What’s in a name?

This morning, I visited a local primary school – along with a fellow performer – to run a workshop on William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, one of the most done-to-death tragedies in the theatrical world.

We had been called in as representatives of a Shakespeare company to watch excerpts from the pupils’ abridged production of the play, to give feedback, to perform an excerpt ourselves and to run a few workshop games.

We were under no illusions: if these children had suffered the endless analysis of metaphors, the constant drilling down to what Shakespeare might have ‘meant’ by every single line, then we were walking into a battle already lost.

Thank goodness, then, that their inspirational teacher – who I shall, for the purpose of this blog, reference only as ‘Mr C’ – whose job it was to teach these children about the bard had hit the mark with his performance-over-reading approach, and showed such belief in the talents of his class that each one’s voice rang out clear and confident as they delivered some of Shakespeare’s most challenging scenes of love, loss and sacrifice.

In a round of character hot-seating, in which the children asked my colleague and I questions and we had to answer as Romeo and Juliet, some of the questions were so deep, so unexpected, that we were almost caught off-guard.

“Describe Romeo in three words,” one said.

“How did you feel when you found out that Romeo had killed Tybalt?” asked another.

And from a third: “Don’t you think it’s weird that if Balthazar had got the message to Romeo on time, the ending could have been different? Do you blame him?”

Wow.

These young minds of just 9 and 10 years old were delving deep into the story, asking ‘why?’ and ‘how?’ and ‘what if?’ of the bard’s beloved play, rather than fixating on the technicalities of its language and structure.

This was a class that had been taught well. Shakespeare, as Mr C so rightly said, is for watching and performing, not reading and analysing.

Sit a 9-year-old in a classroom and tell them to read a play and tell you what it means and what will they learn apart from how to resent both the man responsible for writing it and the teacher responsible for inflicting it upon them?

Sit a 9-year-old in a theatre, or stand them on a stage, and tell them to watch, to speak, to feel, and they will learn confidence, they will ask questions and their faces will light up at the name of ‘Shakespeare’.

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet. 

Juliet herself summed it up, really, when she gazed from her balcony into the night, lamenting the impact of a name on public or personal opinion. Romeo was a Montague, but she saw past that to the sweet, gentle soul of the man with whom she was to fall so desperately in love.

And so, in that vein, we must encourage the next generation to see past those who would have them believe that ‘Shakespeare’ is a synonym for ‘boring’, ‘complicated’ or ‘outdated’, and instead see his plays for what they are: pieces of theatre to be performed, felt and – above all else – loved.

What’s in a name?

Well, it’s all about how you say it.