Table Of ContentLESSONS FROM SHAKESPEARE’S
CLASSROOM
This volume explores the relationship between the emphasis on performance in
Elizabethan humanist education and the flourishing of literary brilliance around
the turn of the 16th century.
This study asks us what lessons we can learn today from Shakespeare’s Latin
grammar school. What were the cognitive benefits of an education so deeply
rooted in what Demosthenes and Quintilian called “actio”—acting? Because of
the vast difference between educational practice then and now, we have not often
followed one essential thread: the focus on performance. This study examines the
connections relevant to the education offered in schools today.
This book will be of great interest to teachers, scholars, and administrators in
performing arts and education.
Robin Lithgow was the first ever Theatre Adviser, and later the Director, of
the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Arts Education Branch. In that role she
and her colleagues were the architects of the Elementary Arts Program, serving
every one of over 550 elementary schools, with itinerate teachers in dance, music,
theatre, and visual arts.
She is the daughter of Arthur Lithgow, perhaps the only person ever to have
produced every play in Shakespeare’s canon. She is the sister of the theatre and
film actor, John Lithgow, who has kindly illustrated this book.
Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies
This series is our home for cutting-edge, upper-level scholarly studies and edited
collections. Considering theatre and performance alongside topics such as religion,
politics, gender, race, ecology, and the avant-garde, titles are characterized by
dynamic interventions into established subjects and innovative studies on emerging
topics.
Rechoreographing Learning
Dance As a Way to Bridge the Mind-Body Divide in Education
Sandra Cerny Minton
Politics as Public Art
The Aesthetics of Political Organizing and Social Movements
Martin Zebracki and Zane McNeill
Notelets of Filth
An Emilia Companion Reader
Laura Kressly, Aida Patient, and Kimberly A. Williams
Transcultural Theater
Günther Heeg
Lessons from Shakespeare’s Classroom
Empowering Learning Through Drama and Rhetoric
Robin Lithgow
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/
Routledge-Advances-in-Theatre-Performance-Studies/book-series/RATPS
LESSONS FROM
SHAKESPEARE’S
CLASSROOM
Empowering Learning Through
Drama and Rhetoric
Robin Lithgow
Cover image: John Lithgow.
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 Robin Lithgow
The right of Robin Lithgow to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other
means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-032-38406-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-38407-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-34491-9 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003344919
Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
This book is dedicated to
The Elementary Dance, Music, Theatre, and Visual Arts Teachers
of the Los Angeles Unified School District
and to arts educators everywhere.
Heroes.
I was brought up at School under Mr. Mulcaster, in the famous school of the
Merchant Taylors in London, where I continued until I was well instructed in
the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin tongues. His care was to increase my skill in
music, in which I was brought up by daily exercise in it, as in singing and play-
ing upon instruments, and yearly he presented some plays to the court, in which
his scholars were the only actors, and I one among them, and by that means he
taught them good behavior and audacity.
Sir James Whitelocke, Justice of the King James I’s
Bench, writing about the 16th-century
pedagogue, Richard Mulcaster
CONTENTS
Timeline ix
Cast of Characters xi
Acknowledgments xii
Introduction 1
1 Time Travel 3
2 Engagement Before Information 8
3 Angels and Eaglets 16
4 Good Behavior and Audacity: The Training Up of
Schoolboy Orators 22
5 Context: The Hatch and Brood of Time: A Brief
History of the English Reformation 46
6 Erasmus’ Egg 54
7 The Delightful Mulcaster 75
8 Per Quam Figuram? 93
viii Contents
9 Erasmus Writes Colloquies 113
10 The Little Eyases: Professional Boy Actors 139
11 The Lego Snap of Learning 158
12 Conclusion 188
Appendix I: Performing the Colloquies in Latin and in English 191
Appendix II: Selection of Educational Drama Resources for Teachers 228
Bibliography 229
Index 236
TIMELINE
Life of Erasmus: 1469–1536
1495–1499: Tutors English students in Paris and writes simple colloquies for
practice in conversational Latin.
1599–1500: First trip to England, where he becomes friends with John Colet and
Thomas More.
1500: Publishes first edition of Adagia.
1510–1515: Second trip to England. Teaches at Cambridge, deepens friendships,
and meets Prince Henry.
1510: John Colet re-founds Saint Paul’s School in London and asks Erasmus to
help him to design the curriculum.
1511–1512: Publication of De ratione studii and De Utraque Verborum ac Rerum
Copia (de Copia) written as curriculum for Saint Paul’s School.
1518: Colloquia familiaria published, without permission, in Basel by the house of
Johan Froben.
1522–1533: Colloquia familiaria augmented and published with permission, many
times. Over the next century, tens of thousands of copies are purchased
in England.
Life of Richard Mulcaster: 1531–1611
1561–1592: Headmaster of the Merchant Taylors’ School in London. Creates
a theatre in the school and regularly produces plays to be performed at
court. Taught Thomas Jenkins and John Cotham.
1582: Publishes Positions.
1583: Publishes Elementarie.
1596–1608: Headmaster of Saint Paul’s School in London.
