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My Poetry and Commentary on Life

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Category: Shakespeare

  • Quick Take: Caliban Shrieks by Jack Hilton

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    Finished the RFB book for this upcoming Sunday’s meeting. A fairly long (161 pages, seemed longer) rant from the point of view of a working class bloke (oppressed like Caliban in The Tempest by powers greater than him). Each chapter focuses on another aspect of his oppression.The main take away is the old adage: the more things change the more they stay the same. The powers that be (church, military, education, government, labor unions, etc) all contribute, if not conspire, to exploit, control, and oppress the working class. Much of what he shrieked about is pretty much still in play in our contemporary politics. So, it was not that I disagree with most of what he screams about, i simply found the writing to be over-wrought and turgid. The book cover claims it is a rediscovered classic. I am not sure a book can be called a classic if it had to be rediscovered. Isn’t a classic— a book that people have continued to read over the years? Not one, forgotten and unread, that some editor found in a book stall, then reprinted. But I quibble. 

  • Getting Wild With Willy

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    I started Shakespeare today. For the last eleven years (God I’ve been teaching forever), I have taught a Shakespeare play after spring break. I know it is near the end of the school year if I have started Billy. One summer before I even thought of teaching a play, I took the best workshop ever: Shakespeare in Blue Jeans, conducted by Paul Sullivan. It followed the methodology of the Folger Shakespeare Library (get the students on their feet with the words in their mouths from the very first day). The workshop has caused much of my teaching to change over the years. Shakespeare is the best part of my year; it is a massive amount of prep work and I am tired almost every day for the last nine weeks of school. I love it. And I think my students love it as well. When I run into old students who were in my classes as eighth graders, Shakespeare and the part they played in Twelfth Night are what they remember and talk about in a positive way years after they were in my class. I take my compliments where I can get them and I take that as a big compliment. Anyway, today I had my students up on their feet chanting lines from Green Eggs and Ham, clapping their hands and stomping their feet in time to the rythmn. Then we moved on to “double, double toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble.” After about six-seven minutes in the classroom, I took them into a nearby hall that has a very high ceiling and a magnificent echo. We chanted and clapped and stomped very loudly through the two lines from Macbeth twice, then ran back into the room. A science teacher stuck her head out of her door during first period and shouted down at us, “Is there a teacher with you guys?” My students and I laughed as we hurried back into my room. Sometimes it is hard to tell if there is a teacher in the room.