Purpose of This Podcast and Why it is Important to Learn About Shakespeare

The podcast "Shakespeare's Soliloquies with Coach Kane" aims to break down Shakespeare's major soliloquies to help students understand and connect with the characters' emotions and inner thoughts. By exploring themes like jealousy, greed, and impulsivity, Shakespeare's work remains relevant today, offering lessons on human behavior and the consequences of flaws. The podcast encourages readers to make personal connections with the text and learn from the characters' experiences to improve their own decision-making. Shakespeare's timeless portrayal of human emotions and behaviors provides valuable insights for modern audiences, despite the historical context of his plays. The podcast also challenges students to think about updating outdated references in Shakespeare's works to modern equivalents. Through analyzing metaphors and literary devices, as well as empathizing with the characters' struggles, listeners are encouraged to reflect on their own actions and strive to make better choice Hello, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you're listening to this. Thank you for joining this podcast again. My name is Coach Kane, and this is Shakespeare's Soliloquies with Coach Kane. And to start things off, I want to break down what the purpose of this podcast is. So the whole idea behind this is to break down and give further guidance on all of Shakespeare's major soliloquies. Of course, we have to start off with the definition of what is a soliloquy, and that is a dramatic speech in which a character talks to himself or herself or reveals his or her thoughts to the audience when alone on stage. Shakespeare uses soliloquies in all of his plays. They used it for a variety of reasons, but the main idea is that the character is alone on stage and is revealing their emotions and inner thoughts to the audience. This podcast will break down the who, what, when, where, why, and how of each soliloquy to assist students with understanding what is going on. Students might even be able to make a connection in their own lives to the emotions and thoughts of the character giving the soliloquy. And that's our goal here. By breaking down the soliloquy, we're hoping students can make a personal connection with the text. This aids with reading comprehension, inferential comprehension, understanding themes, and the morals from the play as well. Which brings us to why do students learn about Shakespeare? And honestly, students complain a lot about Shakespeare, and we get it. You know, we understand it's 400 years old. William Shakespeare is from England. A lot of plays take place in Europe. So how can American teenagers possibly relate to this? It's hard to read. It's hard to understand. These speeches, these soliloquies that we've now called them, they go on forever and ever. Sometimes they don't really make sense. So these are common things that I hear from students. And let me start off by saying that all of these concerns are valid. Sometimes it feels like there isn't a real reason for why we're learning something or why we're reading a specific book or play. But the goal of this podcast is also to help us understand why it is so important to learn about Shakespeare. And I think the best example of this is from Shakespeare's Hamlet and that famous to be or not to be soliloquy. That's soliloquy from the character Prince Hamlet himself. Where he's talking about the many difficult issues that he's facing and all of a sudden he brings up the example of the government being corrupt, justice being a two-tier system, and not being able to get anything done quickly. And quite frankly, these are all issues that are affecting us today or issues that are alive and well today. A lot of students perk up when they hear that and they're like, wait, this was written 400 years ago. These lines could have been written yesterday. Shakespeare's work is very relevant today. It was written over 400 years ago, so there's a lot to learn from the past and how it relates to the present. That brings us to why it's important to learn about Shakespeare. I think Shakespeare does a brilliant job of capturing human emotion and showing how human errors lead to problems. There's always a lesson or a moral, a story to learn with Shakespeare's plays. Shakespeare exposes some of the common human emotions that get us into trouble. Jealousy, greed, stubbornness, impulsivity, to name a few. And shows us how these flaws can turn tragic if left unchanged. Hopefully the readers will learn from the play the changes that they need to make in themselves. In Shakespeare's tragedies, the main character always has the opportunity to change before tragedy strikes or refuses to do so. This is Shakespeare's way of showing the audience how they can become better in their own lives. We all have to deal with moments in our lives where jealousy, greed, stubbornness, impulsivity, and other human flaws affect our best judgment. And more importantly, prevent us from doing the right thing. Even when what we know we're doing is wrong. This is what makes Shakespeare's work timeless. Yes, selves with traditions from 400 plus years ago won't make any sense. But the human emotions and how they influence behavior are as real now as they were 400 plus years ago. There are also moments where there is a technological update that clearly represents what would happen if this play took place today. Love letters are common in Shakespeare's work. And this clearly would be represented by text messaging or social media posts today. Dueling with swords might be represented with fist fights. And royal ambassadors carrying notes from foreign lands would be replaced by emails. These are a few examples and I really do challenge students to think of modern day updates when you come across an outdated reference in one of Shakespeare's work. Which brings us to what I hope you gain from Shakespeare's soliloquies. It's obviously great practice recognizing and using metaphors, similes, and other literary devices. However, beyond comprehension and inferences, I hope you're able to make a personal connection with the text. The human errors, challenges, and flaws Shakespeare's characters face are all very real to the human experience today. I hope you're moved by the text and encouraged to make better choices when these human flaws come up again in your own lives.