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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

Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care, The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath, Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, Chief nourisher in life’s feast.  [Macbeth 2.2.49-52] Sleep. When you really need it, wherever you can get it–a 10 or 20 minute doze in a crowded train or plane,

I can’t talk. Somewhere at the end of last week, after the fifth Bikram yoga class in seven days, and increasing difficulty breathing, I lost my voice. This is a huge liability for a high school teacher. I could do my job in a wheelchair–but without a voice? When things are really bad, people say: “There are

I love HAMLET. Every spring I have the great privilege to teach HAMLET to high school seniors. And I’ve spent over a year now deeply immersed in the process of writing a memoir about Teaching Hamlet as My Father Died. But now, this weekend, I’m seriously considering not teaching HAMLET come March. I was already

For well over a year now I have been deeply immersed in the world of grief, examining the process of getting on with life and work (in my case, teaching high school English) in the wake of great personal loss. I’m working on the second draft of my memoir, TEACHING HAMLET AS MY FATHER DIED,