whenever someone asks me to quote my favorite shakespeare, 'nothing in life became him like the leaving it' always springs to mind. lewis uses 'the dateless limit of thy dear exile' to illustrate the same thing. to me shakespeare was and is about the sentences and moments.

the character studies always bored me, (and my high school english classmates, without doubt -- lewis isn't wrong that the approach ruins shakespeare for thousands of kids every year). "do you think hamlet was right to treat ophelia the way he did? how would you feel if you were ophelia? what motives do you think hamlet might have for his cruel dismissal? jesus #!$%$% christ

i assume that stuff was dreamt up by some poor fool educator who was told he had to engage the kids with literature, and decided the self-insert route was the way to go. e.g. get the students to contrast hamlet/ophelia with their actual relationships, compare the reactions of the play's characters to the way they react to actual conversations. i suppose it could have worked, or maybe it did for some, but on the whole i pronounce it a failure

perhaps i'm being unfair? what do you think lil