Shakespeare at Clapham: The Weaving Together of Faith and Learning
A beloved Clapham tradition reached new heights this spring with our inaugural Shakespeare Festival! Last weekend, our secondary students brought two classics to vibrant life: a whimsical A Midsummer Night’s Dream by classes 6 and 7, and a witty Much Ado About Nothing presented by class 8. The program featured notes from the directors: Brodie Robinson (Latin and theology faculty) for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Hannah Bramsen (longtime rhetoric teacher and theater director) for Much Ado About Nothing. Read on for examples of how Clapham’s faculty consistently weave faith and learning into our curriculum and electives.
Director’s Note | A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Excepting The Comedy of Errors, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is Shakespeare at his silliest. Fairies, wannabe actors, an Amazon, and a donkey-man—the cast of characters alone will tip off any audience to the play’s absurdities. That these absurdities are timeless in the humor they present has also granted Midsummer an enduring relevance. Audiences today are just as likely to laugh at the lovers’ quarrels and the mechanicals’ shenanigans as they were four-hundred years ago. The play is, to put it briefly, fun! And yet, as with the greatest works of art, the craft of Midsummer—its electric rhymes and ridiculous punchlines—disarms us as an audience, shaping our moral imaginations without us even recognizing it.
Consider, for example, the characters of Oberon and Titania. These local deities, for all their grandeur, are far too human to be admirable. Their petty disagreement over the fate of one changeling causes the forces of nature to be out of alignment, resulting in greater suffering for the mortals within their domain. Despite this suffering, neither is able to reach an amicable resolution to the conflict, a fact that prompts Oberon to resort to underhanded methods. As the plot unfolds, we see that these gods are susceptible to both supernatural forces and natural vices. They are charmed; they grow jealous; they are petty, moody, and deceitful.
Shakespeare does not platform these characters to endorse their behavior, nor is he longing for some pagan past. He was a Christian, after all! Rather, he is holding a mirror to those who exercise godlike authority, demonstrating how such power—in human hands—is ripe for abuse. Seeing this abuse onstage should chasten those of us who exercise authority, and it should instill in all of us a longing for a God who is both above human failings and unchanging in his goodness—a God who is “the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb 13:8).
There are other “good morals” we might glean from Midsummer, but to share them here would be like explaining a joke: the explanation defeats the purpose. And where would be the fun in that?
-Brodie Robinson
"The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was."
Director’s Note | Much Ado About Nothing
Much Ado About Nothing is easily one of Shakespeare’s most famous plays. This is probably because of the excellence of the enemies-to-lovers’ trope between Beatrice and Benedict. The many quick-witted insults between the two of them and their swift switch from hatred to love based on nothing more than the word of their friends is a very satisfying arc for us as an audience. However, beneath the amusing surface of this play lies a deeper meaning, which is wise for us to heed. Both the happiness and sadness in this play come about because of whose voices and advice the characters choose to hear. For Beatrice and Benedict, it is the wise but playful machinations of their friends that cause them to fall in love with each other, and this turns out well leading them down the right path. But when Claudio chooses instead to listen to the lies of Don Jon, and to take his advice to take public revenge on Hero, the consequences are disastrous.
The lesson Shakespeare here offers us is simply to be careful in who we surround ourselves with. Our friends will influence our choices more than we even realize, and if we disorder our priorities, or lose sight of the truth, the results hurt not only ourselves, but all those around us. This we see with the ripple effects of Claudio’s decision, not only between him and Hero, but also the way it affected the relationship between Don Pedro and Leonato, and between Claudio and Bendict. This message pairs so well with the verse that we selected for this year’s theme Matthew 22:37-39: “And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”
When we keep this message to the forefront of our minds it is easy to drown out those other voices that will seek to do us harm. It is also a reminder that when we fail to love in this way, God’s grace covers us still. As always it has been a pleasure to work with the students on this production, and I hope that you are able to enjoy the fruit of our labors this evening.
-Hannah Bramsen
“O, what men dare do! What men may do! What men daily do, not knowing what they do!”