My Shakespeare Year: Day 97: Book Review: Shakespeare Saved My Life

Here's a book that I reviewed recently on my other blog, Cozy Little Book Journal. It's called Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard, A Memoir. At first I thought author Laura Bates was, herself, in solitary confinement for ten years, reading Shakespeare (and then writing a book about it) and I thought, "Great! EVERYONE'S reading Shakespeare before I do!" Turns out she's actually an English professor who spent ten years teaching Shakespeare to prisoners, many of whom were in solitary. But yes, those prisoners did read Shakespeare. And they were great at it.

Shakespeare Saved My Life:

Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard

Author: Laura Bates

Publisher: Sourcebooks

Publication Date: April 1, 2013

Buy Now on Amazon.com

Buy Now on Amazon.ca

Turns out that prison--especially solitary confinement--sucks (of course it does) in just about every way but it IS great for catching up on your reading. Or at least the reading that you're allowed to have, since many things--including heavy books--are contraband. Dr. Bates had to give her students their reading assignments a few pages at a time, a week in advance. That meant that each week, she met with a group of men who had spent the last seven days poring over the scenes she had photocopied for them (they had very few other reading materials available to them in most cases) and they had a LOT to say about them. The prisoners' insights about certain plays were my favourite part of the book, for sure.

And that got me thinking. I always used to say that The Complete Works of Shakespeare was my Number One choice for my "desert island list." You know, as in, "If you were trapped on a deserted island, what one book--or three books or whatever--would you want to have with you?" I always said Shakespeare because if I were stuck on a deserted island, at least I'd have no choice but to finally get around to reading it! Now that I've committed to read the entire Complete Works this year, I guess I'll need a new answer to that question.

But the truth is, almost nobody is really stuck on a "deserted island." It's a party game question. But lots of people are stuck in prison. And the fact that Laura Bates got some of them to read Shakespeare--carefully and with great insight--is pretty fucking awesome.

Hit the jump to read the full review I posted on my other blog.

Here's the review I posted on my other blog:

My first reaction when I saw this book was, "Great, EVERYONE is reading Shakespeare before I do. Even people in solitary confinement!" I'd recently decided to read all of Shakespeare's plays in a year and I was finding it slow going. But the prisoners that Laura Bates described in this book seemed to breeze through the plays, even if they had limited education and no previous knowledge of the bard. If they could do it, what the hell was my excuse?

Once I got past my petty jealousy, this book spoke to me on a lot of levels. Laura Bates is an English professor who has been teaching Shakespeare for years, both in colleges and in prisons. This book recounts her experiences with the latter, particularly in a supermax--or solitary confinement--unit. A great number of my family members work in corrections, including in prisons, and I myself had helped start a writing and spoken word program at a women's prison here in Nova Scotia. So I didn't need to be convinced of the value of prisoner education. And, as I mentioned, I'd recently started a Shakespeare in a Year project in which I was attempting to read the Complete Works of Shakespeare (or at the very least the plays) before the end of the year. So I didn't need to be convinced of the value of Shakespeare.

Still, this book surprised me in a lot of ways.

The thing that struck me most about Laura Bates' experiences teaching Shakespeare in prison was the way the inmates interpreted certain passages. Dr. Bates deliberately chose plays she thought might speak to them, plays about crime (Macbeth) or imprisonment (Richard II) or loss of power (King Lear) or violence and revenge (Titus Andronicus). Even so, the inmates' reactions to them often changed the way I myself was reading the material.

Lady Macbeth approaching the murdered Duncan (william-blake.org)

As an example, when discussing the murder of King Duncan in Macbeth, one part that often stumps literary critics is why Macbeth is able to kill Duncan but cannot seem to complete the plan by planting the bloody daggers on the sleeping guards, implicating them. He balks at this and wanders off, forcing Lady Macbeth to complete the task. Why? I, like many critics, interpreted Macbeth's actions as evidence of doubt, of lack of conviction to the plan. Lady Macbeth, by contrast, seems like the pushier of the two in this scene ("Fine! I have to do everything myself, do I?").

But the inmates had a different interpretation:

"'He needs for her to get her hands dirty too', said the new student in the group named Bentley...When Bentley made the observation about Macbeth's need for a partner in crime, the others, all serving time for murder convictions, agreed. It is easier to bear the burden of guilt, especially of such a heavy crime, my students said, with an accomplice.

Genius.

That not only changes how I feel about that scene, it changes how I feel about the relationship between Macbeth and his wife. Is Lady Macbeth really the mastermind who pushes her husband, unwillingly, into a series of murders? Or is Macbeth pulling his wife further into their crime spree so she shares his culpability?

There are a lot of other examples of the inmates' interpretations of Shakespeare (the comparison of Titus Andronicus to Mister Rogers' Neighborhood is worth the price of admission alone) and they're all fantastic. Even if you got nothing else out of the book, these insights are more than worth the read.

Keep checking this blog for an upcoming interview with the author and a chance to win a copy of the book!

Disclaimer: I received a digital galley of this book free from the publisher from NetGalley. I was not obliged to write a favourable review, or even any review at all. The opinions expressed are strictly my own.

RELATED POSTS: