Your Brain on Shakespeare
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greater complexity of thinking
greater verbal acuity
greater tolerance for ambiguity
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eight times as likely to run for class office
four times as likely to participatein math and science fairs
score an aeage of 120 points higher on their SATs
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42% less likely to tolerate racist behavior
The Bard & the Teenage Brain
Shakespeare's plays may have been written over 400 years ago, but his characters think and behave a lot like 21st century teenagers: spontaneous, impulsive, fickle, and definitely rebellious! They operate at a heightened level of emotional intensity as they navigate their way through coming-of-age experiences like falling in love and challenging authority.
Does this sound at all familiar?
Below are just a few examples of why we think Shakespeare was written for teenagers!
The transition from childhood to adulthood is an intense period of physical and emotional growth. Everything feels like the end of the world.
Like teenagers, Shakespeare’s characters operate at an incredibly high level of intensity. Everything from the situations they face to the heightened language they use is at a 10 out of 10 on the scale of intensity.
Teenagers aren't little kids anymore.
In fact, they're not even big kids - they are young adults, and the days of watching from the sidelines are over. Teenagers need to see, hear, and experience things for themselves in order to understand and appreciate their place in the world. They also need to be seen and heard in order to be truly understood and appreciated!
Like teenagers, Shakespeare's plays were meant to be seen and heard in order to be understood and appreciated.
(They were not meant to be read silently from behind a desk - we really cannot stress this enough!)
Discovering Shakespeare through performance provides young adults with myriad opportunities for self-expression and artistic interpretation as they step into the shoes of a character and experience the world of the play for themselves. It's seriously a a win-win!
Shakespeare's characters are often impulsive. They’re also fickle, spontaneous, and frequently act before thinking things through. Sometimes being impulsive is a good thing for Shakespeare's characters; and at other times - not so good.
Teenagers can totally relate.
Here's a little science for you: the prefrontal cortex (responsible for weighing outcomes, forming judgments, and controlling impulses), is the last section of the brain to develop (not until the mid-20s). This explains SO MUCH!
Shakespeare resonates with young adults because he never moralizes! His plays don't tell us how to think, what to do, or whom to love. Instead, he lays it all out and lets the audience decide for themselves. How?
Shakespeare’s characters not only represent folks from all walks of life, they also routinely share their inner-most thoughts directly with the audience. This allows us to see the world through each character's point of view, to understand what drives their words and actions (both good and bad), and then form our own judgments and opinions.
Teenagers (more-so than young children and even older adults) seriously HATE being told what to think. This is because adolescence is a time when most of us develop our own, independent opinions and beliefs about ourselves and the world we live in - a critical step on the road to adulthood!
The teenage experience is all about pushing boundaries, and language is no exception.
Shakespeare's characters (especially the clowns) often rely on clever wordplay and inside jokes to mock the pious and thumb their noses at authority. Teenagers seem to be especially adept at this particular method of subversion, at least "that's what she said."
Shakespeare was a rebel. He didn't follow the classical form – he created his own.
His plays also celebrate rebels. When a rebellion against authority is successful in a Shakespeare play, then the play is usually a comedy.
And, when a rebellion in a Shakespeare play is unsuccessful, the play is usually a tragedy.
Teenagers are literally wired to be rebellious, because coming of age is about defining who you are as a unique individual. It’s about breaking the rules, trying new things, being free to explore, and being an independent thinker.
Shakespeare coined literally thousands of words, phrases, and expressions. In fact, the works of William Shakespeare (along with the King James Bible) are pretty much responsible for how we speak the English language today. Like Shakespeare, teenagers throughout the generations have added countless new words, phrases, and idioms to our contemporary canon.
Students who discover Shakespeare through performance gain access to a plethora of new words, while developing a greater appreciation for the transformative power of language: how words can influence our ideas, lead us to action, and catalyze change.