Tag Archives: As You Like It

Is Old Age Becoming Overrated?

By Robin Bates | Published: November 26, 2019

A “New Yorker” article on aging turns to literature to debunk the notion that aging is a good thing.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Vanity of Human Wishes", "Sailing to Byzantium", "Tithonous", Aging, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Aristotle, Ecclesiastes, Geoffrey Chaucer, Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift, King Lear, Merchant's Tale, old age, Plato, Rasselas, Samuel Johnson, Ulysses, William Butler Yeats, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

Same-Sex Desire in the Sonnets

By Robin Bates | Published: March 19, 2019

Wednesday If you want a one-stop article about the same-sex desire expressed in Shakespeare’s first 126 sonnets, Sandra Newman’s recent Aeon article is the place to go. Newman neatly summarizes the historical debates over the sonnets and pretty much puts the matter to rest: they really are expressions of homosexual love from Shakespeare to a […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Sonnet 20", LBGTQ community, Same-Sex Intimacy, Shakespeare's Sonnets, Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

A Literary History of the Insult “Cuck”

By Robin Bates | Published: April 9, 2017

“Cuck” has become a favorite insult amongst alt-right types. In today’s post I trace literary references to cuckolds going back to Chaucer.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged alt-right, Canterbury Tales, Christopher Marlowe, Country Wife, cuckold jokes, cuckolds, cuckservatives, Doctor Faustus, Donald Trump, Geoffrey Chaucer, Miller's Tale, Othello, William Shakespeare, William Wycherley | Comments closed

Shakespeare Understood Trumpism

By Robin Bates | Published: November 3, 2016

According to Adam Gopnik, Shakespeare would have understood the rise of Donald Trump better than we do today. Whereas we see him as a historical oddity, Shakespeare would have seen him as the kind of evil that has always resided within humankind.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged 2016 presidential election, Adam Gopnik, Donald Trump, Hamlet, Henry V, Hillary Clinton, King Lear, Macbeth, Merchant of Venice, Richard III, Tempest, Troilus and Cressida, Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

Art Is the Path to Liberation

By Robin Bates | Published: May 8, 2014

Nick Brown, a very bright philosophy and English double major, reflects on how to live a worthwhile life. An aesthetic approach to life is at the core of his argument.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Ode on a Grecian Urn", Albert Camus, Art, Dogen, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, existentialism, Fear and Trembling, John Keats, Karl Marx, liberation, Macbeth, Myth of Sisyphus, Soren Kierkegaard, Zen Buddhism | Comments closed

The World’s a Stage–Choose Your Part

By Robin Bates | Published: February 5, 2014

In his senior project, one of my students uses literature to examine life and literature to engage with it.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged examined life, existentialism, happiness, Leo Tolstoy, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

The Bard as Couples Counselor

By Robin Bates | Published: January 10, 2014

Shakespeare charts the way to new kinds of relationships in his cross-dressing comedies.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged couples counseling, cross dressing, Marriage, marriage counseling, Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

Disaster Ahead, No More Fantasizing

By Robin Bates | Published: October 16, 2013

Can the Tea Party move beyond fantasies and deal with the world as it really is? Shakespeare and Yeats weigh in.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Circus Animals Desertion", debt default, GOP, governmental shutdown, politics, Tea Party, William Butler Yeats, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

Government Shutdown? Call in the Bard

By Robin Bates | Published: October 9, 2013

Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” offers a wish fulfillment that we can apply to the government shutdown.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged GOP, Government shutdown, politics, William Shakespeare | Comments closed