"A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool. " -- William Shakespeare

I thought it was time that I wrote about our old friend, Bill Shakespeare. Shakespeare is regarded by many as one of the greatest writers ever. I happen to agree, but that is not to say that everyone on the planet agrees that Shakespeare is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

I have read the complete works of Shakespeare and I also own the leather bound edition from Barnes & Noble. I love Shakespeare and think that he is absolutely brilliant but there are people out there who believe that Shakespeare was a fraud or they just don’t like his writing at all. When I was talking to Dr. Almasy, we started talking about Shakespeare and why most schools, if not the majority of middle or senior high schools, make their students read Romeo & Juliet. I had to read it in middle school and in high school. Romeo & Juliet has probably one of the most warped themes and probably isn’t ‘suitable’ for kids to read. Dr. Almasy and I discussed how certain books get challenged or banned in the school setting but Shakespeare usually remains untouched, especially this story about the star-crossed lovers.

Romeo & Juliet is probably Shakespeare’s second most known play, next to Hamlet. It, along with Hamlet, is read in schools. In case you haven’t read Romeo & Juliet, I’ll give you little synopsis. The base of this story is about a boy and a girl who fall in love. The two kids happen to be the children of feuding families and they go against odds to be together. (I really hate telling the ending of things if people haven’t read it, but the term star-crossed lovers didn’t trigger something, then I can’t help you). At the end of the story, Juliet ends up faking her death so that she can be together with Romeo. Romeo finds out that she is dead, goes to see her and ends up killing himself. Juliet wakes up, sees that Romeo is dead, and kills herself.

People ban Huck Finn because of the ‘n-word’ but they don’t ban this because two people kill themselves because they can’t be together? To me, this seems a bit warped. Now, I don’t support book banning of any kind because, no matter how badly written the books is or the subject matter of the book, every book deserves to be read, but, if you’re going to ban something because children shouldn’t read it, Romeo & Juliet would be one that would be banned. If someone else had written it and it didn’t have the name Shakespeare attached to it, it would probably be banned.

I always hated reading this in class because we would have to read it out loud and we would be assigned parts. I always wanted to be Mercutio but I’d get stuck with Lady Capulet or Lady Montague or, god forbid, Juliet.

Shakespeare also wrote Hamlet, probably his most known play. Again, if it did not have the name Shakespeare attached to it; it would probably be banned in schools because of the content. But, it just goes to show you how powerful a name can be and how contradictory banning and challenging books can be.