Great literature, while seeming to highlight one important insight, often seems to be about much, much more. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 46 is an example: Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war, How to divide the conquest of thy sight; Mine eye my heart thy picture’s sight would bar, My heart mine eye the freedom…

What does a poem have to do with governing a country, any country, our country? Shakespeare’s Sonnet 94, while often interpreted as referring to the power of art patrons over artists, has a lot to tell us about who is capable of governing well and what it means to govern well. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 94 They…

Shakespeare. Bring up that name in conversation, and the reactions of your audience are likely to be mixed. To some of your listeners, that most famous name in all of English literature will likely arouse unpleasant memories of a dreary week or two in a high school class lost in a jumble of lords, ladies,…

I’ve mentioned before that I am a bibliophile. I like to read and I like to collect books—not as a hoarder, although my overflowing bookshelves might say otherwise. I do pass on books that I know family or friends might enjoy. Since I was a young child, I’ve been fascinated with books and all the…

PG-13 | 1h 49min | Drama, Comedy, Fantasy | 6 December 2022 (USA) According to the movie site IMDb.com, there have been 1,675 movies and TV shows based on the works of William Shakespeare and another 45 in some form of preproduction—the most of any writer in history. To put those numbers in perspective, the person behind Shakespeare in second place, Charles…

In the early 1930s, to draw Depression era audiences, Hollywood studios tried to distinguish themselves from the others. They used shock value, outdoing each other with risqué content, violence, and other previously taboo subject matter. This “race to the bottom” created a daring genre of films made during the Pre-Code Era. The downslide came to…

Because we are incarnate beings, our spirits receive meaning through our bodies and their physical senses. If we don’t see (or hear or taste or smell or feel) it, we don’t believe it. We don’t even get it. To be effective, any work of art must convey meaning in some form. Poetry too—at least good…

CHICAGO—It’s considered one of Shakespeare’s problem plays, which is why the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, always appreciating a challenge, decided to mount “All’s Well That Ends Well.” Why is it considered a problem play? Because it presents characters who are seriously flawed, but that is also what makes it a comedy.  In fact, if the characters…

April, lovely April. Scraggly March with its lion’s entrance and lamb’s departure has at last taken a final bow, and April now steps to the stage. Associated with Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, and derived from the Latin “aperire,” meaning “to open,” April waves her magic wand and turns lawns from brown to effervescent…

James Joyce wrote “when you’re dead, you’re dead.” Until modern times most people have believed otherwise. Ancient Egyptians believed in an endless life after death. In the Bible, Moses, King David, and others lie—or rest, or sleep, or lie down, depending on the translation of the Hebrew verb—with their fathers. Dante articulated for Christianity the…