Shakespeare does a great Halloween. Check out Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Which Shakespeare play best captures Trump’s betrayal of the Kurds? Julius Caesar, perhaps, for pathos, Othello for the cold-blooded way it was done.
Friday When assuring my English majors that they will find jobs in the world beyond college, I sometimes point out that they are experts in narrative. Increasingly we are learning how much we process reality through stories, and political operatives talk ceaselessly about “controlling the narrative.” How you organize facts (or for that matter, lies) […]
Posted in Beckett (Samuel), Doyle (Arthur Conan), Shakespeare (William) | Also tagged Arthur Conan Doyle, Donald Trump, Endgame, Hamlet, King Lear, Mueller investigation, narrative, Richard III, Samuel Beckett, Unnamable, Waiting for Godot, Westword Ho!, William Shakespeare | Wednesday It’s satisfying to see national pundits take a page out of Better Living through Beowulf and turn to the classics to understand Donald Trump. Okay, so NeverTrumper conservative Bret Stephens has probably never read this blog, but we both recognize how literature deepens our understanding of the world, including American politics. I particularly appreciate […]
Posted in Aristophanes, Gogol (Nikolai), Shakespeare (William) | Also tagged Aristophanes, Donald Trump, Henry IV Part I, Henry IV Part II, Lysistrata, Nikolai Gogol, Othello, Richard III, William Shakespeare | Tennessee Senator-elect Marsha Blackburn’s insensitivity towards gun victims invites comparisons with Lady Macbeth.
“Macbeth,” a psychological study of a tyrant, also illumines aspects of Donald Trump.
To see the decline of the GOP as a Shakespeare drama, one must draw on “Macbeth,” “Hamlet,,” “Henry IV,” and “King Lear.” And throw in Marlowe’s “Dr. Faustus.”
Melancholy threatened to paralyze Abraham Lincoln in his early years. Literature helped him give voice to his depression and taught him how to turn it into an asset.
Posted in Byron (Lord Gordon), Poe (Edgar Allan), Shakespeare (William) | Also tagged "Dream", "Raven", Abraham Lincoln, Depression, Edgar Allan Poe, First Inaugural Address, Manfred, unipolar disease, William Shakespeare | Washington Post humorist Alexandra Petri has been having a lot of fun with Trump supporters’ attack on “Julius Caesar.” Here are some of her funniest barbs.
Posted in Shakespeare (William) | Also tagged Aleandra Petri, Crucible, Hamlet, Humor, Ice Man Cometh, Julius Caesar, Long Day's Journey into Night, Master Builder, Newt Gingrich, Raisin in the Sun, Rent, William Shakespeare | 
