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Who will believe thee, Isabel? ~ Angelo in Measure for Measure, by William Shakespeare It is the fate of Woman tHat few blame a man if One seduces her. When her belly expands even due to rape, It’s true— some say she tempted the Lout untiL he gave in. SheContinue Reading

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Her ghost kept coming back to Hamlet maybe driving him mad as well who knows trailed by pale regret and her sad specter (haunted undersea dreams of the innocent drowned) his mist-thin love incapable of saving her but oh, her fair fey hair glistening, floating there lost love’s shudder risingContinue Reading

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The group of poems featured in Deep Overstock’s Shakespeare issue are part of a collection that developed as I read through the full catalogue of Shakespeare’s plays. The experience was a frustrating sensory thrill. I didn’t set out to focus on Shakespeare’s female characters; my favorite play is Coriolanus, inContinue Reading

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Romeo, I thought I knew you. You were a sap for pretty girls (or any girl, really), a little melodramatic, but sharp-witted, and also my best friend, the only one who always understood my puns, who always understood me. When you refused to fight, I thought I understood; Tybalt’s aContinue Reading

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language-less, a monster – Troilus and Cressida Athena loves Ulysses for his guile, Achilles for his prowess, does not love quiet Ajax, though he grows like a tree towards Olympus. What patron will visit Ajax in his tent at night and accompany the mammoth body, oiled and scraped, as itContinue Reading

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The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.An evil soul producing holy witnessIs like a villain with a smiling cheek. . . . Antonio in The Merchant of Venice Study history and see the way partisans associate rivals with the devil and themselves always with the divine. They can proclaimContinue Reading

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Oh, noblest of efforts by novices this spring evening not gone unnoticed. Such potent nouns summoned to play at names— monotony, tears, regret— & verb games: present tense, past tense, return present tense— with echoes of Romeo’s dawning sense; with deep down inside, inside my heart doubling the mind’s painContinue Reading

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Shall I go win my daughter to thy will? – Richard III I think of Elizabeth, Edward’s daughter, that pretty box for reconciling hopes. She never is onstage except in the mouths of those who bid on her. Here is a play with ghosts, two princes locked in a tower.Continue Reading

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Fair ones change their skins to change their songs. Dare you shed false love to mate true peer? Give your heart, as hard as art is long? Poor tunes assail you; still you say, play on! Finer melodies shall scale your ear. Fair ones change their skins to change theirContinue Reading