A Midsummer Night's Dream

31 July 2025: 

[Catch-up post...]

I had a delightful time last night seeing A Midsummer Night's Dream last night at the Olney Theater. It was a production but on by Synetic Theatre (they do wordless shows--which are always very cool). It really was terrific--beautifully interpreted with great music, dancing, and lots of great comic moments/performances.

Tim organized the whole thing for a group that also included Kevin (of course!) and our new colleague Michael and his fiance. 

The Tempest

17 November 2024: I was not expecting to get emotional at the Rude Mechanicals' production of The Tempest, but once the show was over and the applause started to die down, the company of actors and crew honored Betty, who is retiring at the end of this academic year and had, thus, just completed her last run directing a Shakespeare play. The tears started flowing. 

The Winter's Tale

6 November 2022: I saw the Rude Mechanicals' production of The Winter's Tale this afternoon and found myself moved to tears--something I wasn't expecting. When Leontes is so cruel--when he refuses to believe the his wife, his advisors, his friends, and even the oracle, even as everyone begs him to--it was too much: the misogyny, the tyranny, the refusal to admit when you are wrong. It's just too real in our modern moment. I saw a production years and years ago when I was at Oxford, but I sure didn't respond to it this way. It's a strange, strange play...perhaps sadly perfect for right now. 

Romeo and Juliet

1 April 2022: Friday vibes were all over the place; some good stuff, some hard and frustrating stuff. But by the evening, they settled into quite nice. Hannah and I had dinner and then saw the Rude Mechanicals' production of Romeo and Juliet, which was quite entertaining. A perfect way to end the work week. 

As You Like It

4 November 2018:
"Love is merely a madness;
and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a
whip as madmen do; and the reason why they are
not so punish'd and cured is that the lunacy is so
ordinary that the whippers are in love too." --Rosalind in As You Like It

Really enjoyed the Rude Mechanicals' production of As You Like It today.

Road Trip: Downton costumes and Hamlet!

19 July 2014: Saturday was a nearly perfect summer day. My friends Anna, Hannah, and I took a mini-road trip to Delaware to see the Downton Abbey costume exhibit at Winterthur. In planning the trip, I realized that the Delaware Shakespeare Festival was putting on Hamlet that evening--outdoors, picnicking encouraged. What more could three English-minded folks ask for?

The trip up was fun and traffic-free. The exhibit was fun and interesting. The play was great. The weather was perfect. I mean, picnicking outdoors in July sounds like a risky proposition, but it was pleasant and breezy and lovely. Before the show started, the stage manager came out and made some general announcements. He mentioned that although the forecast called for a 0% chance of rain, if it did rain, the policy is to continue in light rain and, if it gets heavy, stop for twenty minutes and reassess. But again...0% chance of rain, right?

...Until Act 4, Scene 7 (really close to the end). And a light rain started. And the actor playing Laertes, in the really dramatic and sad scene where he learns of his sister's drowning, says the line" Too much of water has thou, poor Ophelia." And the whole crowd cracked up. The actor, God bless him, broke just a bit, briefly smiling and suppressing a chuckle before recovering quite well. It was a terrific moment. You could feel everyone--the actors, the crew, the audience--just hoping and pulling for the show to finish before the rain picked up. It actually ended (more or less) by the sword fight in the final scene. Anyway, a great night and a great day!

Oh--and I won the drawing for a free t-shirt!

Some pictures:

Cora's outfit from Baby Sybil's christening. 

Mary and Matthew's outfits from the cricket match.

Daisy and Mrs. Patmore's dresses.

Sigh! Mary and Matthew's outfits from their engagement scene. The scene itself was playing on a large scene in the background, with snowfall projected all along the wall. Very emotional!

One of Matthew's suits.

Sybil's shocking pants!

Sybil and Mary's dresses from Edith's (canceled) wedding. Edith's dress was there, too, but my picture didn't come out.

The exhibit had memorable lines of dialogue on the walls. This one made me laugh.

 

 Anna and Hannah picnicking before the show.

Even more link dumping: Literature Edition

Three more:

1) A student brought this up in class today and it reminded me that I had a bookmark about it: A new portrait of Shakespeare?

2) Lots of folks are discussing the sad news about Nicholas Hughes, son of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. This certainly demonstrates the lingering power of mental illness and depression on a family.

3) On a lighter note, be sure to check out this awesome blog that recently came to my attention: How a Poem Happens. And I might as well give another shout-out to my former grad-school colleague, Dan Albergotti, who has an entry there.

Hamlet on Facebook

Awesome.

Shakespeare in graphic novel form...

An interesting concept, especially for younger students or non-majors. We've just started Othello in my ENG 102 courses and it can be a real struggle for these students to break through Shakespeare's language. I've actually told them to go ahead and use Cliffnotes if they need to. Does that make me a bad teacher? I don't think so--I want them to get something out of this text, and if study aides help make that possible, then that's okay. As I've said before, when I teach these introductory or general education classes, one of my main goals is appreciation: I want students who wouldn't read these kinds of works on their own to realize that these texts are actually pretty good--and that they can talk about and understand them. If graphic novel adaptations of Shakespeare can help accomplish this, then they aren't a bad idea at all.

Of course, someone has to rain on the parade:

"'If you want to use them as an introduction or a taste, that's fine," says Leila Christenbury, English education professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and past president of the National Council of Teachers of English. 'But they cannot be equated with seeing the play.'"

[Ummm...who is suggesting that? Talk about an overreaction.]

"She believes the United States as a whole has 'an affinity for superficial knowledge of the classics' and is often unwilling to stick out challenging works from beginning to end, preferring to get just the gist of the story for 'cocktail-party knowledge.' Couple this tendency with teenagers' crowded schedules, she says, and you're likely to get a bunch of students who toss the original texts (even if they've been assigned) in lieu of the more exciting abridged versions."

Again, this is true, but consider why we want students exposed to Shakespeare and the classics. The sophomore sociology major doesn't need to be a Shakespeare expert, and it's foolish to act like he should be. After all, not every English major is expected to be an expert in Sociology. And "cocktail-party knowledge" is better than no knowledge at all.

Incidentally, my students have also introduced me to something called "No Fear Shakespeare". Have y'all seen this? It would make the woman I've quoted above pass out, I think, but it's been a lifesaver for many of my students. I have mixed feelings about it, but here's what I told my classes: first, read the text as is, then go ahead and use "No Fear Shakespeare" or whatever if you need to, and then finally, look at the original again. I know I am being idealistic to assume they'll take all those steps, but once I've told them that is what they should do, I know they know what I expect of them. What they do from that point on is up to them.

Yes, I know that part of the beauty and power of Shakespeare comes from that original language. You don't need to convince me of that. But most non-majors aren't going to see that on their own. That's what class time is for. Let them do their best to get through the reading for homework and then we'll talk about the art of it all during class. And yes, maybe someday they'll be able to leave "No Fear Shakespeare" behind, but if not, at least they tried and at least they know the basic story. I've got to say, these classes are loving reading Othello, and if I have Sparknotes or whatever to thank for at least part of that, than that's fine.

Finally, here's an excerpt from that article that sounds a lot scarier than it is probably meant to:

"Writer and longtime college professor Adam Sexton is a believer — and not just because Wiley hired him to adapt the Shakespearean texts for its 200-or-so-page manga editions. When he was just 8 years old, a neighbor lent him a comic-book adaptation of "Julius Caesar" by Classics Illustrated. 'I was so taken by it that I pulled 'The Complete Works of William Shakespeare' down from the bookcase in my parents' living room and actually forced my two brothers to perform the assassination scene from the play,' Mr. Sexton says."

And now Mr. Sexton is an only child...

"Advice To College Students: Don't Major in English"

From seemingly out of nowhere comes this attack on English departments across the nation. Now it's nothing to get too worked up about on the surface--seems to me that Schlafly is going for shock value here and little more, but it is hard to let a comment like this pass without notice: " That's why it was no surprise that Cho Seung-Hui, the murderer of 32 students and teachers at Virginia Tech, was an English major." What a ridiculous assertion--one that the author doesn't even attempt to support in her column. This kind of discourse--where the barbed attack, the killer soundbite becomes the whole story--makes me genuinely sad. And it comes from both sides of the political spectrum.

Beyond that, though, she is simply wrong. When I heard that Cho Seung-Hui was an English major, I was more surprised than anything else. Yes, maybe that says something about how proud I am of my discipline, but I stand by that assertion. Let me take this point a bit further: to imply that English courses made this kid a murderer is so crazy and anti-intellectual that the author should be ashamed. In addition, as we look back on this tragic event and wonder what could have been done to prevent it, please note that it was his English teachers who made the most attempts to help him--to do something to stop him. See here and here for articles discussing their attempts. An English class, where students are free to discuss their ideas and their interpretations of texts and writings, is one of the few spaces where this kind of realization can happen. Yes, in this case, their efforts didn't work, but not for lack of trying.

And here's where I get really idealistic, I suppose: Schlafly implies that an English major that asks students to read newer additions to the curriculum (including, horror of horrors--works by women and minorities!) is a waste of time and money. She couldn't be more wrong. An English major that continues to embrace both the classics (however you want to define them) but also pays attention to shifting critical and cultural debates--that isn't afraid to adjust as attitudes change--is precisely the kind of degree that can change the world. Those who know me well know that I am far from a left-wing radical--about as far away as you can be and still be in a humanities branch of academia. But you cannot tell me that classes I've taught with titles like "Creepy Literature" and "Shocking and Scandalous Nineteenth-Century Literature" aren't worth teaching--that they don't teach students about what makes a text worth reading and how we can use literature to understand ourselves, our history, our world, and the people around us. To me, there's nothing inherently political about that--nothing left-wing or liberal about it.

Furthermore, it's equally ridiculous to act as if the traditional canon isn't also full of violence, alienation, and questions about race, sex, sexuality, and class. Ever really read Shakespeare, Phyllis? Chaucer's "Wife of Bath"? Isn't she a model of good family values! How about Whitman? Or Thoreau? And how about those ancient Greeks?

Okay--I could go on and on, but I'll stop for now. In a little while, I have to go teach my English 204 class. On the agenda for today, Henry Louis Gates' Colored People, a fascinating memoir about growing up black in West Virginia in the 1950s, written by one of the leading academics in the world today. Wonder how Schlafly would feel about that...