In his last moments, Brutus voiced a sentiment about the ultimate tragedy of the virtuous life in those evil days, in which the good was punished and the evil rewarded. This does not make virtue worthless for the individual; it just may place him on the losing side. [E]veryone knows that some young bucks among [...]
Any attempt to mould Shakespeare into the image of what Evelyn Waugh called “our own deplorable epoch” is ridiculously absurd, and “queer theorists” who seek to do so should not be taken seriously as scholars or critics. If these critics were able to empathise with the past, they would see Shakespeare’s sonnets as they truly [...]
Rome does not occasionally become relevant in our understanding of political upheaval. Rather, it forms part of our very identity as Christians and heirs of the Western tradition that it helped shape. No one saw the essential drama of Rome more clearly than William Shakespeare. In the current issue of Atlantic magazine, editor-at-large Cullen Murphy [...]
“Beware the Ides of March!” As it does every year, this March fifteenth affords us the opportunity to contemplate the recurrent patterns of history. Yet what exactly was the pattern exhibited on that infamous day? […]
One thing that is abundantly evident from the demands for the cancellation of Shakespeare in public schools is that none of those demanding his removal from the curriculum have been able to read or understand his work. Had they been able to do so, they would know that Shakespeare’s plays show us relevant, perennial truths. [...]
In the current battle for the classroom between traditional literature and overt propaganda, #DisruptTexts and its allies attack Shakespeare for hate speech. But is Shakespeare promulgating hateful rhetoric? Or is he thinking deeply into the dramatic situation of racial and religious conflict in the Mediterranean world to reveal the human heart in conflict with itself? [...]
In his tragedy “Othello,” Shakespeare censures the age in which King James I renewed the persecution of Catholics in England, with a tale of darkness, told with the doom-laden and crushing weight of the playwright’s own heavy heart. Othello is the first of a triumvirate of tragedies written by Shakespeare during a particularly dark period [...]
As Samuel Taylor Coleridge expresses in his poem “Constancy to an Ideal Object,” we might find in art the most constants, idealized in our creations, which piece together some meaning of truth amid a world of change where it might appear that nothing has meaning. Although this essay will be about Samuel Taylor Coleridge and [...]
“The Tempest” is indubitably the final play that William Shakespeare wrote. Why did Shakespeare, who was still in good health, bow out in such an apparently premature fashion? What might have induced such a decision to leave his career in theatre? Now my charms are all o’erthrown, And what strength I have’s mine own, Which [...]
Abstract law or the worship of a document is not sufficient for guidance of a people, nor are the paltry checks of public shame and dread enough to deter criminality. We stand a far greater chance of learning wisdom from William Shakespeare’s “Henry VI” than we do from listening to the countless talking heads and [...]
Perhaps Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice" is really just a mess. For all his brilliance, the Bard stitched together four different plots, threw it all together, writing for the actors he had on hand, and the result is a hodgepodge of a play. If it is a comedy, then is it simply a comedy of errors? [...]
William Shakespeare (baptized April 26, 1564, died April 23, 1616) is arguably the greatest writer in any language. Shakespeare’s classical poetry is not only one of the most exalted examples of what an immortal sense of creative identity can accomplish, it is a symbol of the artist’s immortality, and timelessness itself. As today’s coronavirus crisis [...]
The first spark of genuine engagement with great writers most often comes from a teacher, and the ever-fresh immortality of the great work has its ironic contrast in the aging and death of those who made the introduction. So it is for me with Shakespeare, who was first truly impressed upon my imagination during my [...]
Marchette Chute’s “Shakespeare of London” is a delight to read. With a fluid narrative, Chute has produced a fascinating wealth of research in a most readable form. Shakespeare of London, by Marchette Chute (397 pages, E.P. Dutton and Company, 1949) It was a classic when it was first published in 1949, but it remains a [...]