Shakespeare’s Genius Is Nonsense - Issue 48: Chaos
▻http://nautil.us/issue/48/chaos/shakespeares-genius-is-nonsense-rp
You’d be forgiven if, settling into the fall 2003 “Literature of the 16th Century” course at University of California, Berkeley, you found the unassuming 70-year-old man standing at the front of the lecture hall a bit eccentric. For one thing, the class syllabus, which was printed on the back of a rumpled flyer promoting bicycle safety, seemed to be preparing you for the fact that some readings may feel toilsome. “Don’t worry,” it read on the two weeks to be spent with a notoriously long allegorical poem; it’s “only drudgery if you’re reading it for school.” Phew! you thought, then, Wait a second... You might have wondered what you had gotten yourself into. Then again, if you had enrolled in Stephen Booth’s class, chances are that you already knew. By this time, Booth had been teaching (...)