Actors Ron Cephas Jones as Richard III, left, and Michael Crane, as
Buckingham, perform "Richard III" at the Taconic Correctional Facility
in Bedford Hills, New York. (AP)
Karen Swallow Prior, The Atlantic Monthly, 4-23-2014
It's his 450th birthday, and The Bard has never appealed to a wider or
more diverse audience. American higher-ed English departments may be
teaching
him less than they used to,
but the Internet and modern film and TV interpretations have helped
democratize appreciation of his works around the world. That’s only
fitting: In Shakespeare’s era, the royalty in attendance at his
productions was joined by crowds of commoners called “groundlings” and
“stinkards” who paid a penny to stand in the pit, sweltering in the
heat, while even more milled about outside.
n hold special significance: convicts. Recent decades have seen a
proliferation of programs in prisons, jails, and juvenile detention
centers meant to introduce the accused to works found in the Folios and
Quartos. While arts outreach efforts in correctional environments are
nothing new, any diehard Shakespearean might recognize how his works
appeal uniquely to the criminally accused, one of society’s most
marginalized populations.
Laura Bates, author of
Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary With the Bard, described teaching the plays in a super-max facility housing the most violent criminals in the system in an
interview
last year with NPR. The book’s title comes from the words of one
inmate, convicted of murder as a teenager and placed in solitary
confinement for years.
“The day that I came knocking on his cell door,” Bates explained,
“his life had been so desperate, so bleak for so many years that he was
literally at the point of suicide. And so in that sense by Shakespeare
coming along, presenting something positive in his life for maybe the
first time, giving him a new direction, it did literally keep him from
taking his own life.”
Is such redemptive artistic power special to Shakespeare? To an
extent, yes. The themes and characters of Shakespeare’s
plays—overflowing with ambition, greed, love, deceit, betrayal, and
revenge—naturally have particular resonance for criminal convicts.
“Shakespeare’s tragic figures are very much imprisoned by both their
circumstances and their choices,” says Scott Hayes, an associate dean in
the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Liberty University and
a seasoned Shakespearean actor and director. “Prisoners connect deeply
with that sense of imprisonment. The consequences of choices made by
Shakespeare’s characters are tremendous, and the prisoners truly
understand and connect to the power our choices have to reap tragic
consequences.”
Read the rest of the article here:
Why Shakespeare Belongs in Prison
