"I'm not going to be an English major"

As a kid, I found a copy of The Tempest and brought it with me to school everyday. I kept it in my desk. Brought it home in my backpack. I carried it everywhere. I didn't read it. I don't think I even flipped through the pages but I loved the idea of loving Shakespeare. Something about carrying around this book made me feel more intelligent. I must have been 10 years old when I started telling people that I love Shakespeare. I hadn't read a single thing he had written, but I knew I would love it if I did. Romeo and Juliet came first, I read it for a high school English class, Hamlet came next...same class, and I still said I loved Shakespeare. But it wasn't until I took Dr. Kramer's 232 class my first semester that I actually started to love Shakespeare. He knew everything about Shakespeare, about the Globe Theatre about London at the time, about the Kings and Queens during Shakespeare's life. He taught us about the political implications of the plays, and we started to feel like we knew something. And whatever that something was, it told each of the students in that class that Shakespeare needed to stick around.

"Shakespeare for non-English majors." I knew I liked Shakespeare, I didn't think I would ever become an English major, so I just ran with it. Professor Kramer had us read King Lear, Winter's Tale, Some Like it Hot and The Merchant of Venice. Those in addition to Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and a few others. I was awful at finishing our readings. I hated reading plays that I didn't know the story line of (ridiculous, I know). Yet I so badly wanted to understand Shakespeare, wanted to love Shakespeare.We watched the Leonardo DiCaprio adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, we watched mob-themed adaptations of the Merchant of Venice and we watched Mel Gibson play Hamlet. We acted out scenes from King Lear. We memorized sonnets and had dramatic readings. We loved Shakespeare. I loved Shakespeare. We wrote Commonplace books picking apart the lines that we loved from each play, analyzing fragments of the most quotable lines, and of those lines that we had never cared for.  We discussed the "Ophelia syndrome". We read and read until our minds thought rhythmically.We loved Shakespeare.

After our class ended I felt a crutch had been pulled out from under me.  The course was set up to teach us to think for ourselves, to help us develop our own thoughts and opinions about each play, but it was set up in such a way that none of us realized any of this was happening. After the initial shock of feeling alone in my Shakespeare reading I realized that Dr. Kramer had not told me what to think about Shakespeare but rather, how to think about Shakespeare. An idea that was both invigorating and intimidating. I am entering this class fully recognizing that I don't know much about Shakespeare but at the same time completely willing to work towards a better knowledge. I'm excited to reread some of the plays that were difficult for me to sit through. I'm excited to hear the perspectives of others, and I'm particularly excited to study Shakespeare in a new medium that will put me completely out of my element and hopefully give me some insight.

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