Shakespeare and Me
Mike has published over 100 books, articles, and reviews about William Shakespeare. He is best known for writing about Shakespeare and performance, especially screen and radio productions, Shakespeare in the comics, his annual review of Shakespeare performances in Oregon's Rogue Valley, and for his "Talking Books" column, about which there is more below. Mike co-taught Shakespeare as a guest in two continuing studies classes at Stanford University, to undergraduates at Southern Oregon University in Ashland, Oregon, and lectured about Shakespeare at Southern Oregon University, the Wooden O Symposium in Cedar City, Utah, the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, California, at Wonder Con in San Francisco, and gave a little lecture tour in Southwest Oregon, and recently lectured about the impact of radio in growing both the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the town of Ashland at the Medford and Ashland libraries. His article "Forbidden Tempest" has been published three times. Mike is a contributor to the Non-Shakespearean Drama Database, which presents the facts about the other plays and playwrights of Shakespeare's time. He has written many papers for the Shakespeare Association of American seminars and sometimes leads these seminars.
Shakespeare Column
Mike has been a Contributing Editor for Shakespeare Newsletter since 2002. He writes the "Talking Books" column interviewing prominent Shakespeareans about important books on Shakespeare, his theater, and his times. He has interviewed dozens of the most prominent Shakespeareans of our day including Sir Stanley Wells, Sir Brian Vickers, Sir Jonathan Bate, Jill L. Levenson, Lois Potter, James Shapiro, Alan Dessen, and Tiffany Stern. He also consults as an unofficial member of the editorial board and sometimes writes articles and reviews and recruits articles and reviews from others in consultation with editor T. J. Moretti. Click here for the SNL website and to see some of Mike's work for free.
Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal
of Shakespeare and Appropriation
Mike guest-edited a special section about Service Shakespeare, meaning Shakespeare used in the service of different populations in need. Essays include using Shakespeare for cross-cultural education, a Shakespeare prison program, performing Shakespeare in an Alzheimer's support group, performing Shakespeare with French homeless actors and actors with other challenges, a high school Shakespeare competition, disabled access at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and a paper about using Shakespeare as a therapy in film. These essays and Mike's introduction are online. Click here for that link.
Recreational Shakespeare
Mike joined Jeffrey Kahan and Eric S. Mallin as a General Editor of the Recreational Shakespeare series of books published by Amsterdam University Press. Three books were published, Shakespeare and Superheroes by Kahan, The Battle of the Bard by Jensen, and Fictional Shakespeares and Portraits of Genius by Annalisa Castaldo. The concept behind the series is that most academic writing about Shakespeare is dry and does not reflect the joy audiences feel when seeing his plays. Jeff, Eric, and Mike wanted to create a series of books that are academically rigorous yet express the fun to be found in Shakespeare. Click here for the publisher's page about this series.
Jeffrey Kahan explores what Shakespeare and superheroes have in common, especially character types and plots, in Shakespeare and Superheroes. He talked about the origin of the series and his book on the New Books Network podcast.
Click here for Jeff's interview.
Annalisa Castaldo explores the different ways that writers of fiction and screenplays have conceived Shakespeare's "genius" in Fictional Shakespeare and Portraits of Genius. She talks about her book on the ARC Humanities website.
Click here for that interview.
Shakespeare and Charles Schulz
Mike wrote a paper about the ways Charles M. Schulz used Shakespeare in Peanuts and his other comic strip work for the "Quoting Shakespeare" seminar at the World Shakespeare Congress in England in 2016. In the first part of that year, he used the same research for a little lecture tour in Southwest Oregon. A longer version of the paper was published in Hogan's Alley #21, April 2017.
Click here to purchase a copy.
Shakespeare in Ashland
With originator Michael W. Shurgot, Mike co-taught the Shakespeare in Ashland class for a decade. Dr. Shurgot created the format of teaching plays about to be performed at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, seeing the plays, then discussing the performances in class. "Students" were mostly high school teachers getting personal improvement credits, though an increasing number of non-teachers joined the class in the later years. The class was discontinued when a new administration at the festival cut back the number of Shakespeare plays performed each year to two, which is not enough to provide material for the class. This also prevented Mike from working with his friend Sheila Cavanagh who would have taken over the class in 2020 had it not been for Covid. The class Facebook page was taken over by a spammer. Everyone is discouraged from consulting it.
Pitch a Play
Mike won the Poor Yorick "Pitch a Play" contest. Click here to see his entry.
Shakespeare Studies
The essays behind the links below were written to answer student questions or correct false impressions. They were originally posted on the course websites or used as handouts in classes.
Click here for "Two Images in Antony and Cleopatra"
Click here for "Facts About the 1935 Film Version of A Midsummer Night's Dream"
Click here for a series of National Inquirer type headlines about the real-life woman who became the lead character in the play The Roaring Girl
Click here for "Plot Holes in Twelfth Night"
Click here for "Love and Virginity in All's Well That Ends Well"
Old Interviews with Mike About Shakespeare
Mike has been interviewed about Shakespeare several times by different publications. Most of these are no longer available online, but one is. Click here for the ancient 2007 Almanac interview.
