LK English

When reviewing the LK E 1989-91 I cannot help remembering Shakespeare's motto for MACBETH: "fair is foul and foul is fair". There was a good deal of fairness in a minority of students to whom I want to say I am grateful. They ought to lean back in their seats now and smile about my recalling the stage we have been acting on. By the way, foul is etymologically derived from both OHG and OE ful, which became NHG 'faul' - the latter can be used ambiguously, as you all know.

There has been that motley bunch of absentees some of whom did their minor extra-scholastic jobs and others suffered from irritable Bowel Syndrom or driving lessons, some of them imagined to be sick and others were really ill: what was fair, what was foul?

Although dealing with Protestant (work)ethics we have not been able to revive these in out scenario - maybe the scenarist has not been 'well-liked'. Some players would give a monkey's at being prepared, particularly after practising absenteeism: foul is foul!

Do you remember that mumbo-jumbo at the initiation of most of our performances after the prompter had summoned the players to start acting? there was quite some strutting in (with me quelling any fretting) after the bell had tolled, and methought I heard some groundlings cheer about it.

At times it was rather hard to communicate against a recurrent swell of coughing, sneezing, sniffling and shuffling of feet, which sometimes made me use a heinous trick to stop it: I asked a question about the text! Whereupon there was not even the faintest wheeze or whisper from anybody any more: similar to Macbeth I felt like addressing ghosts, but unlike Macbeth I was not driven crazy. I only had to sense some pedagogical deprivation, and sought help on my couch with Shakespeare: Is it that "the nature of the bad news infects the teller" (Antony & Cleopatra) or "instructions, which being taught return to plague th'inventor" (Macbeth)? Playing foul is fair enough.

Dealing with a literary text was another poor play particularly when I did not allow them to take things at their face value: so 'action' was seldom experienced in our lessons, which had to be compensated by the latest videos at home. I wonder whether I sometimes practised or should have practised BRAVE NEW WORLD's sleep-teaching. When we analyzed texts the Elizabethan stage was revived in our course: there were those classical asides when somebody who was producing a sentence (the average sentence took about a minute) got stuck and asked his or her neighbour: "was hoißt....?" Soliluquis were mostly my parts, signifying nothing. Whenever there were contributions they were addressed to the teacher resulting in short dialogues. And there were groundlings who had their comic relief when somebody mispronounced. As to discussions I have never known whether those who have really known have not spoken because those who have spoken have not really known. What's been fair, what's been foul?

Correcting some of the actors' prompt books (texts) caused quite some nightmares considering the almost illegible handwriting, which is only allowed to doctors after numerus clausus studies. There were also some Bad Quartos or pirated texts in homeworks. Unfair or megafoul!

Teaching LK E has made me often feel like batting on a sticky wicket or to put it differently there has been somehting slightly more or less Quixotic about my teaching: Have I been considered foul when I tried to be fair??

May I express my conclusion with that Dickensean character's insight: 'People mutht be amuthed. They can't be alwayth a learning, nor yet they can't be alwayth a working. They an't made for it.' (HARD TIMES) I hope that all students of my course will be able to know which side their bread is buttered.

*+*+* Good luck on your next stage *+*+*