Monday, May 1, 2017, 11:30 AM – 1 PM EDT

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT:
A Substitute (of Sorts) for Sam Dixon and the Story of Spivey Hall

Gretchen Schulz, Professor of English Emerita, Oxford College of Emory University

Because Sam Dixon has been forced to cancel his presentation at our Lunch Colloquium this coming Monday, May 1, Gretchen has volunteered to present on her favorite topic, a topic never more timely than now, when Emory is concluding the extensive programming with which the University has celebrated “The Year of Shakespeare,” programming scheduled in support of the visit of the First Folio to our campus, our city, our state.  Given the date of this Colloquium, she considered offering something appropriate to “the merry month of May.”  But given Emeritus College plans for a group visit to the Shakespeare Tavern to see their production of Richard III sometime in June (with the director of that production set to speak at a Colloquium soon thereafter), she has decided to do something decidedly UNmerry.  Here’s her title and a brief description of the talk (first offered to a conference of interdisciplinarians a couple of years ago).

“Something wicked this way comes”:  The Problem of Evil in Shakespeare’s Plays

There is much talk today about “wicked problems,” problems so complex they require interdisciplinary solutions. But, of course, such problems have been around for a long time, with our greatest artists among those attempting to deal with them, not least the problem that may be the “wickedest” of all, the problem of wickedness itself, the problem of evil.  Shakespeare’s greatest villains and the plays they inhabit address this problem, raising questions about the nature of human nature and suggesting answers from a variety of perspectives that deserve designation as “interdisciplinary.” I will discuss how Shakespeare “anatomizes” the “hard hearts” of his villains in Richard III, Othello, Macbeth, and King Lear—positing (and portraying) causes (possible causes) for their behaviors that might well be labeled theological, psychological, sociological, and even biological (if we were to use the labels we use today when discussing the evil characters we find in our own midst—and in our own drama—Frank Underwood and his real-life counterparts anybody?).