Uncategorized

It was the last Sunday before Christmas, and I was just starting to get into the mood.  As a deeply nostalgic, sentimental human, I require certain seasonal harbingers and talismen to trigger that numinous burst of warmth from deep in the fibers of my being: the Christmas Spirit. I’ve always loved Christmas. It’s a holiday […]

As a writer and English teacher I’m always looking for signs. I went back to yoga last week and on the inspirational quote board someone had written: “Remember me.” ~ Your body It was an apt point, without question. It’s also what the ghost of Hamlet’s father said to him at the end of their

I’ve said it before. As a teacher and a writer, I don’t cotton to the concept of being lost for words. Dig around. Thesaurus it! Be like Shakespeare and make up the words you need. Nonetheless, as I teach Senior Girls Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, by Harriet Jacobs, I find myself

Creeping like snail unwillingly to school. It’s a line from Shakespeare’s “All the world’s a stage” speech about the seven ages of man. All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being

We were wondering what it would be like. I was excited and curious. My parents were curious and trepidatious. A female Hamlet? One of the many good things about studying and teaching Shakespeare is that you are always, and I mean always, learning new things. It’s a license, an invitation, nay a requirement to be

The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited. Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the liberty, these are the only men.                            

You know how when you learn a new word and then you start seeing it everywhere? That’s how I have been feeling about Shakespeare all spring. A little more than a year ago, when I was planning my very first tour of Shakespeare’s England, I perhaps somewhat naively said to my traveling companion–who studied at

The moon is waning, My joints are paining, My mood is draining, Next up will be raining. I can’t stop thinking in verse or in rhyme; Oppressed with the sense that I’m losing to time. It’s a green and nipping month of May. The peonies bud tight against the cold. And they said April was cruel.

I think the cruel part of April has passed. It’s Shakespeare’s birth (we assume) and death day and everything in the Northeast Corridor of the US is in rich, new green and bloom. Today marks the end of a year of around the world celebrations of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. Somewhat maudlin, but

March is my hardest month. Which is sort of pathetic considering a week of it is spring break. But I always have a lot of papers to grade over spring break. And new classes to get ready for. March is my hardest month. My dad’s birth day and death day in the same month. I