Another Featured Member:

Emily Ehm spent most of her life as the Average Shakespeare Fan. Of course, New York City schools did study Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar (surprise!), and she was an English major in college. During the 12 years she taught the eighth grade in Illinois, the subject was not at the top of the agenda in her class. (If only she had met Rafe Esquith!) 

Of course she and Roger did go to Shakespeare’s plays, especially after Chicago built a beautiful lakefront facility dedicated to his works. And she spent two weeks at Oxford studying the Bard (and drinking ale in pubs). But, alas, an English major did not a Shakespearean scholar make. It made a grammarian. And after changing her profession, her subsequent career as an editor entailed more computer study than sonnets.

Fifteen years ago she and Roger joined Chicago’s Roosevelt University’s program called the “Institute for Continued Learning.” Rather like Emeritus College here, ICL caters to those over 55 years of age. Members join and also some of them teach various classes. It meets for three semesters over the year.

It then became Emily’s ambition and the ambition of her study groups to read all the plays aloud, word by word, and to study the eras of the historical plays and the Elizabethan time itself. Every semester three times a year twenty-five adults signed up to study a specific play two hours a week for nine weeks. As each act was mastered, the class would study it on film or listen to a recording and finally go to the complete play itself. This reading-study process generally took 16 hours for each play. But at the end of this process of study, each line was understood and appreciated. We could laugh at the jokes in the comedies and even understand the War of the Roses (gasp).

Field trips were arranged for each play. One time the class even went as far as Stratford, Canada, a town very much like Ashland, where the plays are professionally performed by excellent actors. Did the group actually read all the plays? No, Emily moved to Rossmoor two-thirds of the way through the process. (So much for The Two Noble Kinsmen.)

This teaching experience convinced her that the average person can enjoy Shakespeare very much, an attitude she learned by reading Harold Bloom’s book Shakespeare, the Invention of the Human. There is real danger that WS will belong only to the elite and the smug. Even poor readers can enjoy him if the process of study is open and non-threatening.

And where is her photograph, so often requested by our president?  I’m happy to report there is a splendid likeness of her right eye as she stands next to Roger at the Valley Shakespeare Festival in Livermore the night we saw All’s Well That Ends Well. [Picture is at bottom of MEMBERS page. A much better picture of our vice-president can also be found on the ABOUT US page. Emily is the officer all the way on the right.]