Why Shakespeare?
What is most apparent about Shakespeare is the language employed to tell these stories. It varies in its’ syntax, it is full of colorful, expressive and metaphorical language, more than everyday modern speech, and frequently employs rhetorical structures which we are more familiar with from sermons or speeches than conversation.
Ultimately, language cannot actually express the truth of experience but poetry uses many structures to attempt to get us closer to the feeling of experience. Metaphor, meter, and rhyme all activate parts of the brain that mimic the experience of the story.
Shakespeare’s stories are often the stories of war, the return from war, the veteran’s struggles to reconnect with civilian life. Using the special techniques we employ to connect veterans with the Shakespearean scenes, they find themselves on a 400 year old continuum of experience and not alone.
