Day 91 - Shakespeare (Sell)

This is going into the box designated for "Half Price Books".  "The Riverside Shakespeare" is 1,923 pages - and almost six pounds - of the Bard's masterpieces.  It's one of those books that looks good on a shelf, but it's not something I'm going to pull down for some leisure reading.  That's probably literary blasphemy for an English teacher to say, but I find reading Shakespeare about as enjoyable as the next guy.  (Plus, the font in this book is microscopic!)  WATCHING Shakespeare is an entirely different story.  I actually enjoy a good Shakespearian production either on the stage or on the silverscreen.  And you may doubt me, but I once saw a film version of "Taming of the Shrew" that was laugh-out-loud funny. 

Currently, I am reading Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" with my students.  We have two acts out of five under our belts and the big stabbing scene is coming up.  (Nobody is in a hurry to finish it ... the research paper comes next!)   I try to make sure the students don't dismiss it as "history" and "politics" - a deadly combination in the teenage mind.  I play up the "forming alliances" and the "betrayal" aspects of it all and compare it to the way reality show contestants behave - it's Survivor in togas. 

There are a few memorable lines in JC.  Of course you have the "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears" and "Et tu, Brute?" lines.  And this play is the source of the saying "it's Greek to me."  But Caesar himself says one of my favorite lines from all of Shakespeare:

"Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come." (2.2.34)

Has the ring of Truth to it, doesn't it?

 ¹⁴ Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— ¹⁵ and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.   (Hebrews 2:14-15)