Making Friends with Shakespeare

Friends, roamers, Cape Codders, lend us your ears; we’ve come not to bury Shakespeare, but to praise him.

We know, we know; even his name can be intimidating.

And that language! All those “thous” and “forsooths” and “prithees” and “haths!”

All those women dressed as men!

All those King Henrys!

And all those dead bodies piling up in Act Five!

(Not to mention the dreaded creature known as iambic pentameter!!)

So if his plays are so confusing, why are people still reading them?

Believe us, Shakespeare wants to be your friend. In fact, he wanted to be everybody’s friend. Remember, he wasn’t just a playwright; he was a businessman. The more people that came to hear his plays, the better he and his company of actors ate.

Why not meet him halfway? Read a bit, listen a bit, discuss a bit, perform more than you thought you would, and think a great deal in our weekly explorations of the works of the man we won’t be calling “the Bard.”

You’ll find that Shakespeare’s reputation exceeds him; the last thing he’d want is to make his plays too difficult to understand.

Join Ed O’Toole, who’s taught Shakespeare to thousands of students and directed hundreds of others in a score of Shakespeare productions during his 30 years at Barnstable High School, for an eight-week exploration into what makes Shakespeare’s plays so rich, so complex, so challenging, and yet so insightful and understandable.

Together we’ll unpack Shakespeare’s incomparable language, dive into his observations of human nature, and learn why his plays are so valued still for their beauty and significance.

Every week we’ll discuss a different play, for which you’ll receive helpful notes and commentary in advance. Read the play, read parts of the play, or watch the play, whatever works for you. We’ll make it work either way when we meet onstage (even if it’s a classroom), just as Shakespeare intended.

BONUS! No tests, no papers, no art projects.

Week 1 Shakespeare Boot Camp (down & dirty intro to the man, the myth, the legend)

Week 6 The Merchant of Venice