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Shakespeare & Illiteracy

ON SHAKESPEARE - by G.L. Horton (4/03/02)

On the humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare newsgroups list, W writes: Dyslexia is not illiteracy. Please don't confuse the two.

I'll confuse them if I want to -- my family is full of dyslexia! (must come from the other side) Many painful hours of helping them read, and of trying to figure out what words the jumble of letters and alphabetical shapes that somewhat resemble letters left me as a note is supposed by its author to contain.

W continues: Dyslectics can learn to read.

They can, but if they live in an environment where it is possible to thrive w/o being literate, why should they? However, I don't know any who have a severe case who can cope with cold reading. As playwright-director-actor, I have sat through many an excruciating rehearsal where one cast member with a reading disability has stumbled through the "new pages" passed out to everyone after a rewrite. These are people who if given a page of script and 45 minutes, will have it decoded and close enough to fully memorized that they can perform it. But with a new page, the first attempt at reading will be full of strange transpositions and misapprehensions

W continues: and many read quite well, once their condition is diagnosed and they undergo treatment. People do overcome all sorts of things, though. James Earl Jones, who sounds like the voice of God when he's on stage, has a stutter in ordinary speech.

As you say, WS was not a star-- merely an actor good enough to play roles with VERY long speeches, like the Ghost and the principal role in a play of Ben Jonson's. So WS isn't likely to have been one of the illiterate acting geniuses, is he?

W continues: I doubt if there were any illiterate actors on the London stage. From what is known of the time, there was no shortage of actors and there would have competition for parts. Being a member of a repertory theatre, where you'd have to know several parts and be able to learn parts quickly, as WS was, only heightens the necessity of good reading ability.

Guess what? There are illiterate playwrights and poets: thousands before writing was invented, thousands in parts of the world today where the oral tradition of poetry contines, and literacy is for commerce and law. But so what? SW isn't likely to have been one of these, either-- We have personal testimony from his fellow workers that WS "writ".

 

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