What We’re Reading
Mark David Hall, Who’s Afraid of Christian Nationalism? Many terms have popped up over the years and decades simply meant to smear political opponents. No term has…
“All the Grace I Beg”: The Cruelty of Mercy in Measure for Measure
It is no secret that Shakespeare is interested in the triumph of mercy over judgment. One of Shakespeare’s most famous monologues, delivered by the character of Portia…
Carl Schmitt’s Shakespearean Life: Between Hamlet and Othello in Weimar Germany
There have been many Shakespeare scholars, critics, and admirers throughout history. Such undying popularity, and engagement, is a testament to the profound and timeless nature of Shakespeare’s…
Laughing With Shakespearean Controversies
Never have the father, son, and holy ghost of letters been so split by heretics as in the holy trinity, maybe the holiest of the Western literary…
True Friendship in A Midsummer Night’s Dream
I have always loved Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, ever since I first read it in my high school drama class. Perhaps I was drawn to it…
King Lear: The Virtues that Come from Nothing
Return to Zero: Lear and Gloucester After raving through suffering and storm, King Lear is seared by an insight, one as dramatic as the lightning flashing in…
Moving and Being Moved by Shakespeare’s Sonnets
Shakespeare is widely recognized as one of the preeminent poets of the English language. Throughout his poetry, readers encounter both the lighter and joyous, as well as…
Coriolanus Before His Troops
Not to be known of senators, Or ediles, spreading out their hands To Rome’s observant mob; to wars We struggle, nor in foreign lands. I will be…
Fairy Stories and the Eucatastrophe of Shakespeare
I have spent several weeks preparing to lead a weekly after-school club on Shakespeare. In the process of doing so, I have returned to some of Shakespeare’s…
Finding Oneself in Ephesus
The Comedy of Errors is a play about a Syracusan man named Antipholus who wanders in Ephesus with his servant Dromio in search of his twin brother,…
How Shakespeare Would Have Loved Us and How We Love Shakespeare
William Shakespeare is widely considered the “greatest” of England’s many poets and writers, a dramatist whose works stir the heart and mind in both its language and…
Shakespeare and the Good Life
William Shakespeare is the immortal bard of the English language, the great dramatist of the human soul on the human stage. Shakespeare is recorded as having been…
“The Queen of Spades”: A Fairy-Tale of Disordered Loves
Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837), the “Father of Russian Literature,” is most famous for his poetry, but later in his life he increasingly published prose. We are not to…
