Shakespearean Star Ships and Free Throws

I'm about to compose another metaphorical salad. To return to two of my old favorites, 1) language is a vehicle, and 2) good teaching is actually coaching. I'm also a fan of Star Trek, so I shall use it as one more ingredient of today's composition.

It is almost time to bring it all together, but let us first examine more closely each of the main ingredients:

I played sports and coached for thirty-five years. It took retirement for me to fully perceive how coaching and teaching are connected.

It makes little sense to merely "appreciate" a Chevy. We drive it. We shouldn't be teaching "appreciation" of Shakespearean plays either. We should be teaching students to read them.

But a Shakespearean work isn't a Chevy. It's among the most advanced language vehicles known to humankind, and the only means by which it is possible to personally explore the universe of Shakespeare. It is the starship Enterprise, designed to take a student where none has gone before. Your crew are Spock and Crusher and Data and Scotty and Ohura and Checkov, and all of your students.

You are the Captain, Pike, Kirk, or, as I prefer, Jean-Luc Picard. It is his syntax, his rhythm, and his persona I have assumed and shall continue to express for the duration of this composition. Hear now his deep and resonant voice: "Engage!"

Once under way, I tell kids that it's my responsibility to get them into the captain's chair of a Shakespearean starship and train them to fly. I reassure students that they won't injure themselves by crashing or disintegrating in the atmosphere, or even falling into a black hole if they start reading Shakespeare, but I warn them that, if they don't try, they won't learn those skills they will need to take an ACT or SAT intelligently. In my class, I make them read it, and at regular intervals, I make them fly solo.

Too many teachers do something else. They cover "the bases" (and other things), by trying to give kids declarative knowledge about the great classics, hoping that, if they run into any of those authors in a standardized test, they can perhaps fumble through and get some right answers.

Your students' reading skills don't improve if you present them with videos and sound recordings instead of making them read. Yes, you can show them what Hamlet is "all about," but when they encounter a passage from Shakespeare's As You Like It on the ACT, you won't be available. They must learn how to discover for themselves "what it's all about," and you must force them to the task.

Yes, I did say that. You must "force" them to do what they don't want to do. I'm comfortable using force. I don't teach Shakespeare; I coach reading of Shakespeare. I do not hot-wire his starships by skipping over the reading and showing videos; I coach kids and force them to take the controls and perform, just as an athletic coach teaches fundamentals and forces players to perform. Then, after they've had a chance to fly, I show how others engage the same vehicle, by means of sound and video recordings.

Kids very much want to perform in sports, of course, so motivation in athletics is obviously easier. They volunteer for the sport; they yearn to perform. The whole point is to go where they've never gone before, to get out on the court or the field and find out for themselves "what it's all about."

You don't teach kids to be athletes. You don't even coach them to be athletes. They either are athletes or they are not. But many of those who "come out for" a sport aren't the best athletes, and you need to do what you can with what you've got.

As a coach, you train their bodies to do what athletes do. They imitate athletic movements, and they either become comfortable moving in those ways, or they don't. If they train hard and stay in the sport long enough, they get their opportunities to perform. And kids who love sports, whether they're athletes or not, stay and learn to perform. Most will never go on to perform in college or in the pros because they don't possess rare athletic gifts, but they will have opportunities to do what they love, and they will learn all those "intangibles" you hear about (they are intangibles, yes, but they are also very real): determination, courage, concentration, persistence, patience, etc., etc.

It took me a long time to realize that you can't teach kids to be intelligent readers and writers. But you can coach them and foster the growth of "intangibles."

American schools generally require all kids to "go out for" college preparatory language arts. Some of those kids don't have the gifts, and they shouldn't be compelled to join an endeavor in which they lack abilities and skills.

This is where they need to be given a choice. They have other gifts, and they should be allowed to pursue development of them and prepare for something besides college. Our inferior system, however, fails them, not at the end of a term, but there at the beginning, before they even get started.

The fact that all students are forced to "go out for" Shakespeare right now is ridiculous, but we're stuck with it. The United States Educational System is not the United Federation of Planets, and your crew does not matriculate from a space academy. It is what it is, and you've quite a diverse crew to work with as a result.

But you can't change that reality, and it's no excuse for you or anyone else to quit coaching. You must do your best to coach them all. And you need to remember, when you're reading Hamlet in front of a classroom, you're not just coaching; you're a pro - you get paid for this. You're the best the system can find. Take pride in it; read it beautifully - But force them to read also.

You're coaching free throws, showing them how it's done. You describe what you're doing, and then you do it.

They mispronounce one of those strange Elizabethan contractions, such as, "cat i' th' adage," and you correct them. You show them what it means and you say it, and they say it, and then you show them the "follow through."

With free throws, it's "all in the wrist."

With a Shakespearean star ship, it's all at the ends of his lines of blank verse. That's where they need to "follow through" without halting the meaning; otherwise, it doesn't work right. You ask them to try, and sometimes, they still stumble over the line, but you praise them for incremental improvements.

And the result may be horrendous. The ball misses the iron by a foot or so, but you say, "Nice effort," and they try again.

They learn to love Hamlet, or they don't. Nevertheless, you force them. They're members of the crew now, and your responsibility is to force them to practice the fundamentals of operating a Shakespearean star ship. If they stay with it, they do their best to imitate actors, and they become better readers, but best of all, they learn those same intangibles: determination, courage, concentration, persistence, patience, etc., etc.

Coaching has it over on teaching every time. In athletics, you rehearse body positions, postures, and movements. You drill, drill, drill. Then you perform.

In the language arts classroom, their reading of Shakespeare is a performance. You don't read it all for them! You don't just show videos and have them listen to recordings!

Your crew aren't in your room to observe performances. They are there to learn to perform. You need them to rehearse mental approaches to learning. You must always remember, you're coaching them to encounter Shakespeare. Shakespeare is not the enemy. He is not Borg. Shakespeare is a magnificent cognitive universe, and his plays are the vehicles that provide a means to explore it.

You can't go out on the field and play defensive end for a kid who's having trouble. You show him what's wrong. You demonstrate in practice. You force him to imitate your postures, body positions, and movements. Then you correct him when he resorts to old habits and makes mistakes. During an actual scrimmage, you take a time out occasionally and remind him, but you can't do it for him.

Young people have to read it themselves.

My study guides take them through cognitive reading habits. They force reflection. They focus attention. They position the mind and impose movement. They drill, drill, drill.

I command my students to develop their own proper habits of constant questioning by forcing them at regular intervals to fly solo and explore a sector of the Shakespearean universe. I order them to formulate their own internal dialogue with one of his star ships and, "Engage!"

(Yes, sometimes I literally impose this entire metaphor on a class.)

Upon their return, I evaluate their performance with quizzes. (They always get reading quizzes from me for their first reading of an assigned segment of a play.) Perhaps their skills are not yet what they should be. No matter. There must be no deviations. They must read. We play for keeps. They need practice games, but we keep score. My assessment of their performance is as fair and as just as Vulcan logic.

As a football coach, you take teams through two-a-day fall practices filled with the utter misery of training and drills. You show them what they have to do and force them to do it right. Some stubborn athletes despise you for the misery. They prefer to sit on the bench than listen to you. But when they see others having success, they come around. Soon, some of the most incorrigible develop into the most courageous, the most persistent, and the most devoted.

Yes, that is what happens in sports. Believe it.

Some athletes quit. They are assimilated into the Borg, the nameless, unconscious crowd. They watch from the stands. Perhaps they are yet conscious enough to admire how their former crewmates execute their plans, but they admire from the sidelines. It's a shame.

Some of your language arts students will sit on the bench and refuse to perform, and some will quit, right in your classroom. They will become Borg among your crew. That's not your fault! The system doesn't let them "go out for" something else and develop their other talents. Right now, they all must "go out for" Shakespeare, and you have to deal with it.

So, do all you can do to win them back. Coach them and encourage them. Parse the task. Cut down the amount of work so they can concentrate on one or two concerns at a time; see them during tutoring time and give them more coaching. But never allow your students to escape their responsibility to perform.

Athletes deliver their gratitude at the end of a season. They're exceedingly grateful that you believed in them and insisted that they perform, long before they even believed in themselves.

It will take approximately ten years before your students will thank you. It will take that long for them to encounter authentic reading tasks in real life, and your training will come back to them, and when they have to, they will line up.

They will! They'll focus and position their minds. Even some of those bench-dwellers will take unfamiliar controls of vast vehicles into their minds and execute well-rehearsed cognitive movements that you had the termerity to force them to learn. They will persevere as never before. They will probe strange new language structures and execute perfect follow-throughs. They will perform, and then, they will perform better, and they will at last go where they've never gone before.

And suddenly, they will understand it is because of you.

And one day, back on earth, you'll be having a refreshing, well-deserved adult beverage in the local pub, and one of your former crew will happen upon you and say, "Thank you, Captain. You truly taught me. I didn't appreciate you then, and I'm sorry. But thank you."

And you will know that you were not just their teacher; you were their coach. You believed in them, and you forced them to go - Well, you know.

You are their captain! Engage!

Why Are We Doing This? It's Boring!! WAAA!! WAAA!!

My students used to ask that question all the time. They don't anymore. Now, I just distribute the following on a back-to-back printed sheet on the first day of the term and explain it. Afterward, anytime kids ask, I remind them of it. You may download it FREE at my TeachersPayTeachers store if it's of use to you:

 

Why Are We Doing This?

1.“Why do we need four years of English?”

       State education departments across the country place extremely heavy emphasis on the study of “English.” In most high schools, every student must have four full years of English studies in order to graduate.

2. “What do we learn in English class that we don’t learn somewhere else?”

       “English” is not limited to the narrow realm of “language arts,” as the course is sometimes known. In certain ways, “English” class is also the study of American culture and classical values.

       Modern high schools often do not list certain extremely important academic disciplines in their catalogs; and yet, mature adults very much need them. It has become the responsibility of English courses and other “humanities” courses, such as history, art, and psychology, to introduce students to these ideas. Many students never take an art or psychology class. The only opportunities they have for exposure to these concepts come in English and history.

       If these specific disciplines were offered as separate courses, they would have names such as “logic,” “philosophy,” “theology,” “composition,” “reasoning,” “ethics,” and “the humanities.” Admissions officers of colleges and vocational institutions, as well as personnel directors in business and industry today, are continually calling for more instruction and better quality instruction in all these areas.

3. “Theology! Hey! That means religion! Isn’t it against the law to teach religion and morals in schools?”

       Most religions are grounded in values and morals, and while it may be impossible to teach value-related ideas without teaching any values at all, we do the best we can to address what might be called "value consciousness." Public educational institutions must be careful not to provide religious instruction as such, but they are obligated to instruct students in value-related ideas such as sensible decision-making and responsible behavior in a democracy. Insofar as is possible, English curricula are designed with those ends and limitations in mind.

4. “So how do you do that?”

       It isn’t easy. Few Americans would agree to the indoctrination of one strict morality code upon all public school students. But nearly all Americans would agree that responsible democratic citizens must understand the concept of morality.

       Almost no one insists that every child be trained with one particular philosophy in school, but Americans do insist that educators encourage the development of philosophically sound reasoning.

       Most of the time, we approach this task by confronting students in an “English” class with choices, both hypothetical and real. For example, they consider choices and decisions made by characters in stories. They are asked to judge the characters’ decision-making processes. In writing assignments, students make real choices in selecting topics of controversy. They make a decision on the topic itself; then they decide how to argue their opinion. In all of these situations, students are asked to consider what is "right,” “wrong,” “responsible,” “irresponsible,” “selfish,” “unselfish,” “ethical,” and “unethical.”

       In much the same way the student considers and evaluates all aspects of a fictional character’s decision-making, it is the English teacher’s task to consider and judge the students’ decision-making skills. It is essential that the English teacher remain extremely cautious about judging any student’s sense of morality, but it is absolutely essential that the teacher judge the soundness, logic, and structure of the student's arguments.

       The task of English teachers is not to prove that their students’ moral code is wrong, but to help them find good reasons for living according to their morals.

      

5. "These old books are boring. Why do we have to read them?”

       They're not selected for their entertainment value. They're selected for their usefulness and appropriateness in accomplishing the goals outlined here.

       The materials studied in an English class have gone through a careful and thorough process of screening and selection. The vast majority of Americans agree that these works of literature are among those which best represent commonly accepted American values. Most of these works are also accepted by the world community. Almost all are “classical” works, presenting “classical values” (unchanging, proven values, which have withstood the test of time). As a free American, you are given the great responsibility of preserving those American ideals upon which the nation has been built. It is commonly believed that, if you have the knowledge, you will make sound decisions when you begin voting, working, and taking other roles in the operation of the country. It is also believed that, as a result of your efforts, the nation will survive, and subsequent generations of Americans will continue to enjoy the freedoms you currently enjoy.

6. “Tell me more about some of those so-called ‘classical values.’”

       A sense of responsibility for one’s actions, some measure of compassion, and the ability to understand situations from many perspectives all are served by careful analysis of characters and conflicts in great literature.

       Over the past ten to fifteen years, however, education in the United States has gone much further. We now evaluate your level of literacy by very strict standards. It's no longer good enough to just understand "what happens" in a story. You may be asked to describe the author's tone and mood. You're often required to speculate about developments that might transpire afterward from the situation described. At times, you must discern details that aren't in the text at all. You can't do that by finding a single word or phrase. Instead, you must do additional reasoning, combining many hints from the text to arrive at a conclusion. Seemingly unimportant details, for example, sometimes provide information about a character's motivations.

       You've already confronted this issue in tests where you're given a passage to read, and then you're required to respond to questions regarding that passage. You're allowed to refer back to the passage, but you're also under time limitations, and the questions are surprisingly complex.

       Occasionally, you're even tested on what isn't said. A writer's purpose may be grounded on statements of opinion rather than on fact. His or her real purpose might even be disguised, and discernable, not by what is written, but by what is left out.

       Therefore, you need to develop your skills of "close reading," during which you parse a text by subjecting it to a constant stream of observations and questions. In effect, you must learn to produce your own "study guide." Today's English curriculum is burdened with the task of showing you how to do that.

       In early grades, the topics discussed and the stories read served to build expression and thinking skills. At some point in your learning career, however, the emphasis shifts. Now, in order to take your expression and thinking skills to a higher level, you must begin using them to examine an argument's philosophical, logical, and ethical soundness.

7. “OK, so that’s the explanation for the literature. But what about the writing? Why are we taught all this writing stuff?”

       All of us are better writers than talkers. Writing gives us a chance to read over what we’re trying to say. If it isn’t quite what we want to say, we can change it. When your teacher calls your attention to the fact that you have sent a garbled message, or that you have said something you never meant, you're being required to think carefully about what you’re communicating.

       Writing is often considered an exercise in “thinking out on paper.” The written work you create is a record of your thinking. Analysis of your own writing is an examination of your own thinking. That process is almost identical to the analysis of literature.

8. But why do we have to use this kind of language when we write? This isn’t the way I talk! And I’ll never have to write this way!”

       Don't be so quick to say "never."

       We “write this way” for the sake of clarity. Clearly written expression focuses thought. Most of us would agree that it’s important to say exactly what we mean to say. The problem is, we very often say something we don’t mean. We “speak before we think.” The problem has a great deal to do with the “kind of language” we use. Careful writing forces us to think first. The habit of writing “this way” carries over to speaking. We should write and talk “this way” more often.

       Most young people do not understand the impression they create in their writing or speaking. They communicate with their friends by means of slang phrases, grunts, expletives, and sentence fragments, and they mistakenly believe themselves to be perfectly fluent. In all likelihood, the impression you create now with your writing and speaking habits is probably not quite what you think it is. Those skills could use a little work. You probably haven’t met prospective employers who are intensely interested in your ability to reason in written or spoken language. Wait until you’re out of school, though. You’ll meet them. And if you can’t use your language with some precision, eloquence, and care at that time, you’ll wish you could.

       Good thinkers don't always communicate effectively, but good communicators have to think well, and like it or not, in these times, which are so oriented toward literacy, those evaluating your thinking skills will do so through your ability to communicate your thoughts, so your future will depend on it.

       It is important to understand one of the highest forms of thinking, called “metacognition.” Simply defined, it is the ability to understand the processes going on inside your own brain. Not everyone has this ability. All people have thoughts, impressions, feelings, emotions, and sensations, but some don’t bother thinking about why they have them or what influences they provoke.

       To maintain opinions without reflecting upon their origin is unwise. Prejudices are opinions without sound bases, and prejudices can be very destructive. What stimulated your mental activity? Does a chance exist that it took shape from a false impression? (You might notice that this sort of analysis is almost the same kind required in good reading.)

       In summary: As you read and write and analyze, you become more self-aware. Good reading and writing practices will exercise metacognition skills, which will be useful at all times throughout your life. That's what you're learning, and that's why we're doing this.

Shakespeare, the Holy Bible, and Watching Rocks Roll Downhill

I asked a fellow teacher, thirty-six years ago, "Do you know where I can find a novel study that contains close reading questions and discussion for the entirety of the piece, sort of like a concordance for the Holy Bible?"

It was Friday night after a football game. We were at a little town bar in a little Minnesota town where we both taught, enjoying a beer. The older gentleman with whom I was talking - we'll call him "Veteran Teacher" ("VT" for short) - doubled over in laughter. "What in God's name would you want that for?" he finally managed to say.

I must have a penchant for asking ridiculous questions. Another time, when I was traveling with a few guys on a country gravel road, I asked, pointing to the cracked, tilted rocks at the top of a hill in a pasture, "Have you ever seen one of those rocks up there tip over and suddenly start rolling down the hill all by itself?"

The other three fairly split their guts for about three full minutes.

During a lull, I asked, "I mean seriously, from erosion, spontaneously - a rock tips over, maybe in the rain, while you're watching, and you happen to see it. I'm just wondering if a guy might ever actually see it happen?"

One of them said, through titters, "So, when you do that, do you bring a lunch?" It was another twenty miles back to town, and they could not stop laughing.

Being the object of ridicule is difficult, but I guess, when you're a certain type of person, you get used to it. You need people to think you're just a little off, or just kidding around. They all gave me credit for a magnificent joke.

But back to the little bar: It was 1976. I was starting my second year in the classroom. VT and I were talking about teaching. I couldn't answer his question, so I restated what I thought was an obvious purpose for my work, "Well, you know, the Holy scriptures are frequently examined and read many times and interpreted with great care. I'm trying to train my students how to read and interpret all literature, for themselves, so they're ready for college."

This time, VT was able to restrain his laughter. "Son," he said, "these books ain't Holy, and you're not teachin' a group of kids matriculatin' to Yale." He spoke with a pleasant Southern lilt - I believe he was originally from Georgia. How he ended up in Minnesota, I couldn't tell you - "You're now an English teacher in a little Minnesota farm community. What you hope to do here is build familiarity with literature. You're educatin' future farmers, carpenters, and truck drivers. They're good kids, but when they're done with school, a lot of 'em 'll roam around a while and come back home and end up tendin' bar right here, just like most of the rest. Your job is just to open up their eyes to the greatness of a Shakespeare or a Keats or a Dickens, or in America, Twain or Hemmingway or Steinbeck, and leave it at that.

"Readin' teachers teach kids how to read," he said after pausing for a sip of his cold beer. "We don't. We don't even teach 'em how to write, not at the high school level, at least. We teach 'em what it means to read and write with care. We teach 'em how to think deeply about somethin' important to 'em and invite 'em to begin doin' it themselves and talkin' about it. Then, they graduate and work road construction the rest of their lives." He laughed at his own little joke.

I smiled back and asked, "What about kids actually going to college?"

"We don't prepare kids for college," he said. "We show 'em what it takes to be successful in college. If they keep up and do the minimum work, they pass the class. But that doesn't mean they're learnin' what they need to know for college. If they wanna go to college, they assume the responsibility of preparin' 'emselves. Colleges 'at takes these kids with marginal scores on their entrance exams gets just what they asks for." (Although an English teacher, his language did become quite colloquial and grammatically fractured after a few beers.) "If colleges let 'em in the door, the colleges can worry about remediation. That's not our concern. Now you tell me, why, in God's name, do you think you need all these concordances for all these so-called 'great' books?"

Evidently, my answer at the time was not sufficient. But I was just twenty-four years old. Now I'm sixty. That's maybe not all too old yet, but my, how time seems to accelerate! I retired from full-time teaching five years ago. Those few years have disappeared extraordinarily fast.

My mission of creating concordances for every piece of great literature continues with my current close study of Julius Caesar. Act One contains some vital keys to that story. It frames two extremely important upcoming developments: 1) a surprisingly probing analysis of people, not individual people, but the whole of them, the masses, and 2) a study of the art of manipulating them. One interesting sidelight will be the devolving of Brutus and Antony to sameness.

Every character in Shakespeare possesses qualities and/or flaws he is unaware of. Other characters are usually blind to them also, but the reader always sees. It's fascinating. It's almost as though the character has a sixth finger on his hand, or a third breast on her chest, or a spare eye in the back of her head, or additional senses. But the character is completely oblivious to the fact.

Yes, I know. Sounds like I've taken a lunch along to watch for these things, but let me expound:

Macbeth is so much more than the ambitious murderer he supposes himself to be, and Lady Macbeth more than a power-hungry instigator and devotee to evil. Brutus has dimensions of character that belie his honor, and Antony prizes his devotion to a man beyond its reasonable cost. The two members of each pair at times seem hostile toward one another, but interestingly, they ultimately collaborate in a gigantic swindle of the masses.

Shakespeare draws similar conclusions about violence in both plays. Violence, he emphasizes, is undertaken either from petty selfishness or from a perceived danger to security, whether imagined or real. He examines with great care the forces that destroy nations from within, using as examples, Scotland and Rome, in Macbeth and Julius Caesar, respectively. He proposes that destruction comes from a confluence of many parties, be they political, military, or ideological. Those forces, although they may strive against one another for power, at times unwittingly acquiesce to perpetrate a fraud on the populace. The various factions agree to presume a lack of intelligence among the rabble and construct from that premise a rationalization to prey on their ignorance and fear. They don't press the ignorance of the majority; they merely ignite those who are easily frightened and then allow a conflagration to spread.

The strategy is as old as civilization and as current as today's Political Action Committees assembled to "educate" and "inform" voters. Intelligent public discussions of policy are nowhere to be found. Instead, people are told to be afraid. They are told of enemies who are perpetrating conspiracies.

The stoic Brutus becomes almost enraged when Cassius "informs" him that he must fear more strongly than he does. But it is fear that ultimately motivates Brutus to take a lead role in the assassination. Afterward, he defends the conspiracy by convincing the masses that he and the others have removed an evil from their midst. In doing so, he "informs" them that they have been ignorant of its existence.

When Antony gets his turn to speak, he merely explains what he construes to be the facts: Brutus has grotesquely insulted their intelligence. The "ambitious" Caesar loved them and graciously provided them public parks in his will. Antony shames them (without telling them he is doing so) into thinking they have allowed one man to halt their rage. He rekindles it.

His speech is no work of brilliance. It is easy for Antony to incite a riot. It is always easy to spread fear if one cares less for the good of the country than for self. Antony sets fire to Rome because he will miss, not just a friend, but the privileges his friend once provided.

Now before I continue, I must say, on a personal level, it's really hard for me to believe in the worth and worthiness of leaders, let alone masses. There's a lot of ignorance out there.

But as a teacher, it is my duty to believe in human intelligence and to foster its growth.

Socrates, the great teacher, said that humans wish to do good but just need knowledge; perhaps Shakespeare felt the same way.

I'm not so sure Shakespeare actually felt that way, and I have my doubts too, about the other man's "knowledge-to-goodness" connection. But the great Bard does provoke in me the growth of a new awareness: While I often waver between the dark, conservative pessimism of Mark Antony and the idealistic, liberal, slightly disconnected mind of Brutus, I hear on all sides people telling one another, not that they must do something, but that they must fear something, and that they must allow others to rescue them from it, and in every one of those ominous, bombastic warnings, I sense cruel travesties.

A teacher's job is to help students develop their ability to think and do for themselves, and so, I believe, it is our duty to put fear aside, reject negativity, find joy somewhere, remain optimistic, and no matter what we think or feel personally about the idealism of Socrates, assume that there's something in all people worth saving.

Shakespeare's message is entirely political and quite relevant to our times. I tell kids there's nothing more brilliant and more complex than Shakespeare, and nothing more relevant. His plays are a never-ending discussion of human nature. And, as you see, I have always tried hard to advocate for Shakespeare by confronting things political, not ducking them.

Interestingly as well, Shakespeare is held fast by consistent underpinnings: His view of the vastness of the universal war between good and evil, if there is one - and he's not so certain there is one - makes human conflict shrink almost to microscopic proportions. Hecate, in Macbeth, specifically calls it a petty thing. Humans don't serve good or evil, asserts Hecate. They serve themselves.

The same is true in Julius Caesar. The only man in it who truly strives to serve good is Brutus. He fails. He resolves that he will fall on his sword rather than live under a tyrant. Shakespeare allows us to judge whether or not his death is meaningless.

Macbeth tries, but fails to serve himself. He refuses to "play the Roman fool" and fall on his sword. He believes he has no choice but to play another sort of fool, who " ... struts and frets his hour upon the stage/And then is heard no more."

Socrates took his life to defend grand principles. We don't understand it fully, but we wonder whether his self-sacrifice, though famous, amounts to the same sort of protest as that of a Mongolian Monk who makes a public show of suicide by setting himself ablaze and running through the streets.

Observing these sorts of behavior, Shakespeare remains skeptical whether humans can do much about the larger "conspiracy" of good and evil (if that is what it is) that is taking place (if it is actually taking place). Considering the passing nature of life, human conflict seems to him a trivial matter. All experience is important. Life's comedies are just as instructive as its tragedies. We can choose to be afraid if we wish, but in the end, every last one of us will leave this stage. So, since "...'tis all one," perhaps we should fear as seldom as possible and appreciate every moment.

In the meantime, if we want to, we can make noble efforts to understand and spread understanding, but as we're enjoying this existence for the wondrous miracle it is, Shakespeare emphasizes, it's best not to respect conspiracies or participate in calls to violence.

Read him closely. You don't find themes and morals in Shakespeare that stray far from that.

During my youth and beyond, even into my early college years, I was indoctrinated by a Fundamentalist Christian church. The only truth, I was told, was "Holy." Then I started to read Shakespeare. For some reason, it was good to read wisdom from a source that admitted he was not "Holy," but only "Wholly Human." To me, as much truth has come from Shakespeare as from the entire Holy Bible, which has been closely read and reinterpreted in numerous ways. Every dimension of it is still being examined and rethought.

I think Shakespeare is worth a close read too, not just for the content of his work, but for the purpose of learning how to discern truth a bit more effectively, how to examine it and separate it from falsehood.

A close read of any fine literature, I think, is therefore a good idea. So, VT, I'm sorry for responding so late to your question. I hope you're still on stage somewhere, but wherever you are, here at last is my answer:

If God is a God of peace who means to save humanity, then, in God's name, let's all learn the art of close reading.