Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard

by Laura Bates

Like war refugees, prisoners have lost everything: home, possessions, friends, and often family. For a prisoner, education has a special value as the one thing that no one can take from him.

Awareness of multiplicity of interpretation is the key to reading Shakespeare.

Think of simply stopping at a stoplight, deciding which way to go. Are you going to go forward or turn? Either road leads someplace. “Man,” said Newton. “That’s freedom!”

“So there are two outlets for the frustration of that powerlessness: insanity or violence.”

What has Shakespeare done for you? He had written, “Shakespeare saved my life.”

Hamlet is fighting the torment of what he could’ve done or should’ve done, or how he might have prevented the outcome. How many times have you laid there in bed fighting the torment of what you could’ve done, or should’ve done, or how you might have prevented the outcome? Do you know what separates you from Hamlet? Four hundred years.