Sonnet 73
That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. […]
The World’s a Stage: The Drama of Faith
Shakespeare shows us that there are none so blind as those who will not see because they prefer the darkness of sin to the light of virtue… 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 [...]
Courage to Defeat Postmodernism
There is a way out of postmodernism: courage. You do not reason yourself out of the postmodern, you fight your way out. You realize that logic can only take you so far. Then you have a decision to make. And you make it. Western civilization is founded on this one faith, this one great volitional [...]
Beyond Machismo to Manhood: The Challenge of Real Masculinity
Machismo is the failure to grow into the fullness of what it means to be a man. The mark of machismo is the boast and braggadocio of the braggart. It is the mask of pride, worn by those who lack humility… Once upon a time, when I was a boy, I recall watching a Western [...]
Enchantment, Realism, and the Imagination
Longing for the enchanted world underlies the poetic imagination, but it’s the light of common day that we inhabit, thus we should value realism in the imaginative realm… One of the themes of frequent discussion at Wyoming Catholic College is Charles Taylor’s idea of disenchantment—the disappearance in modern times of an “enchanted” relation to the [...]
Hunting Good Will (Shakespeare)
Hunting Will Shakespeare will be a continuing pursuit. It is almost as if the hunt for him is a hunt for humanity and a search to understand ourselves… My oldest son, Benedict has rightly observed that TV series are now more interesting than movies. Many of the series are well written, well budgeted, and well [...]
Minding Malvolio: Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night”
The ancient Catholic world was rich, colorful, and full of ritual and rumbustiousness. It was the culture of the rough and tumble, blood and glory, lusting and loving, fasting and feasting of the lives of the English people. I was introduced to Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night when I was a college freshman. Having learned to act [...]
“Let me not to the marriage of true minds”
Sonnet 116 Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand'ring bark, Whose worth's [...]
Imaginative Conservatism at Bob Jones University
Who would have thought that Bob Jones III, chancellor and former president of Bob Jones University, could be such a great actor, sensitive to the work of Shakespeare and quite clearly a lover of beauty?… As a resident of Greenville, South Carolina, I have learned to live alongside an overbearing Protestant neighbor whose looming presence [...]
Shakespeare as Political Thinker: Man’s Supernatural Destiny
What is new about our era, as opposed to the Christianity of an Augustine, of an Aquinas, or of a Shakespeare, is that now we actually see Christians themselves betraying their own traditions of political limitations… Shakespeare as Political Thinker, edited by John Alvis and Thomas G. West (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1981) For some [...]
The Use and Abuse of Shakespeare in Our Recent Election
What William Shakespeare would think of our recent election will never be discovered by those who cite words without taking the trouble to examine them… Persons who look up to others sometimes ask what they would advise. What would Jesus or Allah, Lincoln or Lenin, F.D.R. or Reagan, tell me to do? they wonder. But [...]
The Leisure of Reading
Reading with leisure means reading is not about me; it’s about giving my faculties over to the contemplation of a work that’s worthy in its own right… Early in January, several of us on the faculty of Wyoming Catholic College held a one-day seminar about leisure and hope at the Shrine of our Lady of [...]
Shakespeare: Three Plays About Human Desire
When a character imitates the desire of another character, the differences between them dissolve as the similarities in desire increase. This pattern of “undifferentiation” is more and more evident in the plays of the mature Shakespeare, such as “The Taming of the Shrew,” “As You Like It,” and “Twelfth Night. In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s [...]
What’s Love Got To Do With It?
The sobering lesson that Romeo and Juliet teaches is that the thing possessed possesses the possessor. Juliet is Romeo’s beginning and his end… Oh what’s love got to do, got to do with it, What’s love but a second hand emotion; What’s love got to do, got to do with it, Who needs a heart [...]