I published a post on the first lecture of Shakespeare’s The Tempest three weeks ago. In that post we learned that Prospero, a learned man and magician, lost his dukedom to his scheming younger brother, Antonio, who conspired against him with King Alonso. Prospero and his daughter, Miranda, were sent to sea on a small…
“What cheer?” is the line spoken by the Boatswain, a minor character, at the beginning of Shakespeare’s comedy The Tempest. The play opens in a storm somewhere in the Mediterranean off the coast of a fictional island. Prospero, the rightful Duke of Milan and a magician, and his fifteen-year-old daughter, Miranda, live on that island….
“The readiness is all” is a famous line spoken by Prince Hamlet to his friend Horatio. It means always to be ready for death, to face one’s fate ready to die, because we never know when that moment will be; and we cannot escape it when it comes. All we can do is be ready….
In an earlier post, I described the beginning of Hamlet. The title character is haunted by the ghost of his dead father to discover his uncle is his father’s murderer. In Acts Two and Three of Hamlet we see how Hamlet begins to plot his revenge. In the middle of Act Two, as Professor Smith…
“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” That line is spoken by Marcellus, a relatively minor character in Shakespeare’s play The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. It is important not to minimize lines spoken by minor characters in Shakespeare’s plays. He typically gives them magnificent lines revealing the most important things. Denmark is…
On June 28, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned an administrative law precedent—the doctrine of Chevron deference—in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. Conservative commentators heralded the ruling as a victory for limited government and a boon for business. Progressives criticized the ruling as an example of a rogue Court and warned that the decision would…
What is the connection between war and the consent of the governed? Is there one? Should there be one? In a republic grounded in consent of the governed and the securing of the natural rights of every citizen, it seems like there ought to be a strong connection. In our system of government, the primary…
C.S. Lewis wrote a short book called The Abolition of Man, comprised of only three chapters. In it, Lewis articulates what it would mean for man to abolish the part of himself which separates him from the beasts. Lewis begins by showing us that we need to pay closer attention to our children’s curriculum. The…
God is the point on which everything depends. Far from leading us to despair, contemplating our own mortality in light of God’s infinite power can be good for us. The sin of man is to believe that he is always in control. He is not. God created everything and sustains it by His will. That…
C.S. Lewis begins The Abolition of Man by pointing out that we do not pay close enough attention to elementary textbooks. This is problematic because some authors may unintentionally smuggle into lessons certain ideas about morality that will lead children down the path of death and destruction. Such is the case with “The Green Book”…