DO STUDENTS TODAY EXPERIENCE SHAKESPEARE DIFFERENTLY?

DO STUDENTS TODAY EXPERIENCE SHAKESPEARE DIFFERENTLY? Stephen Greenblatt says that today’s students experience Shakespeare differently in this article in the New York Times Magazine (September 11, 2015). (Bruce Able called my attention to the article). Greenblatt says he has observed a difference between the students he teaches now at Harvard and the ones he taught at Berkeley in the 1980’s, even though he recognizes that the Harvard students are “highly gifted”. Although his current students have “verbal facility” and “write with ease”, “their engagement with language, their own or Shakespeare’s, often seems surprisingly shallow or tepid.”