shakespeare, William Shakespeare: The Complete Works on CD-ROM, The Time, Life, and Works of Shakespeare on CD-ROM, Romeo and Juliet: Center Stage CD-ROM, Shakespeare’s Theater, Macbeth on CD-ROM, Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night or What You Will, Shakespeare on CD-ROM, Voyager Shakespeare: Macbeth, and Much Ado About Shakespeare.

Karaoke Shakespeare allows the user to "play" the role of one or more characters from Macbeth. Graphic presentations of selected scenes play on the screen, with the lines of each character appearing at the bottom of the screen. When it is the user’s turn to speak, his name and lines appear and the voice is removed for the user to read. The complete text of Macbeth, some public domain illustrations, and a word search are other features of this program.

William Shakespeare: The Complete Works on CD-ROM contains Oxford University Press texts of all of Shakespeare’s works. Line-by-line notes are available for the twelve most popular plays taught. Introductions with notes on main characters, plot synopses, and summaries of individual scenes are provided, along with a biography of Shakespeare and in-depth background on Shakespeare’s England.

The Time, Life, and Works of Shakespeare on CD-ROM includes an audio survey of 1,000 years of English pronunciation and excerpts from 22 of Shakespeare’s sonnets. There is also a 24-volume encyclopedia, a 150,000-word dictionary, notes on plots, theme, and characters from 14 Shakespearean plays, and a glossary, along with quizzes.

Romeo and Juliet: Center Stage CD-ROM allows students not only to read, but to experience the play. There is an 85-minute student performance video, complete play text, and a video script. There are also interviews with the cast and directors, a notepad and writing tools to enable students to create multimedia presentations, and the complete text, along with a teacher’s guide developed by the Folger Library.

Shakespeare’s Theater offers students a chance to take a "field trip" to the Globe Theatre, where they learn about the development of London playhouses during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. An evaluation of the behavior and tastes of Elizabethan audiences and insight into how a production was staged are just two of the topics covered in this informative CD-ROM, which also includes a 24-volume student encyclopedia and a 150,000-word dictionary. There are also notes about plots, themes, and characters from fourteen of Shakespeare’s plays, as well as a glossary of important words.

Macbeth on CD-ROM contains analysis, textual reference tools, an edited text of the entire play, and video clips from three filmed versions of the drama. It, too, features karaoke role-playing.

Shakespeare’s Life and Times guides users through hypertext pages of information on the Elizabeth period in such categories as "Life," "Stage," "Social Background," "Historical and Political Background," "Intellectual Background," "Literary Background," "Some Plays Explored," and "Chronology and Bibliography." It makes use of musical passages, sound bites, and illustrations.

Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night or What You Will is a CD-ROM with background information, photos, art, text from the play, and annotations, including a dictionary of "hot" words.

The Shakespeare Study Guide CD-ROM contains all 37 unabridged plays, 5 poems, and 154 sonnets, along with plot synopses of the plays, scene-by-scene discussions, character, theme, and style analysis, a biography of Shakespeare, and sample tests with answers.

Much Ado About Shakespeare contains the text of all the plays, plus a word search program, biography of Shakespeare, glossary of words from the plays, artwork, musical passages, and audio passages.

The Voyager Shakespeare, which features an in-depth study of Macbeth, contains textual analysis of the play and the entire performance by the Royal Shakespeare Company, along with clips from other performances. There are more than 1,500 annotations and a commentary of over 24,000 words, as well as essays on the language and history of the play and a karaoke section.

As more and more teachers have found the advantages of using new multimedia technology, they have discovered areas in which improvements could be made in the programs available, as well as benefits of a more technological methodology, even when coupled with videos and/or performance learning. Yet another technological advance which even now is in the process of revolutionizing Shakespearean study is the Internet. There are a number of sites devoted to the study and appreciation of Shakespeare on the World Wide Web, and this is an area of educational potential still awaiting major studies.

Although more educators are embracing the computer program and the Internet as valid educational tools, still very little has been written about the technological methodologies of Shakespearean study. Most of the literature continues to reflect methods used with some success by teachers and professors, but not in an experimental setting. Literature on research projects yielding empirical data is practically nonexistent at present.

An interesting study in the use of technology in the teaching of Shakespeare comes from William G. W. Barnes of the University of West Florida. Barnes conducted an experiment in which 16 undergraduates were exposed to a multimedia program on Hamlet developed by Barnes and the regular teacher of the literature class. The program, using Hypercardã , proved to be successful when students used it in independent study, especially when viewed in small groups of two or three where the subjects spent time discussing the play while using the multimedia program. At the end of the 8-day experiment, subjects in the experimental group using the Hypercardã program scored higher on a post-test than did 16 members of the control group, which had been taught through lecture and discussion classes. Although the study did yield a significant difference in scores, according to Barnes, he speculated that there would have been an even larger margin of difference between the two groups had the lecturer for the control group not been so excellent a teacher (Barnes, 1974)

SHAKSPER: An International Electronic Conference

Bowie State University in Bowie, Maryland has developed an Internet site which serves as an "international electronic conference for Shakespearean researchers, instructors, students, and those who share their academic interests and concerns". SHAKSPER, a LISTSERV running under UNIX on a Sun work station (a Sparc 4, running Solaris 2.5), is edited by Hardy M. Cook, a Professor of English. According to the introductory material sent via e-mail to new members, SHAKSPER

includes approximately 1,300 SHAKSPEReans (many of whom are prominent in the field), from Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Costa Rica, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Iran, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Nether-lands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, and the United States (Bowie State University).

Announcements and bulletins of national and international Shakespeare conferences, scholarly papers, inquiries about performances, questions from students, textual debate, suggestions for directors and actors, book and theatre reviews, and a myriad of other ideas are exchanged on SHAKSPER. It also "offers on-going opportunities for spontaneous informal discussion, eavesdropping, peer review, and a sense of worldwide scholarly community. In addition, the SHAKSPER Fileserver offers conference papers and abstracts, an international Directory of Shakespeare Institutes, biographies of conference members, and a variety of announcements, texts, and bibliographies." Daily digests are organized by subject for reader convenience.

SHAKSPER is open to teachers, students, researchers, scholars, anyone interested in the life and works of William Shakespeare, English literature, the Renaissance, or drama. There are no academic qualifications for joining the listserv, one must simply submit an online application with a brief autobiographical sketch.

Inquiries about joining SHAKSPER may be made via e-mail in a one-line message, "SUB SHAKSPER firstname lastname" to LISTSERV@ws.BowieState.edu.

The Shakespeare Frolic Project

One of the more unique uses of multimedia technology in the teaching of Shakespeare is the Shakespeare Frolic Project. This innovative form of study makes use of video, music, film, and the Internet—all technological forms very familiar to most students—in a fun, stimulating, and intensive structure which has young scholars reading, interpreting, and performing segments of the works while making presentations and projects (Baines, 1997). This sort of methodology seems to make the best use of all of the best features of all of the other methodologies prescribed in the past century’s educational literature.

The videotape, computer program, CD-ROM, and the Internet are all valid and beneficial educational tools whose time have come. There is vast potential for the use of these implements in the Shakespearean classroom, but little of that potential has been tapped. Much study is needed and much more empirical data is necessary in order to determine the best uses of these technological advancements. However, it is not too early to predict that within the decade, these and other breakthroughs in technology will be adapted by a majority of English teachers, if not in whole, at least as supplements to the lecture/discussion and performance methodologies that have proven so popular in the past.

Method

In quest of a new, more effective way of teaching Shakespearean drama, I conducted an experiment in which a self-directed, constructivist approach which made use of modern technologies was used to teach high school twelfth-graders Shakespearean drama. Two of my classes participated in the research program. Group A (the control group) consisted of 24 students—9 males and 15 females. Group B (my experimental group) included 12 males and 14 females for a total of 26 students. By the end of the experiment, three students from both the experimental group and the control group had been dropped from the study due either to excessive absences or schedule changes to other classes.

The problem this action research project attempted to solve is the need for a new way to teach Shakespearean drama to high school students that, because it holds the attention of students, will result in a greater level of student understanding than a more traditional, direct instructional style.

The experiment began in the second semester of the school year, shortly after students returned from Christmas vacation. Group B received the experimental treatment as they studied Macbeth in an independent, constructivist setting. The students in Group B were divided into four sections of 6 students each, in order to facilitate the use of computer stations in my classroom. Four work stations were set up—three at computers and one at a TV/VCR—and each group spent one week at each station. The first group viewed the British Broadcasting Company’s film version of Macbeth, while following along in the text The BBC film is 148 minutes in length, which meant that the students could easily view the entire video in five class periods.

The second group of 6 students worked at the one computer in my room that has access to the Internet. A listing of recommended web sites related to William Shakespeare and to Macbeth was provided to these students, and they were encouraged to explore other areas on these topics.

Group three was stationed at a computer which is connected by an AverKey Video Link to a television monitor, doubling the monitors so that students had more room as they studied the Macbeth CD-ROM, an intensive critical and analytical guide to the play.

The fourth group also worked at a computer station and used a number of CD-ROMs as background material on Shakespeare and the Elizabethan period. Among those CD-ROM programs students had access to are Shakespeare, Shakespeare Study Guide, The Time, Life, and Works of Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s London, and Shakespeare’s Theatre.

During the four weeks in which the experimental group made use of the technology available in my classroom, the control group was taught Macbeth in a more traditional way. These students read the play aloud in class, scene-by-scene. Each student was assigned roles, which were changed each day so that every student had an opportunity to read. At the end of each scene, we discussed the scene, with particular regard for plot, character development, symbolism, irony, and themes. Students were encouraged to take notes during the discussion.

Four weeks were allotted for the study of Macbeth. At the end of that period, both groups had completed their studies and took the two tests which were used to determine the effectiveness of both methodologies. The first test was a 100-question objective multiple-choice and true-or-false test developed by the teacher. The second test was a five-question essay exam. Students in the experimental group were also given a survey which asked them to evaluate the method they used to learn Macbeth.

Results

Of the 23 students in the experimental, high-tech group, 11 failed the 100-question test with grades of 69 or less. Of the 21 students who had participated in lecture/discussion classes, only 2 failed. The mean score of the experimental group was 63.35, while the control group’s mean score was 82.62.

On the essay test, student responses in the lecture/discussion group were in general far more accurate, complete, and knowledgeable than were those of the experimental group.

Given the opportunity to express in a survey their opinions about the use of the computers and videotape in studying Macbeth, seven students in the experimental group said they enjoyed using the technology, while fourteen said that they had not enjoyed the experience. Twenty said that they would rather have read the play in class scene-by-scene and then have the teacher lecture and discuss the play with them.

Only eight of the students in the multimedia group said they had read Macbeth outside of class as they were assigned; thirteen admitted that they did not read the play. Asked if they felt they had learned Macbeth as well as they would have if they had read the play in class and then discussed the scenes, eighteen said that they had not, two said they had, and one couldn’t decide.

Among the comments made by students in the experimental group were these:

"I really enjoyed some of it, but I would have probably learned more if it had been lectured to the class."

"I thought it was boring (Internet) and an excuse to goof off. I really didn’t learn much, although I did get some from the CD-ROM background material. The movie was okay, the parts I could understand."

"Watching the movie helps you see what is going on in the play. The CD-ROMs had limited info on Macbeth. The other CD had god study guides and pictures. Maybe if we didn’t spend so much time at each station it would have been more fun. Looking at the same stuff on CDs and Internet gets old quick."

"I believe that if we were lectured we would have scored better. I also feel that if we were to use the technology and the lecture we would have scored even higher. It seems as though students learn the material better when they have a guide or path to follow instead of if they are allowed to freelance and be self taught. Listening to someone and writing down what a person says makes learning a bit more interactive; also it is good to listen to a person who has experienced the student’s way and that wants to help the new students enjoy the old material."

Second Phase

As a means of determining the reliability of this experiment, a second phase was conducted immediately after the conclusion of the students’ study of Macbeth. In the next stage of the study, Group A became the control group and Group B the experimental group for an intensive four-week study of Hamlet. Group B was divided into four groups, just as in the first experimental group. This study lasted almost five weeks, at the end of which the students in both groups took another 100-question objective multiple-choice and true-or-false test developed by the teacher and a 5-question essay test. Students in both groups, now having experienced both the technological and the traditional pedagogies, were given a survey in which they evaluated the methods they had used to learn Shakespearean plays.

At the end of the two groups’ study of Hamlet, eight students in the multimedia group failed the 100-question test with a score of 69 or less, while fourteen passed. The group’s mean score was 73.14. In the experimental group, seven of seventeen students failed. The mean score of the class was 70.47.

Comparing the scores of each class on both tests, only 6 of 23 students in the technological group scored higher on their tests after studying a Shakespearean play through the use of videotape, CD-ROMs, the Internet, and computer programs on the play. In the traditional group, only 2 of 22 students performed better through the use of technology as a study guide rather than with traditional lecture and discussion.

Once more, the students who received the traditional treatment of lecture and discussion answered questions on their essay tests much more fully, with complete, knowledgeable responses than those of the experimental group.

After both phases of the experiment were concluded, I again surveyed student opinions to find out which pedagogy, traditional lecture and discussion or the use of technology, the students preferred. Of those students who had just completed a study of Hamlet with technology, nine said they enjoyed used the computers, CD-ROMs, the Internet, and videotapes, while eight said that they did not. Sixteen said that they would prefer having their teacher lecture rather than to use technology in independent or group study; one preferred the technology.

Asked to rate the four workstations as to their educational value, the majority (10 of 17) said that viewing the videotape had helped them understand the play better than the other stations. The Internet ranked second most beneficial, with four students preferring it. Two felt that the background CD-ROMs were most useful, while one chose the Hamlet CD-ROM. The Hamlet CD-ROM was deemed least beneficial according to 6 students, while 8 said that the background CD-ROMS did them the least good.

I asked the students which work station was the most fun, and nine said viewing the videotapes had been most enjoyable, while six voted for the Internet. One chose the background CD-ROMs and none voted for the Hamlet CD-ROM.

Those students surveyed were unanimous in saying that they felt they had not learned Hamlet as well as they would have if they had been lectured to and had discussed the play in class. Sixteen said that they liked the play, while one did not. Fourteen said they would not like to study another play using technology, although many said they would enjoy another play using the more traditional pedagogy. Three indicated that they would like to study another play using technology.

One major factor contributing to the poor grades on the test was the fact that only five had actually read Hamlet as a part of their study; twelve had not read the play. Fourteen had read the study guide I had prepared for them; three had not.

As a measure of the students’ sincerity in answering survey questions, I asked one question in two ways. The second question on the survey, "Would you rather have Mr. Perry lecture to you about Hamlet?" drew sixteen "yes" responses and one "no". The last question, "Which learning method did you prefer?" drew sixteen responses for "Teacher lecture and discussion" and one vote for "Using computers and video".

Asked which learning procedures they preferred, students in the control group who had studied Macbeth using the experimental treatment said that they preferred a more traditional pedagogy. Twenty responded that they preferred the lecture and discussion method while two preferred videotapes and computers.

Among the comments elicited from the survey of the experimental group were these:

"If people tried, it would probably have been successful. But most students aren’t mature enough to do it on their own."

"I feel that I learned more and was better prepared for the test when we read and discussed each scene in class."

"I think I learned more with Mr. Perry teaching."

"I prefer lectures in class rather than using computers and video. I think that I learn better by the teacher doing the plays step-by-step."

"I think the class discussion is a better way."

A Simultaneous Experiment

During the semester that these two classes were involved in this experiment, I taught two other classes of high school seniors. One was an Advanced Placement English class and the other was a college-preparatory senior English literature class. Neither class was involved in the experimental procedure, although they both were taught Macbeth and Hamlet.

The initial feedback that I received from the experimental group in the first phase was that they enjoyed the videotaped performance of Macbeth, which they considered to be the most beneficial part of the technological method. I decided to experiment with these other two classes by teaching them Macbeth in the traditional lecture/discussion style and to modify my teaching style when we studied Hamlet. Rather than reading each scene in class and then discussing it, students in these two classes watched the videotape of Hamlet, following along with their textbook, scene-by-scene. At the end of each scene, I lectured and we discussed the scene.

Four of the twelve students in the college preparatory class scored better on their objective test with the modified lecture/video treatment than with lecture/discussion alone. In the Advanced Placement class, six of sixteen students scored higher on an objective test after the lecture/video style of learning. When I surveyed the two classes, all but 3 of the 28 students said they enjoyed watching the video and discussing the play more than reading it in class. Among the responses were these:

"The idea of watching the play and then talking about it scene by scene was a good one. Since you had seen the play just moments before, you could focus your total concentration on what was being discussed instead of being preoccupied with imagining what was going on."

"I liked watching the play and then discussing it because it made you remember the characters’ names better. Even if you didn’t watch it, you heard it and you recognized the voices of the different characters. I remember more of the details in Hamlet than I do from Macbeth."

"I thought that the movie was very effective for some people because they are visual learners and can get more that way."

Conclusions

I had hoped to find some indication that the use of technology in a self-directed, constructivist learning environment would spark students’ interest in studying Shakespearean plays and would result in greater

achievement of understanding and appreciation for the plays, as evidenced by higher scores on objective tests. However, the findings of my experiment indicate that reliance upon technology alone is not enough. Students still need critical, analytical discussion of subject matter.

I don’t know if there is any such thing as a "typical" high school senior. If so, I don’t know if the students in my control and experiment groups would be considered "typical". However, as one of those seniors pointed out in his comments on the survey sheet, they were not mature enough to succeed in a self-directed study, even though most of them enjoyed using the computers and videotape.

The comments of the students in the modified experiment seem to indicate that blending videotaped performances of a Shakespearean play with classroom discussion and lecture is a more effective pedagogy than reading aloud in class.

The videotape, computer program, CD-ROM, and the Internet are all valid and beneficial educational tools whose time has come. There is vast potential for the use of these implements in the Shakespearean classroom, but little of that potential has been tapped. Clearly, they will never replace the teacher, nor will they take the place of thorough analytical study and discussion in the classroom.

However, the use of these pedagogical tools in combination with the more traditional lecture and discussion is a highly effective method of instruction which can compensate for different learning styles and varied student interests. Seeing and hearing a Shakespearean performance scene-by-scene, then stopping to analyze and discuss each scene with regard to plot, character development, theme strands, imagery, symbolism, the use of figurative language, irony, allusions, historical accuracy, and all other details important in the understanding, enjoyment, and appreciation of Shakespeare is an effective teaching style.

By using more than one videotaped performance of the same play, teachers can present to students varied interpretations of individual scenes. Teaming videotape, the printed word, computer programs and the Internet for individual student assignments may seem to some teachers a scattershot method of instruction, but it provides all students with a greater opportunity to understand and enjoy the literature.

Much study is needed and much more empirical data is necessary in order to determine the best uses of these technological advancements. As even more breakthroughs in technology are made, these and others will, no doubt, be adapted by many English teachers, if not in whole, at least as supplements to the lecture/discussion and performance methodologies that have proven so popular in the past.

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