Beauty of Shakespeare through the Keables Chair

From A Midsummer Night’s Dream to Hamlet to Romeo & Juliet, the intelligence and beauty of William Shakespeare’s works were revered and reflected upon during the two-week teaching residency of 2009 Keables Chairholder Dr. Peter Saccio.

Saccio, the  Leon D. Black Professor of Shakespearean Studies at Dartmouth College, visited classes, held a public lecture, and met with faculty from January 25 to February 6. He inspired students to delve into Shakepeare’s sonnets and plays, characters and culture. He shared his rich background on the world’s literary giant.

“There is an emotional complexity to William Shakespeare that is less easily understood and appreciated than the more academic aspects of his work,” Saccio told an ‘Iolani Shakespeare class as they studied a scene from Henry V.

Students did more than just study the Bard. They immersed themselves in great writing and toiled with the depth of his characters.

In tenth grade English classes, students compared Shakespeare’s vast vocabulary of over 10,000 words to that of the King James Bible’s 4,000 and noted both the sublime and the absurd sides of young love.

To Advanced Placement English students, Saccio led discussions on Hamlet, tracing the surprises in action and verse that add immediacy and a human effect to the play.

Going to War In Shakespeare was the topic of his public lecture on February 4 in Seto Hall. Saccio detailed Shakespeare’s kings and their approaches to battle, focusing on Henry V. The audience viewed the same scene from two different film versions of Henry V, the 1944 film by Laurence Olivier and another produced in 1989 by Kenneth Branagh. The first had a light-hearted, comedic approach, while the second was brooding and pensive.

Saccio also taught Advanced Theater, British Literature, Women in Literature and other English classes and spoke in chapel. Thanks to the generosity of Keables Chair supporters, ‘Iolani is able to bring an educator of Saccio’s caliber to campus.

Saccio has taught at Darmouth since 1966 and has been honored with the J. Kenneth Huntington Memorial Award for Outstanding Teaching. He earned his doctorate from Princeton University and has served as a visiting professor at Wesleyan University and at University College in London.

He is also the author of Shakespeare’s English Kings and is the editor of Thomas Middleton’s comedy “A Mad World, My Masters” for the Oxford Complete Works of Thomas Middleton.

“To an Ivy league professor in the Northeast in January, the Keables Chair is a dream come true,” Saccio said during a reception in his honor.

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