Lessons from Shakespeare's Classroom

This volume explores the relationship between the emphasis on performance in Elizabethan humanist education and the flourishing of literary brilliance around the turn of the sixteenth century. This study asks us what lessons we can learn today from Shakespeare's Latin grammar school. What were the cognitive benefits of an education so deeply rooted in what Demosthenes and Quintilian called "actio"-acting? Because of the vast difference between educational practice then and now, we have not often followed one essential thread: the focus on performance. This study examines the connections relevant to the education offered in schools today. This book will be of great interest to teachers, scholars, and administrators in performing arts and education.

Robin Lithgow was the first ever Theatre Adviser, and later the Director, of the Los Angeles Unified School District's Arts Education Branch. In that role she and her colleagues were the architects of the Elementary Arts Program, serving every one of over 550 elementary schools, with itinerant teachers in dance, music, theatre, and visual arts. She is the daughter of Arthur Lithgow, perhaps the only person ever to have produced every play in Shakespeare's canon. She is the sister of the theatre and film actor, John Lithgow, who has kindly illustrated this book.

Timeline Cast of Characters Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1. Time Travel: Setting the scene Chapter 2. Engagement before Information: Instruction in both colloquial and rhetorical language in Elizabethan schools Chapter 3. Angels and Eaglets: Schoolboy actors set the scene Chapter 4. Good Behavior and Audacity: The training up of Elizabethan schoolboys Chapter 5. The Lego Snap of Learning: Research in arts education and neuroscience Chapter 6. Context: The Hatch and Brood of Time: A brief history of the English Reformation Chapter 7. Erasmus' Egg: His life and his works in support of performing arts in education Chapter 8. The Delightful Mulcaster: Playmaking schoolmasters in Tudor England Chapter 9. Per Quam Figuram? Rhetoric in Shakespeare's classroom Chapter 10. Erasmus Writes Colloquies: Classroom training in Latin conversation Chapter 11. The Little Eyases: Professional boy actors in the 16th century Chapter 12. Conclusion Bibliography Appendix I: Performing the Colloquies Examples of Erasmus' Colloquies in Latin and English - Proci and puellae (Courtship) - Naufragium (The Shipwreck) - Uxor (Marriage) - Abattis et eruditae (The Abbot and the Learned Woman) - Herilia (A Master's Commands) Appendix II: Selection of Educational Drama Resources for Teachers Index