The Look of Things

Wallace Stevens was brought up on a few occasions today. I was first introduced to him in this class, when Dr. Sexson read part of  A Postcard from the Volcano. Something about that poem, or maybe it was the day or the way it was read, something, made me remember the name.  I searched for it casually, always coming up just a few bucks too short, always getting something else instead:

A travel guide for Peru

A Tom McGuane book

Expensive coffee.

It took me until three weeks or so ago to realize what a mistake I had made. Then it happened. I walked into Salvation Army, and there it was, with the binding disintegrating off the yellow pages.  I only saw the WS, and I thought..hmmm…Shakespeare? No. Wallace Stevens.  25cents.  And now that I’m thinking about that poem again, and I think, damn! Why didn’t I use the first lines of this for my paper…? Agony.

A POSTCARD FROM THE VOLCANO

Children picking up our bones

Will never know that these were once

As quick as foxes on the hill;

And that in autumn, when the grapes

Made sharp air sharper by their smell

These had a being, breathing frost;

And least will guess that with our bones

We left much more, left what still is

The look of things, left what we felt

At what we saw. The spring clouds blow

Above the shuttered mansion-house,

Beyond our gate and the windy sky

Cries out a literate despair.

We knew for long the mansion’s look

And what we said of it became

A part of what it is . . . Children,

Still weaving budded aureoles,

Will speak our speech and never know,

Will say of the mansion that it seems

As if he that lived there left behind

A spirit storming in blank walls,

A dirty house in a gutted world,

A tatter of shadows peaked to white,

Smeared with gold of the opulent sun.

Presentation

Caliban and Cetus, notice the similarities?

 

Perspective of the "goddess" Miranda in The Tempest, here she watches as her "hero" Ferdinand is almost drowned, watch how this diverges from the original mythic image.

Gettin' close with her friend Caliban, (in the dark on her left)

Dad as the hero, where the hell is Ferdinand?

 Andromeda and Perseus, notice the Gorgon's head and Caliban, I mean, Cetus, in the foreground

 Don't forget Cetus (looking a little unhealthy) at Perseus' feet!

Extra-sexy Andromeda.

Drugs, Sex, and Sacred Texts

              Memories of Class Past:

I think that since so much of this class is based on mnemonic systems, it would be fitting to recount some of what I thought were really memorable insights from other students' presentations. Allow me to apologize beforehand for any miscalculations on my part..this is what I got out of it.

First, Roberto's presentation on the dark side of Caliban, and the psychological construction of and reliance on our perception of ourselves as the other. This was crucial for me when I was trying to formulate my thesis, it helped to think of Caliban as having a dark past, as embodying a dualism to be able to let him "translate" into his other mythic forms.

Second: The presentation on Caliban as Poseidon, (sorry that I have forgotten your name, especially because I reference your comments all the time!) which got me to thinking about Poseidon's influence on both land and sea, of earthquakes, tsunamis, and tempests. It also made me start taking stock of Caliban's amphibious appearance, which lead to ideas about evolution, and so on.

James' presentation was of course quite memorable. I have to admit, I'm not sure if it cleared up anything about the epilogue in The Tempest, but I think that it's fitting with my feelings about a lot of the class: it certainly didn't make "getting" Shakespeare any easier, it just made me have a much deeper appreciation for it. I had a friend who was trying to explain to me the difference between hunting with a compound bow and a recurve, and he said..."It's just the feel..you have to feel where you want it to go, you can't think about it." Anyway, I think about that when I hear stuff like Jame's paper, it embodies the cataract at  the end of the Tempest, it doesn't shy away, it gives it right back.

Nathan is a really, really fantastic speaker, and it was definitely refreshing to hear some musings on critical theory instead of plot and character elements. I can tell he's really into the stuff he's been reading, and his (and Jan Kott's ) thoughts on the political commentary in The Tempest really rang true with me. Also, LOVE to see people easily, politely, and succinctly defend their stance; he obviously knows what the hell he's talking about.

Of course, everyone helped lead me down the garden paths and put this paper to work for me, I'm excited to read some of everyone else's work, though NOT excited to say "damn, I wish I said that" for the hundredth time in this class. Good work folks.

ppppaper!

Seeing Stars:

Andromeda, The Tempest and Mything Shakespeare

In Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being, Hughes points to Shakespeare’s interest in Occult Neoplatonism as the basis for the philological construction of his dramatic landscapes. According to him, Shakespeare’s spiritual interests draw on a hugely diverse catalog of mythologies, and those mythologies are then contained in and signified through the appearance of sacred images, flashes of discourse that suggest the narratives, the archetypes, and essentially, the tropes through which Shakespeare colors his plays and helps us navigate his created universes. Though Hughes identifies Shakespeare’s treatment of both “Venus and Adonis” and “Lucrece” as the bedrock of his “consuming myth”, these basic “images”, the divine goddess and her consort, lend themselves to other similar mythic patterns that may fit some of the environmental conditions of each drama more specifically.  In yet another fractal of what Hughes defines in Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being as the “tragic equation”, Shakespeare uses Perseus’ marriage to Andromeda as part of the mythic backdrop through which we can interpret The Tempest.

Shakespeare’s indisputable knowledge of mythology in general, and that of Greek/Roman origin in particular, would suggest his familiarity with Ovid’s Andromeda. The story occurs in the beginning of many of Ovid’s passages devoted to the heroism of Perseus, the famed conqueror of the Gorgon.  The scene between he and Andromeda begins as he is soaring over Ethiopia on his winged sandals and spies the beautiful maiden chained to the rock by the sea, a sacrifice to be devoured by the terrible sea monster Cetus in payment for her mother’s hubris, and in hopes of providing some relief for the Ethiopians that have since been punished on land and sea. After inquiring with the Andromeda as to her situation, Perseus agrees to rescue her just as Cetus is rising out of the surf. The hero slays the monster, frees Andromeda, and takes the maiden as his bride, all to the great satisfaction of her grateful and repentant parents. (Ovid, 103)

The Tempest opens in much the same way. The boiling sea, the “tempestuous noise of thunder and lightening”(I.i) reminds us of the violent surf beating against the rocks that Andromeda is bound to, an image of human vulnerability juxtaposed against the terrible forces of nature. Yet, while the imagery remains relatively congruent, the perspective in The Tempest suggests the same kind of tinkering that Shakespeare demonstrated in his treatment of “Venus and Adonis”. Rather than the hero spying the maiden from afar and coming to her rescue, the roles are reversed, and scene two opens with Miranda the maiden entreating her father to “allay” the “wild waters”, that she has “suffered with those that [she] saw suffer.” (I.ii, 1-5) Here Miranda, not her would-be rescuer Ferdinand, is the onlooker, the sympathizer, watching as he and the others are nearly consumed by the sea.

Though she is no longer bound to helplessly to the rocks, in The Tempest, Miranda is not entirely freed from her bondage; she is herself the goddess chained to the island.  Her isolation feeds her longing for companionship, sexual or otherwise, which Ferdinand fulfills more by accident then by a demonstration of heroism. Rather than the valiant, monster-slaying hero of classic Greek myth, here Ferdinand is the victim; he is shipwrecked, mediocre-looking, a prince “by circumstance” rather than merit. Musing on his daughter’s “choice” in suitors, Prospero reminds her that in regards to men in general, “[Ferdinand] is a Caliban,/And they to him are angels.” (I.ii, 480-482) Miranda, of course has no means for comparison, confessing to Ferdinand that, “I would not wish/Any companion in the world but you;/Nor can imagination form a shape,/Besides yourself, to like of.” (III.ii, 54-57) Compared to her father and Caliban, Ferdinand, though no hero, makes a fine suitor in respect to her available options. Again, Shakespeare, as in his “Venus and Adonis”, has rendered the goddess’ consort into something of a disappointment. While Ferdinand does not outwardly reject Miranda, he remains undeserving of her affections to begin with.

  Miranda is unable to see her self and others in the context of greater humanity. Her motherless upbringing no doubt limits her ability to express herself as a female being. “I do not know/ One of my sex/ no woman’s face remember (III. ii, 48-49) she says. Miranda has no reference for which to help her reach her goddess potential.  Sycorax, the only female element which she might have had example of, was in fact slain by her very own father. The play makes no other mention of a potential maternal figure for Miranda, creating a void that Prospero can occupy simultaneously with his paternal function. In this way, Prospero strives to fulfill all the various roles in Miranda’s life as needed. In a sense, it is Prospero who is Miranda’s promised hero. It is he who kills the hell queen, just as Perseus had slain the Gorgon.                                                                                                                         Prospero, then, is both the goddess destroyer and the surrogate mother-goddess, but this manipulation of roles most clearly aligns with Andromeda’s predicament in the following way: When, in the beginning of Act Four, Prospero warns Ferdinand, “Do not smile at me that I boast [Miranda] off”(IV.i, 8-10) he alludes to Cassiopeia’s same blunder, bragging about the unsurpassed the beauty of his daughter, the very trespass which landed Andromeda on the rocks as sacrifice for her mother’s hubris. Ferdinand’s reply resonates with the myth as well, he answers, “I do believe it/Against an oracle”, perhaps referencing Ammon’s decree that no relief would be given to the Ethiopians until Andromeda was exposed to the sea monster.                                                                                                                                    Miranda’s exposure to the sea monster is, of course, not quite the same as the Andromeda’s, her experience with Caliban is yet another demonstration of Shakespeare’s alteration of myth for his own purposes. Here, Caliban is hardly the terrible sea monster that Cetus is. He is not feared by the King of the Island, but rather enslaved by him. While his features remain quite disgusting, he has in essence begun his evolutionary transformation from the terrible Greek legend toward an amphibious and relatively civilized creature who dwells on land, and to the surprise of Trinculo and Stephano, speaks English.  Caliban, on one hand, is like Miranda: isolated, without a mother, and looking for companionship.  Evoking pity in the audience, he describes his first encounter with Prospero: “when thou cam’st first,/ Thou strok’st me and made much of me…and then I loved thee,/ and showed thee all the qualities o’ th’ isle.” (I.ii, 333-338) Caliban, like many of Shakespeare’s characters, embodies almost contradictory personality traits. Despite his pitiable circumstances, however, he also retains many of the less redeemable qualities identified with the Cetus, his earlier form.  Prospero’s initial warmth towards Caliban, for example, is quickly extinguished when he “seek [s] to violate the honor of [his] child”, to which Caliban boasts that, had he not prevented him, he would “had peopled else/ This isle with Calibans.”

It is in this way that Caliban is a secularized version of Cetus, and this complication of Cetus’ unprovoked rage lends Caliban a particular authenticity because there is a human motivation behind his wrath. The argument between Trinculo and Stephano pertaining to the nature of Caliban speaks to this dualism: they refer to Caliban as “a dunken monster”, “a ridiculous monster” a “lost monster.” Thus, Caliban can be seen both as the physical embodiment of the mythic “sea monster” image, or as merely acting out those mythic qualities in a certain way. On one hand, he is a friendly, singing monster and, on another, a monstrous slave, the boar sent from the queen of hell, plotting to brutally “brain” his master.  

Like Caliban, many of the characters in The Tempest are emerging from their original mythic contexts, liberating themselves from the rage, the entrapment, and the limitations of their original forms. Yet, for Prospero there seems to be some uneasiness in regards to this transformation. When Ariel asks for his emancipation, Prospero scolds him, saying, “Dost thou forget/ From what a torment I did free thee? [. . .] Once in a month recount what thou hast been,/ Which thou forget’st.” (I.ii, 250-251 and 263-264) In a similar moment, he addresses Miranda’s ignorance of her own mythic character; he describes her as, “my dear one, thee my daughter, who/ art ignorant of what thou art”(I.ii, 18) and urges her to seek her origin in the “dark, backward and abysm of time.” As both a creator and a player in The Tempest, Prospero’s remark about Antonio’s treachery begs the same question, “my trust/ Like a good parent, did beget of him/ a falsehood in its contrary as great/ as my trust was” (I.ii 93-97) Without divine intervention, the people of the island have strayed far from their mythic origins.

Even Prospero, who appears to be obsessed with time and origin, himself eventually forgets his obligations.  The bridal feast attended by Love and Hymen is a moment that occurs in both Andromeda and The Tempest, and it is here that because of Prospero’s failure to remember his mythic origins, that the sea monster, the enraged boar, the revolting slave, enters with a “strange, hollow, and confused noise”; the very picture of Cetus rising out of the boiling sea, the mythic reality waiting for all of us just below the surface, just as their constellations circle silently overhead..

Works Cited

Hughes, Ted. Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1992. Print.

Ovid, and Rolfe Humphries. Metamorphoses. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Pr., 1972. Print.

Shakespeare, William, and Alfred Harbage. Complete Pelican Shakespeare. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981. Print.

*Seeing Stars*

I did it. I finally gave up on my paper. It's not that I feel defeated, it's just that I can't possibly write about it anymore. Not like that, not in paper-writing language. I do have this presentation to give this afternoon though. I'm still trying to decide the best way to present all the things I want to say...

First, I stumbled on my paper topic by sheer luck. The Tempest definitely pulls rank as far as my favorite Shakespeare plays go, and I really wanted to work with that, but I didn't know where to go...I started googling pictures of Caliban, like the ones in the book we passed around in class that day....

 

 I was lucky! I got to present today instead of last Thursday... some of the presentations on Caliban, especially comparing him to Poseidon..and all this talk of Ovid....and a conversation with a friend about Moby Dick....AHA!  CETUS.....PERSEUS....  Sea-monters, heros, tragic equations....ANDROMEDA...it even sort of sounds like Miranda. It's the images that lead me there.

 Every time I got really lost when I was writing this thing, I had to think back to what lead me to any of my conclusions, and the concept of consuming myth, and of images as metaphors served as a kind of epileptic roadmap the entire way. Blink, and it all makes sense, Miranda as the goddess, blink again, Andromeda, Caliban, Cetus, Ferdinand, Perseus...it never fit exactly, but that seems to be Hughe's theory, that the images evoked themselves are powerful enough to make the connections, to set the tone and the mood.
 Drunk on "celestial liquor", you can start to recognize the patterns, the parents and originals in the form of the constellations that hang over our the characters heads, silently portraying their mythic origins.

I'll be the first to admit that my knowledge of Cabbalism is extremely limited. But, I think that in the Cabbalist tree there is a at least a good metaphor for the interconnectedness of mythology, and that's what I tried to keep imagining every time I was second guessing myself about my paper. There are no right answers, only more clues, more hallways, more rooms in the library...

SONNET DOGGONIT

Just a quick grammar lesson:


Remember: For those of you, who like myself, couldn't tell you what iambic pentameter is without starting to sweat, I found this helpful article at iambicpentameter.net, which appears to be a blog devoted to the use of foot and meter in such a way. Who knew?:

Let’s define some terms to help explain this one. Meter refers to the pattern of syllables in a line of poetry. The most basic unit of measure in a poem is the syllable and the pattern of syllables in a line, from stressed to unstressed or vice versa. This is the meter. Syllables are paired two and three at a time, depending on the stresses in the sentence.

Two syllables together, or three if it’s a three-syllable construction, is known as a foot. So in a line of poetry the cow would be considered one foot. Because when you say the words, the is unstressed andcow is stressed, it can be represented as da DUM. An unstressed/stressed foot is known as an iamb. That’s where the term iambic comes from.

Pentameter is simply penta, which means 5, meters. So a line of poetry written in pentameter has 5 feet, or 5 sets of stressed and unstressed syllables. In basic iambic pentameter, a line would have 5 feet of iambs, which is an unstressed and then a stressed syllable. For example:

If you would put the key inside the lock

This line has 5 feet, so it’s written in pentameter. And the stressing pattern is all iambs:

if YOU | would PUT | the KEY | inSIDE | the LOCK

da DUM | da DUM | da DUM | da DUM | da DUM

That’s the simplest way to define iambic pentameter.

Great examples of a iambic pentameter poems would be many of Shakespeare’s sonnets. He often wrote sonnets and whole lines of dialogue from plays in this meter.

Other Poetry Definitions

It can help to understand the other forms of feet and meter that are used in poetry.  These are all determined by the stressing pattern.

DA dum (FORest)  =  Trochee

DA DUM (RED CAT) =  Spondee

da da DUM (like a WOLF) = Anapest

DA da DUM (CUT the FLESH) = Dactyl

da dum (and the) (-ing the) = Pyrrhic

Understanding the rhythm of poetry and how to read a line to determine whether iambic pentameter or some other meter is used can help you learn to write your own poetry and better appreciate the writings of classic and modern poets.

Again, check out iambicpentameter.net if you're really, really desperate.


Okay. So on to Shakespearian sonnets. This article came from Wikipedia:

The form is often named after Shakespeare, not because he was the first to write in this form but because he became its most famous practitioner. The form consists of fourteen lines structured as three quatrains and a couplet. The third quatrain generally introduces an unexpected sharp thematic or imagistic "turn"; the volta. In Shakespeare's sonnets, however, the volta usually comes in the couplet, and usually summarizes the theme of the poem or introduces a fresh new look at the theme. With only a rare exception, the meter is iambic pentameter, although there is some accepted metrical flexibility (e.g., lines ending with an extra-syllable feminine rhyme, or a trochaic foot rather than an iamb, particularly at the beginning of a line). The usual rhyme scheme is end-rhymed a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g.

This example, Shakespeare's Sonnet 116, illustrates the form (with some typical variances one may expect when reading an Elizabethan-age sonnet with modern eyes):

Let me not to the marriage of true minds (a)
Admit impediments, love is not love (b)*
Which alters when it alteration finds, (a)
Or bends with the remover to remove. (b)*
O no, it is an ever fixèd mark (c)**
That looks on tempests and is never shaken; (d)***
It is the star to every wand'ring bark, (c)**
Whose worth's unknown although his height be taken. (d)***
Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks (e)
Within his bending sickle's compass come, (f)*
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, (e)
But bears it out even to the edge of doom: (f)*

If this be error and upon me proved, (g)*

I never writ, nor no man ever loved. (g)*

I know that this helped me a lot. 
If you're having trouble coming up with a good sonnet, you could always follow suit of the French surrealist Raymond Queneau, who wrote a book called A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems, where he wrote ten 14 line sonnets with the same end rhymes, and cut each book into lines, so that one could mix and match all of the poems. The result is a collection of random sonnets produced from the same "parents and originals". Bet the printing company had fun with that!

And just an FYI, 
The word sonnet comes from the Italian sonneto, meaning "little sound". If you'd like a searchable database of Shakespeare's sonnets, check this out:
http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/

Venus and Adonis, all Shook up

In making an attempt to identify some mythological aspects within Shakespeare, I'm coming to understand just how essential it is to be familiar with those myths before reading. Someone, Jamie maybe? brought up the excellent point that too often Shakespeare is taught without any prior instruction in mythology. No wonder so many students develop a distaste, even a fear of such fantastic works of literature. Even if the language was made perfectly clear, the "meta-meanings" are invisible without prior knowledge of their origins. And not just that irksome word "exposure", I mean, with Shakespeare you have to have a pretty solid handle on all that Greek business. His take on Venus and Adonis, for example, turns the whole situation upside down by rendering Adonis into a goddess-rejector rather than having him heed her lustful advances. Of course, the nod to Ovid's version is unmistakable here, with a few changes to the plot which certainly don't render the story unrecognizable. But this bait and switch move is typical of Shakespeare, and I think that it takes a certain level of confidence to be able to point  with a shaky finger to the mythological roots in some of his works. Some of his characters adopt recognizable names, Hymen, for example, but that doesn't necessarily define their roles in the play, the reference is there, it gives color to the idea, but it is only that, a background idea, not a definitive trait. This fits nicely with Hughe's assertion of Shakespeare's Cabbalist roots, where each aspect of his ideas can be contained within a single mental image. The mention of a name, or a place, can encourage the construction of a hundred answers to the Shakespeare riddle, and our espousal of any one of those points to our inheritance of a tangled mythological history.

Bravo!

(I want to preface this by saying that this blog is and has been a work in progress...and thus, I apologize beforehand for any and all incongruities of time and space, sorry. )

Yesterday's group projects were really outstanding. I'm always impressed by the things this class comes up with when they work together, how incredibly diverse our presentations were, all plays written by the same person...crazy. I really loved the presentation of King Henry IV, and I must say, whoever played Falstaff..(don't know your name, sorry!) you did a really great job. Some people are just natural actors, and I think that parts like that are really challenging to begin with. However, just to put it out there, I think that everyone in this class who performed did really well, and THAT, I think, speaks to the natural human affinity for stage acting, for role-playing, (me-ow!), and for putting on masks. This reminds me of the Judith Butler article that we read in Lit Crit...it's the one where she discusses gender as a "performance". While I'm going to save any feminist/social tangents for another class, I think that the idea of "performance" of assigned roles really speaks to our ease not only in assuming "characters" different than our own, but also in our readiness to play along with that staged assumption (pardon all the scare quotes, but you get the point, right?...) It's too bad I'm not reading the Bloom Invention of the Human book right now, because I feel like some of this is similar to what was mentioned in class. Shakespeare's characters perhaps feel so rich and dynamic because, they, like us are caught up in this tangle of assumed identities, of expectations, etc., AND they know how to manipulate those expectations to get results...just as we do. Because I'm  in the Othello group, it's one of the first plays to come to mind, and I think my observation here could help explain (to me at least) why Othello the character is so weird...since Othello finds himself in an alien sociological situation, not to mention any potential language barrier, essentially, he suffers the same communication gap that I do when I try to tell a joke in Spanish. Though the basic communication is there, the subtleties, the formalities, come across translated. Thus, his "role" that he strives to fulfill in society comes off as aggressively resolute.

(AND, briefly, I just learned that there is an old proverb that goes, in Spanish: " El traducir es traicionar" or, to translate is to betray. For Othello, it's these misinterpretations, or "over interpretations" that drive his jealousy, and, essentially the tragedy in the play.)

Of course, this is just speculation. Maybe even the wild and unfounded kind. Othello is incredibly eloquent throughout the play, he is certainly not stupid, or in anyway less intelligent than the other characters, but still Cassio manipulates him by playing on his overly mythic interpretation of love, perhaps spawned from a translated understanding of language and culture. Obviously, any claim in this direction is bound to ruffle some feathers, but my emphasis here is on the interpretation, and subsequent "performance" of the expectations in a society, which are often outlined in the basic mythology of that culture (though perhaps not entirely or obviously congruent with it). The introduction to the play in our Pelican text outlines this really well. Othello seems to believe in the ideal of love, (and to paraphrase from there) a love where wives never lose keepsakes given them by their husbands. Other male characters make the same mistake. Postumous. Leontes. Maybe Shakespeare is trying to demonstrate the inherent fallibility of characters who are incapable of adjusting the role that they play.

FEAR SHAKESPEARE, and teaching majors...

IN doing some catch up work on my much neglected blog, I am kicking myself for multiple reasons, not just for screwing myself out of the lovely spring weather, but also for not reading some of the more thoughtful blogs out there (jealous....).  Amanda Jones, you were one of the subjects of my adoration today.  The series of blogs Amanda has written are really well done, and seem to indicate her ease with using the medium (though she claims to be uncomfortable blogging herself).  One of the more interesting things she brought up was in the beginning of her posts, where she wrote about some of the competition between English Lit and teaching majors. Being a Lit major myself, I can totally substantiate the claim that theyre a bunch of snobby brats, but I think that in relation to Shakespeare, teaching majors may have an upper hand in some departments. I think that drama in general is meant to inspire a diverse audience, from the rude mechanicals to the parents and originals, Shakespeare speaks to all of us in our own individual ways...but it is the ability to connect and value those multiple perspectives that makes Shakespeare move the most.  Here, the teaching majors are able to find that common ground, and encourage others to do the same. If shakespeare can be understood on multiple levels, then our ability to navigate its many faces gives us a bigger, richer understanding and appreciation. This is in keeping with Hughe's notion of the Cabbalistic (is that a word? James?)  influences in Shakespeare's writing, the idea that any one belief is inherited from a series of others, all surging together to create a holistic ideal...This, to me, is the way to think about Shakespeare, and our own dogmas as well..as the offspring of generations of ideas, all layered and superimposed....
Ive had people suggest NO FEAR SHAKESPEARE to me, and I gotta say, that's just lazy. Amanda makes an awesome lesson plan about understanding the language of WS, and that's it. By making those connections with students, she revitalizes the importance of multiple interpretations, and opens the language up, Nietzche style, for interpretation. It's important to BE AFRAID of Shakespeare, if you don't have a healthy fear of that kind of brilliance, then you've missed the point all together.
They say that teaching something is the best way to learn about it, and on this subject especially, I couldn't agree any more. Fear not, teaching majors, all those arguments about whether WS actually existed, those stupid, one sided arguments that have nothing to do with actual Shakespeare are leading us further into the cave. Keep the conversation going, I say.