This article is interesting. My undergraduate school required one course of Shakespeare. I read three of his plays in high school. In graduate school, I studied more about Shakespeare than his canon. I know that I will be teaching Romeo and Juliet to little 14 year olds next year. (This will be their first experience with the Bard--no pressure!)
Hmm...I don't know what these factors add up to, but...
I definitely think that ALL English majors should have to take a class on Shakespeare!
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Actually, I graduated from one of those places where I was not required to study Shakespeare for my undergrad. In fact, my advisor suggested I forego the Shakespeare course because the Shakespeare course at my uni was designed so that non-majors could use it to fulfill their English requirement, so it wasn't challenging and I was an honors student. She suggested I take things more relevant to my research interests... so I took science fiction!
Then in grad school, the only Shakespeare I took was some of his prose poems.
So the only Shakespeare I've ever had to read was at the high school level. But being an English geek, I've read lots of it on my own, so I don't know that I've really missed out on a lot.
Then again, I'll probably never be required to teach it, so my lack of formal Bardic training shouldn't ever affect my students.
But maybe I have missed out on something, who knows?
Y'a know, I don't believe I took a Shakespeare course as an undergrad — we merely "covered" a couple of his plays in other classes. I'd have to look back at my transcripts to say for certain.
Regardless, I'd have to say academia is suffering not just because of a "dumbing down" of standards from the outside world, but from a sort of internal decay of the arts. A little too obsessed with criticism, coupled with a failure to appreciate the thing in itself.
I've taken way more Shakespeare than I've ever been required to take, and to be honest, I'm a little tired of him and the whole Early Moden period. It's what we Victorianist take when the university doesn't offer any classes in our area, which they seldom do.
However, I have encountered a positive hatred of Shakespeare from my undergraduates, and I do wish that students could enjoy him more for the complexity of his ideas and the beauty of his expression. I attribute their loathing to changing times and the manner of high school education. Rather than increasing appreciation, high schoolers are often trained to dislike him as something difficult and utterly irrelevant.
It's sad to think that if given the choice, few people would voluntarily read Shakespeare anymore. (Although I firmly believe that reading his plays instead of seeing and hearing them is part of the problem.) But you can't make people like him if they don't, and I don't think people should be forced to study Shakespeare if they are not so inclined.
Academic advisor - perhaps you've hit on what is the biggest problem with Shakespeare - that people are forced to read the plays rather than seeing them performed.
I must admit that I've gotten much more out of Shakespeare watching it performed (and probably seen more performances or plays than I've read) than reading it. Even liberal adaptations give you a much better sense of the plays than even the worst high school performances do!
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