Helping pupils learn to love plays

Guardian Unlimited: Arts blog: "It is the early 90s and I am sitting in A-level English Literature. Every single line of Antony and Cleopatra is painstakingly explained to me. Assiduous fellow pupils are scribbling these explanations on every white space on the page. We have been through the same process with Mansfield Park. The same fate awaits a Canterbury tale or two. And, after that, exactly the same sort of line-by-line exegesis will be visited on Seamus Heaney and Waiting for Godot."