Mr. Shakespeare’s Plays: On Essays and Letters

by James V. Schall, S.J.

Under the listings of Shakespeare, the Internet abounds in essays, reviews, texts, and comments, almost anything one can imagine about his works and about works explaining his works. My Viking Edition of Shakespeare comes to 1,471 pages. I suspect that at least that number of pages of new materials about Shakespeare appears almost every month. In various universities, moreover, from here to India, we can find listed courses on “Shakespeare and . . . —You Name It.” Something is found on every topic and Shakespearean personage from love to war, from atheism to biblical citations, from Sir John Falstaff to Iago, and from Cordelia to Julius Caesar. A student who wants to write an essay on any given play or character of Shakespeare can call up any number of already composed essays. The only thing that prevents him from turning them in as his own is his conscience.

With a class every semester, I myself read Allan Bloom’s Shakespeare’s Politics. “Shakespeare and War” courses appear in various curricula. Out of curiosity, I checked Google to see if a course entitled, “Shakespeare’s Biology” was listed. I was rather relieved not to find one, though some close calls were evident. One entry was entitled “The Biology of Love,” reputedly about “the effects of love on the chemical state of the brain.” This description is enough to make us hope that we never fall in love, but the lady author enthusiastically assures us, “I mean, I love Shakespeare’s sonnets.”

The Haunted Souls of Readers

By John E. Rocha, Sr.

Pursuing a liberal education takes a lifetime. School may not be fun some of the time and for a few of us, all of the time, but what I have learned from Fr. James Schall, S.J. over the years is that a liberal education does not take place at school, but for most of us after we are outside of the university. In an essay entitled, “On Reading Books," Fr. Schall introduced me to writer, Christopher Morley and his second novel, The Haunted Bookshop. It was a book he had not heard of before and had just received as a gift. I soon wandered Amazon.com and found an inexpensive first edition. If it was good enough for Fr. Schall to mention in an essay; it was good enough for me to read...it took him over 80 years to discover the text, it would not have to take me that long.

The Haunted Bookshop is a book worth finding and reading; one that truly sparks the moral imagination. As the first novel that I have read by Mr. Morley, I believe it is a good place to begin reading his works and I look forward to my next Morley read. The end of World War I acts as the backdrop of novel, along with a true hope for peace led by President Woodrow Wilson both of these are brought to our attention by the protagonist, Roger Mifflin. Mr. Mifflin is the eccentric used book dealer, turned American hero, whose bookstore and residence above the store sits on Gissing Street in Brooklyn, NY.

On the opening pages, Mr. Morley draws the reader into the world of Brooklyn post WWI with vivd imagery and sounds of the day. The "remarkable bookstore" is described as "It was very different from such bookstores as he had been accustomed to patronize. Two stories of the old house had been thrown into one: the lower space was divided into little alcoves; above, a gallery ran around the wall, which carried books to the ceiling" (Morley 4). Unique and yet typical of most used bookstores that I have visited, it is described as wall to wall and floor to ceiling of books. I visit two such bookstores when I travel outside of Texas; When I visit the ancestral home of Russell Kirk in Mecosta, MI, I pay a visit to the local bookstore, The Mecosta Book Gallery. I have never left the store without at least one book that I am looking for and perhaps three or four that I did not realize were on my reading list. I always eye the "Kirk Section" for any that I do not own or perhaps a first edition. I can say that I did not discover the city of New Orleans in my youth, but rather through marriage. As I have spent time over the years visiting family and attending a conference or two, I make sure to have book money on hand, as I enjoy visiting a handful of book shops in the French Quarter. There are many shops to mention, but the one that you can always find a a surprise book or two within the budget is at Dauphine Street Books. I am "big" guy and I can barely move around in the shop, it is crammed with books, dust, and more books. In Houston, one does not have travel far to find two good book shops, 1/4 Price Books and the other is a hurricane Katrina transplant, Kaboom Books, which actually has two shops in the Heights, and they still have most of their books in storage. All three books shops come to mind when I first opened The Haunted Bookshop. All have serious, yet friendly proprietors, that a first time visitor may find too eccentric for society today. Each book shop still lacks what Morley gives the Haunted Bookshop, the "air" of what book shops were once were: "The air was heavy with the delightful fragrance of mellowed paper and leather surcharged with a strong bouquet of tobacco...There was an all-pervasive drift of tobacco smoke, which eddied and fumed under the glass lamp shades" (Morley 4-5).