mr kaplan's List: Romeo & Juliet

March 17, 2015
Sara Barkat


Was Shakespeare ahead of his time, in his portrayal of the characters in Romeo and Juliet? A close reading of the play contains the answer.

English critic Samuel Johnson once said of William Shakespeare "that his drama is the mirror of life." Now the Bard's words have been translated into life's most basic language. British scientists have stored all 154 of Shakespeare's sonnets on tiny stretches of DNA.

I listened to most of this show while running errands with my daughter. I can't stand Tom Ashbrook, so, if I listened at all, you know it has to be interesting.

Dakin explores different methods for getting students engaged--and excited--about Shakespeare's plays as they learn to construct meaning from the texts' sixteenth-century language and connect it to their twenty-first-century lives.

"In the past, most brain experiments would involve the study of defects, and use a lack of health in the brain to show what it can do. Professor Philip Davis from the University of Liverpool's School of English is approaching brain research in a different way. He is studying what he calls "functional shifts" that demonstrate how Shakespeare's creative mistakes "shift mental pathways and open possibilities" for what the brain can do. It is Shakespeare's inventions--particularly his deliberate syntactic errors like changing the part of speech of a word--that excite us, rather than confuse us."

Passion has died, argues author Cristina Nehring, taking domestic bliss with it. But is romance really in crisis?

Romeo & Juliet

Interesting for jumpstarting a relationship on Romeo & Juliet