Shakespeare shouldn’t just be ‘droned through’ in schools, says Helen Mirren

Photograph: Getty Images for L'Oréal Paris

Dame Helen Mirren has suggested that the works of William Shakespeare should not be taught in schools.

Instead, the Oscar-winning actor proposed that children should first experience the Bard’s plays at the theatre, through live performance.

Speaking to Royal Shakespeare Company’s artistic director Gregory Doran over Zoom, Mirren said: “I don’t think Shakespeare should be taught in schools.

“All young people’s experience of Shakespeare should be live theatre,” she argued. 

Mirren, 75, also claimed that classroom often struggle to make the “sometimes archaic language alive and accessible”, and that “droning through” Shakespeare at the age of 11 or 12 risked putting children off the texts for good.

Mirren pictured at the Monte-Carlo Planetary Health Gala in September, 2020 (Getty Images for La Fondation Pr)

As well as her distinguished work in film and TV, Mirren is also known for her acclaimed stage performances, and has appeared in productions of many Shakespearean works across her career.

In 2010, Mirren appeared as Prospera in a gender-switched film adaptation of The Tempest, written and directed by Julie Taymor.

“I’m so happy now that women can do Hamlet, do Richard III, do Lear, as Glenda Jackson just did,” she said.

“It certainly was beyond any possibility when I was in my twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties. It was just impossible.”