They come to praise Shakespeare, not to bury him: The teaching of Shakespeare threatens to become a penance, not a pleasure, under the national curriculum. However, there is another way. Roy Hattersley has seen it, and it works

This may be a bad week for William Shakespeare. The great miracle of English literature was meant to make us glad. But, more than any other writer in the language, his popular reputation has been damaged by the 'if it isn't hurting, they aren't working' theory of secondary education.

At Montsaye School in the village of Rothwell, five miles north-west of Kettering, there is a real fear that the demands of the new national curriculum will take the joy out of something that ought to be a pleasure, not a penance. A few weeks ago, year nine threw themselves into Julius Caesar in a demonstration of what a tragedy it would be to teach Shakespeare as if he were no more than the inscription on a weather-torn gravestone.

The school hall was the Roman senate in 44BC and the conspirators were preparing to assassinate Caesar. 'As soon as you've got your togas on,' their drama teacher, Catherine Payne, told them, 'go and sit down. Put your daggers where they're not going to hurt anyone, and where nobody will kneel on them.' Year nine wound themselves into their sheets and a tableau of conspirators was turned into what, out of deference to the television age, Ms Payne called a 'freeze-frame'. The rubber and plastic blades flashed metaphorically in the cold spring sunlight. It was only when the first blade landed home that visitors with a traditional turn of mind realised that Casca was a girl.

The conspirators argued about stage directions. 'Kneel', Cassius hissed. 'I was kneeling,' Brutus replied, 'but Caesar pulled me up.' Then the assembled Romans are instructed to ponder the implications of Act 3, Scene 1, line 114:

How many ages hence,

Shall this our lofty scene be acted over

In states unborn and accents yet unknown]

Shakespeare worship being the prevailing passion in the Montsaye English and Drama Department, the clear implication was that the world was expected to remember, not the assassination itself, but its dramatisation.

Textual analysis followed. Ms Payne is contemptuous of the old methods, which she compares to the Aston Villa coach who teaches in the school 'testing a young footballer's ability by asking him to write an essay'. The parallel is not quite exact. But it reflects her belief in the pleasures of participation. Her philosophy, and the teaching technique it inspires, was learnt from the Shakespeare and Schools project of the Cambridge Institute of Education.

Year nine plunged into one of the exercises set out in the Cambridge School Shakespeare. 'Brutus said, 'Let's be sacrificers but not butchers'. Who do you think the butchers were?' The discussion about who stabbed whom where was postponed while Clint responded to the invitation to stop fidgeting. He was unabashed by the rebuke and apparently unmoved by the encomium that, 'although he often has difficulty with the text, his common sense often sees the rest of the class through'. They believe in encouragement at Montsaye - encouragement and the idea that Shakespeare lives.

When James pronounced the collective conclusion that 'the envious ones just hack away at him

. . . while Brutus does it for the good of Rome', the exegesis had been completed by a group of adolescents who had never heard the word and would have been terrified by it if they had. The bell rang to announce the end of the lesson, so there was no time to follow the Cambridge advice and form the class into a 'panel of a current affairs programme' and 'discuss Caesar's last speech'. Nor was it possible, 'by changing names and a few words' to reinterpret the plea for Metellus Cimber's pardon as a supplication 'begging your teacher not to give you a test today'.

It seems certain that, unlike Caesar, Catherine Payne would have gladly succumbed to the 'low crooked curtsies and base spaniel fawning'. Testing is not popular in the Montsaye English and Drama Department. The demands of the national curriculum have already reduced the amount of time pupils spend enjoying Shakespeare, and it seems certain that the inflexible requirements of standard assessment tasks will cut into the Collected Works even more.

At Montsaye they believe in intellectual discipline. But they encourage it in a way that confuses work and pleasure - and occasionally blurs the distinction between formal and creative education to an extent which might be described as cheating. Year nine have made replicas of Roman scrolls - imitations of ancient parchment which vary from the exquisite to the acceptable. Unrolled, each one revealed its creator's account of Caesar's death. Since Catherine Payne teaches drama rather than philosophy, she is not required to explain how those 'contemporary news reports' differ from the old fashioned and much derided school essay.

The triumph of the creative approach is dramatically, if unconsciously, demonstrated by a group of pupils who have been exposed to living Shakespeare throughout their school lives. They are the beneficiaries of Catherine Payne's infectious enthusiasm. They also prove that what the ignorant call 'difficult plays' can be enjoyed at a dozen different levels and that an appreciation of plot, language and character requires something more and better than copying notes from the glossary into the margin of the text.

Andrew Sawford - who sits A-levels this month and plays Benedick in the school's production of Much Ado About Nothing - has seen so much Shakespeare that it is hard to believe he wants to read politics at university. His excuse is that he wants a political career. To those who watch Shakespeare for pleasure, much is forgiven.

In seven years Andrew has taken part in school pilgrimages to London, Stratford, Leicester, Nottingham, Warwick and Birmingham. And he possesses both the knowledge and the self-confidence to confound criticism of Sir Ian McKellen's Richard III with the explanation that, since the star 'had a third of the total number of lines' it is hardly surprising that his performance obliterated the rest of the cast. But the chance to enjoy Shakespeare is available to all the school. The Cambridge system is built on excitement - an emotion that crosses the barriers of ability. Dull is out of date.

Year 11, confronting Henry V, produced an almost perfect example of why, although Shakespeare is timeless, teaching Shakespeare must move with the times. Rehearsing 'the sort of question that might come up in next month's examination', they were invited - group by group - to find and perform a line which exhibited a facet of the victorious king's character. The warning not to choose 'imitate the action of a tiger' proved unnecessary.

Gray and Scroop were marched off from one corner of the classroom to await summary execution. The king was, his loyal court insisted, as much antagonised by the plotters' hypocrisy as by their undoubted treachery. Thirty lines earlier, the traitors had argued against mercy for a man who 'railed against' the royal personage when 'set on' by an 'excess of wine'. They could hardly complain if he reacted to their sober insurrection with the severity they had demanded for a drunken loud-mouth. But while they were prepared to give Henry the benefit of the doubt when he committed the ancient crime of judicial murder, they were less willing to forgive him for the modern offence of sexism.

One group chose as its indicative line a passage from the betrothal speech - 'Take me, take a soldier. Take a soldier, take a king.' But they did not regard it as proof of either affection or a romantic disposition. It was, they insisted, simply a statement of possession. Henry had captured France and regarded the French princess as part of the booty. The preceding speech, in which the king 'pleaded his love-suit to her gentle heart', was brushed aside. Kirsty McDonald - a 16-year-old veteran hero of Much Ado About Nothing and a potentially perfect Princess Katharine - was adamant. 'They've only just met]' Woman as property is not a popular idea at Montsaye.

It would be silly to pretend that pupils barely older than Romeo and Juliet are capable of accepting Shakespeare's infinite variety of ideas and implications. But they can absorb some of his magic. And sensible teachers encourage them to enjoy him on their own terms. At Montsaye, pupils are allowed to argue their own way to understanding.

The proposition that Henry must be clever was dismissed with all the certainty that is both the strength and weakness of the young. The speech with which he accepts the French king's gift of tennis balls is as decorated as the royal standard. But they regarded the puns and images as Shakespeare's work, not Harry's.

Year nine wrestled with a different problem. They were unwilling, and perhaps unable, to consider the possibility that the real hero of Julius Caesar was not Mark Antony but Brutus. Even the sixth-form devotees were reluctant to believe that the character of Richard III had been falsified in order that a jobbing playwright might win favour with the Tudors, who had usurped the Yorkist throne. It is easy to understand why Catherine Payne (Montsaye's drama teacher and a Shakespeare idolater) is so contemptuous of politicians who say that Midsummer Night's Dream is right for children. 'It's about sexual jealousy and kids can't understand that.'

But at Montsaye School, all occasions inform in Shakespeare's favour. Every day of term, pupils and staff demonstrate the joy that Shakespeare can provide even without close attention to the likes of Bradley, Dover Wilson and Stanley Wells. Those who talk of traditional values, from John Patten to the Prince of Wales, fail to understand one basic, 400-year-old fact. Shakespeare was meant to make us glad.

(Photograph omitted)