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The Sobran Method:
A True Story
 When my kids were little, I inflicted
Shakespeare on them, with the best intentions. I began by telling them that
Shakespeare was a great genius. I made them watch the thrilling Laurence
Olivier as Hamlet. I roared bits of Othello’s raging speeches
constantly. Our home rang with the immortal words of Shakespeare.
 To
be my child was to be intimate with the Bard himself. The Sobran kids had a
privileged upbringing. Like King Lear, I gave them my best, including fair bits
of King Lear.
It took
them years to recover. I’d wanted nothing more passionately than for
them to share my great love. Where had I gone wrong and achieved the
opposite result with four such beautiful, bright children?
Years
later, when my grandson Joe lived with me (he was virtually my fifth child,
bright and beautiful like all the others), a new approach gave me better
success. Or luck. Without much prodding, Joe watched films of
Hamlet, Macbeth, and Julius
Caesar and loved them.
On one
occasion his school principal marveled when he interrupted our conversation
to plead, “Can we see Hamlet tonight?” She was
startled to hear a little boy, a fourth-grader, make such a request. A long
career in education had taught her what to expect. An eagerness for
Shakespearean tragedy? Not usually.
What
had I finally done right? I’m almost embarrassed to reveal my simple
secret. Like the discovery of America, and penicillin, it was an accident.
![[Breaker quote for The Sobran Method: A True Story: Reader discretion advised]](2007breakers/070503.gif) When
Joe was learning to read, I made him read aloud a single sentence from
The Tempest: “Monster, I do smell all horse-piss; at
which my nose is in great indignation.”
(You
won’t find that one in books of great quotations. Never mind the
context. Joe didn’t need context.)
Joe
giggled madly. He couldn’t even finish the sentence. That was all I
wanted. A naughty laugh. You know grandfathers. Incurably silly. Eager to
corrupt youth.
From
then on, I made it a game: I’d give Joe a dollar if he could recite that
one sentence with a straight face. I never had to pay. He cracked up every
time. The other night, nearly 20 years old, he flunked the straight-face test
yet again. He hadn’t forgotten.
Somehow Joe never suffered from a paralyzing awe of
Shakespeare’s genius. A single vulgar joke had made that impossible
at the start. And had also taught him the big word indignation, by
the way. And showed him that big words and small can be combined
explosively. And that Shakespeare knew some little words you’d
better not say when your principal might hear them.
Today
he’s no scholar (baseball, girls, and other things intervened), but one
of his first tastes of Shakespeare was fun — terrific hilarity, in fact
— and it taught me something about teaching the classics. I’d
had no idea I was making a great pedagogical discovery.
I
don’t know if the schools will adopt my simple, revolutionary method,
but I doubt it. They still seem to prefer instilling a fatal reverence for the
Bard, the time-tested way of making kids loathe him. And by the time the
kids get around to that sentence, it’s far too late to save them. They
respect him too much.
But
back to Joe. He’s a mature young man now, so maybe he’s
ready for the funniest line in King John.
As
often happens in Shakespeare, the play is stolen by a seemingly secondary
character — in this case, the Bastard, Philip Faulconbridge. The play
opens with a dispute over Philip’s legitimacy. His younger
(half-)brother Robert wants his title and inheritance (five
hundred pounds a year) and asks John to settle it.
It
transpires that Philip is indeed a bastard, the natural son of John’s
brother and predecessor, King Richard the Lion-hearted (Coeur-de-lion).
Far
from being shamed or defeated, the blunt, witty Bastard is delighted. He
exults in being the natural son of a heroic king, despises his lost inheritance,
mocks his brother, and just doesn’t give a damn. John loves him
immediately and dubs him a knight: Sir Richard Plantagenet.
So the
Bastard is now a happy member of England’s royal family! He
accompanies John to France, where John makes war to claim certain lands he
says are rightfully his.
When
the English lay siege to the city of Angiers, a leading citizen, refusing to
surrender, defies them in a long, violent speech. The Bastard’s salty
comment is priceless:
Zounds!
I was never so bethumped with words
Since I
first called my brother’s father dad.
It
takes some doing to teach kids that Shakespeare is no fun.
Joseph Sobran
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