I think of sitting at the kitchen counter with my mom, listening to her recite from memory Hamlet's "To be, or not to be" speech and seeing, at that moment, my mother as a very intelligent woman. I was young and oblivious to those sort of details, so this sudden recognition is a distinct memory. I still remember looking down at the large, heavy Shakespeare collection sitting open on my lap and then looking back up at my mother reciting "...To die, to sleep-- To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub..." so smartly and eloquently that I stopped looking down at the words because they were a meaningless distraction from their oration. That was the first time I truly saw Shakespeare.
In this class we'll be deeply involved with searching for other ways to view and understand Shakespeare. Along with those ways, I'd like to focus on seeing Shakespeare in the every day life of a college student, secretary, young adult, wife, friend, observer of society. I think the quotidian Shakespeare can help us discover much about our lives, the world we live in and illuminate how he is a writer more involved with today's society than any writer that has been.
In this class we'll be deeply involved with searching for other ways to view and understand Shakespeare. Along with those ways, I'd like to focus on seeing Shakespeare in the every day life of a college student, secretary, young adult, wife, friend, observer of society. I think the quotidian Shakespeare can help us discover much about our lives, the world we live in and illuminate how he is a writer more involved with today's society than any writer that has been.
