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\u201cAs far as I tried to run away from him, I kept running back to Shakespeare,\u201d he recalls. \u201cAnd I kept finding myself in Shakespeare.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Shaw is still running back to the playwright, still finding himself in the verses, still discovering prescient lessons about contemporary political tumult, social struggles, and class conflicts embedded in stage pieces written 400 years ago. As Clark\u2019s resident Shakespeare scholar in the English Department, he works not only to help his students perceive why Shakespeare continues to move audiences to tears, to laughter, to deeper understandings of human motivation\u2014but also why his words still matter, since he last put quill pen to paper in 1610.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can a playwright who died four centuries ago truly shed light on who we are in 2024? Should his work still be an essential part of our literature studies?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yes to both, Shaw says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When Shaw joined the Clark University English faculty in 2020, his first class, an advanced Shakespeare seminar, was titled Kings, Queens, and Tyrants. It was a presidential election year, the U.S. was extraordinarily divided, and the coronavirus was killing thousands of people every week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPeople are putting their lives on the line, and we\u2019re reading a play?\u201d Shaw recalls thinking. \u201cI was curious: What\u2019s the purpose of a Shakespeare class in a world like this?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In his classes, Shaw invites his students not just to read Shakespeare, but \u201cto do Shakespeare\u201d and to see themselves in the plays. \u201cThere are so many characters, so many scenarios we can find ourselves in, with plots that represent very real situations. That\u2019s when it stops being about a dead white guy they have to study, who everyone says is so important. I want them to see and feel the importance.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He notes that English departments have long required students to take Shakespeare courses to earn their degree, and many classes are taught in such a way \u201cthat reinforces the old vanguard of \u2018Shakespeare is the best writer ever.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou have professors thinking that their job is to teach you the genius of Shakespeare, and if you can\u2019t get it, that\u2019s your problem,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m not one of those people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cShakespeare has been an essential vehicle for the most important debates about humanity, culture, and society for the last 300 years,\u201d says Virginia Mason Vaughan, professor emerita of English, who was Clark\u2019s resident Shakespeare scholar for 37 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The author put his pen to race, gender, class, and ableism in his comedies, tragedies, and history plays. The comedies include marriage games, with \u201cmen and women figuring it out,\u201d Vaughan says, although at the time women were legally subordinate\u2014and when the plays were performed, women weren\u2019t allowed to act, so the female characters were portrayed by men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe issue of women\u2019s place in society is still relevant today,\u201d Vaughan notes, as is the concept of masculinity, which takes center stage in numerous plays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We use Shakespeare to read culture \u2014 to read life.<\/p>Justin Shaw<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n Vaughan also believes Shakespeare\u2019s contribution to language cannot be discounted. \u201cHe was writing at a time when language was changing. The vernacular was developing, the printing press had been invented, and more people were learning to read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSo many of his phrases have become second nature to us,\u201d she adds, like \u201chousehold words,\u201d \u201cgood riddance,\u201d \u201clove is blind,\u201d \u201ca foregone conclusion,\u201d and about 1,700 words the playwright is credited with inventing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2002, to give students an opportunity to engage with Shakespeare beyond the classroom, Vaughan launched the annual Undergraduate Shakespeare Conference, which allows students to present papers that examine the many facets of the playwright and his works. Student researchers from across the country attended the 2024 \u201cShakespeare and Play\u201d conference at Clark, where they heard the keynote address delivered by David Sterling Brown, author of Shakespeare\u2019s White Others<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n April Chronowski \u201925, whose paper, \u201cShakespeare and Theater as Our Green World,\u201d earned the conference\u2019s third place prize, examined the idea of theater as \u201ca tool for social change and individual exploration.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In plays like A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream<\/em> and As You Like It<\/em>, characters escape the order of the city by fleeing to a nearby forested and wild setting. In this natural environment, they resolve issues around romantic relationships, social order, and intergenerational struggles, which exist in the real world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe plays are timeless and show the vast array of human experiences\u2014the underlying themes still speak to modern audiences\u201d because they are filled with relatable human emotion, Chronowski said. The texts offer a way for audiences, like Shakespeare\u2019s characters, to \u201cstep aside from society\u201d and explore their own motivations and personalities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cExternalizing our differences makes it easier to deal with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shaw\u2019s own research interests lie in how Early Modern\/Renaissance dramatists and poets use \u201cthe language of melancholy\u201d in areas of race or otherness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s not just feeling down or anxious,\u201d he explains. \u201cIt\u2019s power versus powerlessness. It\u2019s the feeling of living in the world as a person who is queer, or who is \u2018othered\u2019 in some way, or, in different points in history, as a woman. It\u2019s the feeling of living in the U.S. right now, especially in certain states, where there is anxiety about moving through life. It\u2019s being Black in a world where you don\u2019t know how a police encounter will end for you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some characters in Shakespeare are trying to exist and thrive in an oppressive world. \u201cOthello is a respectable Black man who just wants a seat at the table,\u201d Shaw says, \u201cwhile Aaron the Moor in Titus Andronicus<\/em> wants to destroy the table.\u201d In The Merchant of Venice<\/em>, Shylock is \u201cthe other\u201d because he is a Jew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI see real-life people\u2019s situations reflected in Shakespeare,\u201d Shaw says. \u201cBut I don\u2019t think Shakespeare is the only place we can find them. You have to kind of get a bigger picture of what\u2019s going on; Shakespeare was also watching other plays. Sometimes, to understand Shakespeare, you have to get away from Shakespeare.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In some states\u2014including Shaw\u2019s native Texas\u2014students are getting away from Shakespeare because the plays are being banned from the classroom. \u201cThere are important issues in Shakespeare, as there are in a lot of texts, that we should be dealing with head-on,\u201d Shaw says. \u201cI remind my own students often that we have an incredible privilege here at Clark to be able to openly discuss ideas about race and racism, about gender and sexual orientation, about class and religion, and to use these texts to be honest with ourselves about these issues in our own lives.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In his most recent advanced Shakespeare course, Shakespeare in Black and White, Shaw stressed the importance of Shakespeare by \u201cdecentering\u201d the plays. He started by exploring race in two tragedies, Othello<\/em> and Hamlet<\/em>, which helps students develop a method for seeing obvious\u2014\u201cand not so obvious\u201d\u2014racism in the texts. He then moved on to modern plays, all by writers of color, that are adaptations of Shakespeare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe use Shakespeare to read culture, to read life, and then use these other modern dramas to bridge the gap.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As an assignment, Shaw asks his students to write sonnets about topics that interest, challenge, or move them. \u201cI love seeing them work through very personal and important issues through Shakespearean form and content. That\u2019s what Shakespeare did.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shakespeare is not the be-all and end-all (a Macbeth<\/em> phrase) of literature studies, but \u201che provides a helpful lens through which we can read the world,\u201d Shaw says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When his students graduate from Clark, they may never read another Shakespeare play, \u201cbut they\u2019re going to encounter texts. They\u2019re going to encounter politics. They\u2019re going to encounter difference. I want them to be able to encounter anything in the world and say, \u2018I know how to read this situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019ve seen this somewhere before.\u2019\u201d \u25a3<\/p>\n\n\n![\"Assistant](\"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024_Justin_Shaw_June-1-1.jpg\")
\u201cLike madness is the glory of this\u00a0life.\u201d
TIMON OF ATHENS<\/pre>\n\n\n\n\u201cLife\u2019s but a walking shadow.\u201d
MACBETH<\/pre>\n\n\n\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/Macbeth-cover-203x300-2.jpg\")
\u201cIf you prick us, do we not bleed?\u201d
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE<\/pre>\n\n\n\n![\"Book](\"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/Romeo-and-Juliet-cover-212x300-2.jpg\")
\u201cA rarer spirit never did steer humanity.\u201d
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA<\/pre>\n\n\n\n