Shakespeare: Bypassing the Barriers
It was common practice in schools a few years ago, and may still be, that, in order to ‘do’ Shakespeare, the teacher would play Baz...
A Brief Look at Desdemona in 'Othello'
If we accept momentarily that there is a female companion archetype in fiction, as outlined in How Stories Really Work , then it’s worth...
The Character of Richard III
Some works could be labelled ‘character-driven’, while some are ‘plot-driven’. Shakespeare’s Richard the Third is an example of the...
A Series of Questions about 'Macbeth'
If we want to understand Shakespeare’s Macbeth as a play, there are a series of questions that we can ask which take us deeply into both...
The Ups and Downs of Characters
If we go back to mythology and folklore, the hero of a story can have superhuman qualities and is often semi-divine in origin - in...
The Sorrowful State of the Villain
Purely virtuous heroes are hard for us to feel much affinity for. What’s interesting, though, is that as we move away from the complete...
Teaching 'Macbeth'
In the early 2000s, while teaching English Literature to a group of 14 year olds, I performed an experiment in two parts. Firstly, using...