Redeeming Shakespeare

You may have noticed I changed the name of this blog from the rather elementary "Journeys with Shakespeare" to "Redeeming Shakespeare, From Time." While the actual title was inspired by a class (or lifelong) assignment - to redeem, from insignificance, the time - the change was inspired by a simpler thought.
I had been pondering the state of our current society's romance genre, and became severely disappointed as I thought of the cliche, the formulaic, the bland options we have spewing from Nora Roberts and her peers. And I became even more upset when thinking of the art we have lost over the years: it's not simply the bland that we have, but the poetic that we have lost. We have lost Shakespeare. Perhaps he hasn't been completely lost to me, or to you, but we - the culture - have lost the Bard: because we simply do not try, we simply do not care enough to study him. Every time I mention the fact that I'm in a Shakespeare literature class, I get the most sympathetic, worried looks; when I tell these people that I actually enjoy Shakespeare they look as though they're bursting to ask me if I need a ride to the nearest hospital. The majority of our culture treats the Bard with a stigma; he's ever present, but he's not to be read, and certainly not for entertainment. Instead, what we do read are novels of the least literary merit imaginable; we read Twilight, and The Notebook, books that wouldn't even have been comedic in Shakespearean culture. And it makes me sad.
So, in studying Shakespeare this semester, I hope not only to learn more of his artwork for my own sake, but I hope also to learn enough so that I can encourage my friends, my peers, and society to embrace the poetic. Here goes nothing.

"We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion."  -John Keating, Dead Poets Society

Your Hopeful Redeemer,
Sabrina Hayes