I love Shakespeare and I've been lucky to have some amazing teachers who love Shakespeare to interact with. I was very excited to stumble upon a whole program (Shakespeare Festival LA) focused on education and Shakespeare and even more thrilled to see they offered a two day teacher workshop to assist me in teaching it in the classroom (And even more thrilled to see it was about romeo and juliet, a book I teach, but by far not my favorite so I have a hard time getting into it.) As I was listening to one of the presentations I realized how much I like a certain type of Shakespeare lover. Here is what the person must have:
1. They recognize that what Shakespeare is awesome at is word-smithing rather than amazing plot lines.
2. They have a child-like fascination with the English language that is fueled by the green light to discuss even letter choices within a Shakespearean text.
3. They are fascinated by the hegemony inherent in the plot rather than the "oh no, Romeo killed himself!"
4. While they may be able to quote some Shakespeare, they can't quote it all (unless they were in the play) and they only quote it if they have to. Mostly they just read it from the text.
5. They have an appreciation for adaptations and purity, falling prey to neither extreme.
6. It's not about Shakespeare being the end all be all writer. It's just about him being really good.
7. They understand that Shakespeare is meant to be ACTed. Reading it is just something we came up with.
8. They are willing to call Shakespeare on the bullshit that he does putting women down or the colonized down without having to apologize.
I miss having a University affiliation to get my scholar fix, but today I got it from the best kind of Shakespeare lover.
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