Originally published at: Florida teachers toss Shakespeare books from classes, citing fascist Ron DeSantis law | Boing Boing
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In other recent Florida news.
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But but for open raunchiness Shakespeare pales as compared to the bible!
From the Song of Solomon alone:
- “Your breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle.” (7.3)
- “Your stature is like that of the palm, and your breasts like clusters of fruit.” (7.7)
- “My lover is to me a sachet of myrrh resting between my breasts.” (1:13)
- “I am a wall, and my breasts are like towers. Thus I have become in his eyes like one bringing contentment.” (8:10)
- “Blow on my garden, that its fragrance may spread abroad. Let my lover come into his garden and taste its choice fruits.” (4:16)
- “My beloved put his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him.” (5:4)
but wait! there’s much more; far more overt than Shakespeare So we may expect that desantis would be the first to fling the bible onto the cleansing flames alongside, say… Ulysses …surely?
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Glamorizing teen suicide is a better reason to avoid teaching Romeo & Juliet.
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“I think the rest of the nation — no, the world, is laughing us,” said Joseph Cool, a reading teacher in the district, via Tampa Bay Times.
Yeah, definitely not laughing. As Mark Twain once said, “Show me a man who knows what’s funny, and I’ll show you a man who knows what isn’t.”
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This is good news for the wrong reasons. Teachers should jettison Shakespeare so that the high school curriculum is less Western-focused. Instead they can bring in plays from across Asia and Africa. Sure, they’ll still have the problem of Florida’s fascist laws, but they can at least tell the government that while Shakespeare clearly doesn’t accord with the values of Florida, Gao Xingjian and Mao Dun definitely do.
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I went on a school field trip to see Zefrelli’s Romeo and Juliet IN KANSAS in the late 70s (with a permission slip).
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“First you ban books,
Then you burn books,
Then you burn people.”
~ Alsep Baha Moridamus
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I saw it on tape in 8th grade English. I lived in a NY suburb and there aren’t a whole lot of uptight Bible Thumper types there who would have objected.
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The Twelfth Night absolutely has to go. Men dressing like women? Women dressing like men?! Sounds like some WokeTransCommie indoctrination to me!
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Same. We were just told "today you’re going to see a Juliet topless. Be mature. "
That was it.
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There is a bunch of sexual jokes and imagery in Shakespeare, but most of it worded where it will fly over the heads/under the radar and first blush.
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Yeah. I didn’t know Macbeth had a whole bunch of dirty bits until our class went to a performance. It was obvious there where it wasn’t in the text.
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A Winter’s Tale has possibly the first published use of the word “dildo” in English.
SERVANT: He hath songs for man or woman, of all sizes. No milliner can so fit his customers with gloves. He has the prettiest love songs for maids, so without bawdy, which is strange, with such delicate burdens of dildos and fadings, “Jump her and thump her.”
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Me too, in a Connecticut theater. (I don’t remember if we had to have a permission slip.)
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Nay, as they dare. I will bite my thumb at them, which is a disgrace to them, if they bear it.
Bites thumb.
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Mine was “We all have cable, it isn’t anything you haven’t seen before. Didn’t Michael York’s perm look ridiculous”.
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