So recently I went back to my high school, the reason being they wanted me to help organize a Shakespearean play. Now I basically gave a lecture on how the play will work and then suddenly one of the kids said that Shakespeare is from the devil. So when it was over I went back and reflected on the event and I could not help but feel sorry for the kid knowing he will never be able to enjoy literature.
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Is that young man part of the drama program?
Umm yeah, as you can imagine this is a problem since everyone has to pass drama.
Drama is a required course?
Yes.
The young man should play Puck.
I've never heard of Shakespeare being targeted by religidiots before. Do they object to the ghost and witches in Macbeth, the ghost in Hamlet, or the fairies in Midsummer Night's Dream? Could it even be the miscegeny in Othello?
Which play were you doing?
The merchant of Venice.
Oh no, the removing of a pound of flesh! A foreskin's fine to remove, but a pound is too much. Too barbaric. Nope. Not in my school. We only teach about the holy killing of millions. Much better. Easier to stomach.
You know, a well endowed person might give a pound of flesh in the circummcission process. Right, Biggus Dickus?
Oh no! there not coming near my majestic noodle.
LOL!
Wow. Poor kid.
I remember in high school, the majority of kids refusing to listen to Elton John because of his sexuality. Come on! "Benny and the fucking Jets"?!?! How can someone deny them self such a great experience? "Rocket Man"? "Honky Cat"?
I felt like I was taking crazy pills being surrounded by these people!
And religious kids will never be able to truly appreciate AC/DC's Highway to Hell at full volume. That's a shame.
My high school principal ordered the whole school never to listen to "Lola" by the Kinks. That did wonders for record sales in our city.
The Merchant of Venice is the one where Shakespeare creates a stereotypical, avaricious, evil old Jew, who then makes the ultimate statement against racism and religious bigotry. "If you prick us, do we not bleed?"
Obviously anti-christian. Can't have that.
How did Shakespeare suddenly become the devil?
Shakespeare the pen name or Shakespeare the myth?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_authorship_question
There's a school of thought that the man, the playwright, never existed. The only William Shakespeare on record (birth/death records, historicity, etc) was from Stratford-Upon-Avon and that man, a merchant, could barely render his own signature. Also, the writer(s?) of his ascribed works had immense knowledge of the period as only a man of the royal court could have. A humble uneducated man from Stratford could not have been that guy. He has a burial plot with quite a complimentary marker but there are no remains in the grave. Hmmm. What to believe... I should have paid more attention to the playbills and the back stage rehearsals when I was plying those neighborhoods as a young man.
Going back about 17 years I was in a casual friendship with some born-agains. Our relationship orbited around our sons, who were buddies, so we managed to tolerate each other on their behalf. I accepted their invitation to dinners where they discussed how superior they were over other christians as they tolerated my abstinence from their proselytizing. Their son, however, parroted his mother's opinion of the movie Harry Potter as devil worship. My son was a huge fan of the story. They were about 6 years old at the time. I told the young boy that there was no such thing as a devil that existed outside his mother's imagination.
Well, so much for that relationship. My wife was disappointed (again) and off we went to live out our secular lives. I told her to make more sensible friendships. Being an apologist herself, she took exception to my use of the word sensible and that is the crux of the problem between atheism and theism.
@Pitar: "Shakespeare the pen name or Shakespeare the myth?"
My favorite theory on this is that Shakespeare's plays weren't written by Shakespeare but by another poet who was also called William Shakespeare.
And then there's the Sicilian Shakespeare theory. According to that, Shakespeare was actually Michelangelo Florio Crollalanza (Italian for "shake spear"), who was born in Messina. That would explain why so many of the plays are set in Italy. (http://www.timesofsicily.com/shakespeare-sicilian-crollalanza/)
I honestly don't care if Shakespeare existed or not and even if he didn't we would still have his work.