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Linking a Shakespearian play to a popular children's movie helps students read and understand.
Hamlet has always been a problem play for me and my students. Many of my students and my colleagues cannot find much that is heroic in the Danish prince. After all, Hamlet kills Polonius and his friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. He doesn't even assume the throne but leaves it to a foreign prince before he, himself, dies. Why is it, then, that I have always felt that Hamlet is right, just, moral, and heroic? Aren't they the feelings that Shakespeare wanted me to have about Hamlet? I needed an explanation. Hamlet has been touching the hearts of playgoers and readers for centuries. Hamlet, the man, can strike a responsive chord in all of us, a chord that is primal, archetypal. But how do I convey such a complex concept to my students of many nationalities and religions? We lack a common cultural base.
My solution to this dilemma came fortuitously after reading John Bradshaw's Homecoming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child (1990, New York: Bantam) and viewing Walt Disney's The Lion King (Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff, dirs., 1994, Buena Vista). Bradshaw synthesizes the works of Otto Rank and Edith Sullwold and creates descriptions of the mythical child in exile. This pattern is followed in the stories of Jesus, Moses, Buddha, and Perseus as well as Hamlet and Simba, the lion king. Using these two works, I felt I could use popular culture to help my students understand archetypes.
By pairing the play Hamlet with the Disney movie, The Lion King, students discover that both Hamlet and Simba represent the mythical archetype of the exiled child whose role is to restore world order and who has an heroic task. Students also realize that they too are unique individuals on heroic journeys.
THE HERO
The first concept I ask students to think about is that of the hero. What is a hero? How can we recognize one? Students free write on this idea and then the class discusses their ideas while a list of qualities is written on the board. From this list a class definition of a hero is compiled.
In Shakespeare's time people told stories about heroes, sang ballads...