The major thesis of this paper is that the teaching of English should be interdisciplinary. The paper shows that the works of George Bernard Shaw and William Shakespeare are interdisciplinary and observes that the greatest current educational need is for breadth of education and interdisciplinary linkages rather than for transmission of facts. It shows how human beings use language, myths, and metaphors to express and create realities; demonstrates how reality is expressed and transformed in music and art; and shows how historical realities are portrayed in Shakespeare's chronicles. The paper also points to the relationship of English instruction to the reality of the outside world, shows how the English classroom is analogous to the theatre, and argues that the explosive energies beneath the surface of artistic structure in music and poetry are stimuli to intellectual involvement in the English class. The paper concludes by outlining salient characteristics of art, by pointing out that one area of knowledge confirms another the way one art form confirms another art form, and by noting that the purpose of English is the purpose of art: to analyze and transcend experience and to seek higher unities and syntheses for common understanding. (GT)