To the Editor:
Re “Make Shakespeare Soiled Once more,” by Drew Lichtenberg (Opinion visitor essay, Aug. 14):
I really feel sorry for college kids in Florida. Shakespeare has been revered throughout the globe for his wit, his wordsmithy and his deep understanding of human nature.
Because of Gov. Ron DeSantis, it appears that evidently the celebration, appreciation and lamentation of the human situation in its entirety, which is what has made Shakespeare final all these centuries, could also be faraway from what’s offered to Florida college students. What an mental and cultural crime!
The Elizabethans didn’t dwell lengthy by our requirements, falling prey to illness and poor sanitation, however they loved life as seen within the flourishing of the humanities within the English Renaissance, which included the bawdy sexual innuendo and bodily-fluid humor in addition to rapturous poetry and mellifluous madrigals. Shakespeare has captured this spirit as no different has to this point.
I’m an English trainer, and my favourite a part of the curriculum I educate is watching my college students get the double entendre and puns (with a little bit steering) of the spicier wordplay and conditions in addition to watching them moved by characters’ struggles and victories within the Shakespeare performs that we examine in full.
My college students are 13 and 14 years outdated. They’re neither shocked nor offended. They encounter a lot saltier language and pictures on TikTok.
Jean Gilroy
Pleasantville, N.Y.
To the Editor:
Towards the backdrop of Florida’s newest efforts to censor faculty readings, Drew Lichtenberg brilliantly argues why Shakespeare’s performs have to be learn of their entirety, not taught solely in excerpts as some Florida faculty districts are actually pushing for.
It’s an argument that college students, even probably the most recalcitrant ones, may truly like. Too many college students through the years have suffered from uninteresting classroom evaluation of Shakespeare’s performs, resorting to CliffsNotes moderately than savoring the language and bawdiness that Dr. Lichtenberg so deliciously parses for us and insists is central to understanding the Bard’s genius.
Cathy Bernard
New York
The author is a retired affiliate professor of English on the New York Institute of Expertise.
To the Editor:
It seems that Gov. Ron DeSantis’s initiative proscribing what Florida public faculty college students can learn, see or hear of their programs goes one higher than that of Thomas Bowdler, an Englishman who revealed an expurgated version of Shakespeare’s works referred to as “The Household Shakespeare” in 1807.
Bowdler and his sister Henrietta boasted that they’d added “not a single line” to the originals, however “endeavoured to take away something that would give simply offence to the virtuous and spiritual thoughts.”
The noun “bowdlerization” is now a pejorative time period referring to the act of purging from creative or written works something deemed offensive by the censor’s requirements.
Readers of “The Household Shakespeare” had been left with performs considerably resembling the originals (“not a single line” added), albeit ones robbed of their vitality.
In distinction, Florida college students are being left with solely “excerpts” from the performs, so crumbs solely. Furthermore, Mr. DeSantis’s initiatives are a lot broader than these involving instructional requirements. On this context, “DeSanitization” could maybe turn into a pejorative time period referring to such broad initiatives, autocratic all.
Robert E. Lehrer
Chicago
To the Editor:
Within the mid-Nineteen Nineties I used to be an actor at American Gamers Theater in Spring Inexperienced, Wis. One of many exhibits that 12 months was “Romeo and Juliet,” a play that I used to be not performing in.
I went to opening night time, and when the play ended two older girls in entrance of me sighed. One turned to the opposite and stated: “I don’t know why they’d so as to add all that sexual discuss. Can’t they simply do Shakespeare the way in which he wrote it?”
You possibly can’t make these things up.
Bradford Farwell
Seattle
Threats to Democracy, in Israel and Elsewhere
To the Editor:
Re “Girls Fear as Israel’s Far Proper Pushes Intercourse Segregation” (entrance web page, Aug. 13):
Having spent practically all of my skilled life working for Jewish organizations on behalf of Israel and Soviet Jews, I, like many American Jews, am now disheartened about Israel’s encroachment on girls’s rights.
The subjugation of girls in Israel is gaining floor — in worship, regulation, on a regular basis commerce and younger folks’s schooling.
Israel is the recipient of not solely American authorities monetary help but additionally tens of millions of {dollars} from American Jews who assist Israeli faculties, hospitals and the Israeli authorities.
How lengthy, nevertheless, will this assist proceed? Who needs to assist a rustic that subjugates girls? Didn’t we already undergo this in the US?
Go searching, Israel, and see who received that wrestle! We stand tall and proud in assist of Israeli girls.
Sheila Levin
Bronx
To the Editor:
I’m an 87-year-old man, a Jew and a local of Argentina.
It seems to be as if earlier than I depart from this world issues will likely be getting worse.
In Israel, the risk to democracy seems imminent and should turn into inevitable.
In Argentina, the financial and social chaos is nicely established and seems irreversible.
In Poland, the nation of my mother and father, there may be now an autocracy and it seems everlasting.
In the US, my adopted nation, it seems that there’s a actual risk that we could fall into disarray and dysfunction.
I share my ache with tens of millions of others who’ve wished for a greater world for our youngsters.
David S. Cantor
Los Angeles
Our Flawed System
To the Editor:
Re “What Trump’s Indictment Reveals,” by Jamelle Bouie (column, Aug. 6), which discusses the issues of our electoral system:
Mr. Bouie’s evaluation is, as standard, insightful and spot on, although his prescription is as fanciful because the underlying downside is deep-rooted: “If we really hope to keep away from one other Jan. 6, or one thing worse, now we have to cope with our undemocratic system as a lot as we do with the perpetrators of that specific incident.”
Sure, however how? Constitutional modification? Bipartisan laws? A bewitching nostril wiggle? The primary two options are unrealistic since they might be blocked by those that profit from (and more and more rely on) a much less “good union.”
Dan Stone
Centerport, N.Y.
Keep in mind the Toddler within the Automotive Seat
To the Editor:
Re “Expertise Can Save Youngsters in Sizzling Automobiles. It Isn’t Mandated” (entrance web page, Aug. 11):
The second sentence of your headline ought to learn, “It Isn’t Wanted.” There’s a shockingly low-tech answer that may be applied instantly.
Merely connect an extended strap from the underside of the toddler automotive seat that snakes beneath the driving force’s seat and attaches to the higher arm of the driving force. The strap needs to be lengthy sufficient that it doesn’t impede the driving force nor pose a choking hazard to the toddler (because it attaches to the underside of the seat).
The driving force can not exit the automotive with out eradicating the strap and, feeling the restraint, recall, “Ah, sure, child within the again.” Value: Possibly $10.
Downside: It requires that the father or mother present mindfulness each in securing their toddler and in exiting their car.
Sharon R. Kahn
New York
