The Early Modern Commons

Thinking in Arden

Recent Posts

On Juliet, matrons, and apostrophe

19 December 2020

“Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds, / Toward Phoebus’ lodging; such a waggoner / As Phaeton would whip you to the west, / And bring in cloudy night immediately.”...

on “voluntary exile”

1 April 2020

Here’s what I’m thinking about, on my first day of virtual classes, seeing my students and yet not seeing them – or only seeing them, I suppose, when that word “seeing”...

Notes on four words in Twelfth Night

12 September 2017

[I wrote this a few weeks ago, and have been meaning to come back and edit it since then: to tamp down on some of the more effusive enthusiasm, to prune some of the more indulgent sentences....

What does the Prologue say?

15 March 2016

I taught Romeo and Juliet again this fall in ninth-grade English, after a bit of internal argument: should I choose a different play? Was I in danger of “phoning in” my...