Shakespeare Saved My Life Read online

  Why? There was no new write-up, not even a charge or a hearing. He was designated A/S (Administrative Segregation), despite having no apparent justification for segregated incarceration. Although it seemed unfair, I was at least relieved that he was out of the disciplinary cell house, because it was comprised solely of prisoners serving disciplinary time for a current offense, and, as such, Larry would be surrounded by some pretty negative peer pressure. Furthermore, I assumed that now that he was back on my original turf of the SHU, I would be able to see him at any time, that he would be able to lead the program there.

  To my surprise, he was not allowed access to the program, nor was I allowed access to him. When I asked why, I was told that it was “confidential” information—something I had never been told about any prisoner before. Being only a volunteer at the facility, I had to accept that and recognize that—as Larry so often liked to say—“it is what it is.” And so it was that Larry had to sit idle in his cell, even though he was just down the hall from my weekly segregated Shakespeare group. In fact, he was right back where I used to meet with him every week when I started the program six years prior.

  CHAPTER 68

  Remembering the Victims

  Although he was sitting in a segregation cell, Larry’s influence continued to guide the Shakespeare program: “This is not just a compilation of great stories,” Larry had told the audience at the last performance. “It is a tool that we can use to change people’s lives.” As a follow-up to the Romeo and Juliet project, in which they used classic literature to try to help contemporary at-risk teens, the Shakespeare groups in population and in segregation wanted to reach out to another population in need. One member balked at the idea: “Aw, man,” he said. “I’m sick of tragedy. Can’t we do a comedy for a change?” Another member suggested they reach out to victims of crime, specifically women who have suffered from domestic violence. The choice was obvious: Shakespeare’s comedy about domestic abuse, The Taming of the Shrew.

  Larry’s earlier workbooks asked prisoners to reflect on whether they feel remorse or regret for the crimes they have committed. Regret suggests a concern for yourself: “I’m sorry I got caught because I’m sorry I’m in prison,” whereas remorse is driven by a concern for the victim: “I’m sorry I did that because I’m sorry he’s dead.” Or sorry that she’s hurt.

  When Larry was in the disciplinary cell house, prior to being transferred back to the SHU, I asked the superintendent to allow him to write another workbook, on The Taming of the Shrew. Larry dutifully submitted pages every week through the superintendent’s office. True to form, he found great significance in passages often overlooked by scholars and theater professionals. Shakespeare’s play opens with two short scenes that provide a framework for the play-within-a-play that is performed for the entertainment of a drunken bum who is literally picked up by a “lord” and made to believe he is, in fact, a wealthy man himself. These “induction” scenes are usually cut in performances of the play, and many scholars have found them to be meaningless distractions from the main plot.

  Larry disagreed: “Arguably the most important element of this play is the Lord’s social experiment! Do you remember the Eddie Murphy movie Trading Places? A couple of modern-day lords make a bet on whether or not a change in circumstances could change Murphy’s tendencies. Would he return to a life of crime or excel in his new privileged life? That is what we have here, only four hundred years earlier. And the Lord is right! A person can be completely changed if the world around him is reshaped.”

  While Larry was writing the workbook, I was meeting with a group of incarcerated women who had been victims of domestic violence. They shared their stories, which I brought to the men in order to give them an understanding of this issue from the victim’s perspective. The process began with me reading to the women a letter written by the men:

  Dear Sister,

  The abuse that you’ve experienced in your life was not your fault. You didn’t deserve it. You don’t deserve for any harm to ever come your way… I just want you to know that I care. You are the essence of life, a harmonious display of nature’s divine beauty. You are priceless and blessed. The struggles in life are nothing more than a test. After every dark night always comes a brighter day. We greatly appreciate you helping us to become better men during this process. We thank you for giving us a response to these very personal questions.

  A list of twenty questions followed. Some of them were:

  Which do you believe is worse: mental, physical, sexual, or psychological abuse?

  “Mental,” the women answer unanimously. “The pain from physical abuse heals.”

  What is love?

  “Caring, respect, honesty. Listening, being there.”

  “Not hurting, not hitting, not molesting. Love is not pain.”

  “When two people can trust, depend on, and honor each other through all of life’s trials and tribulations.”

  “I’ve never known it.”

  If you could change one thing about the men in your life, what would it be? (You can use extra paper, if you need it.)

  “That they could love someone without hurting them.”

  “Their ability to listen.

  “Talk things out instead of fighting.”

  “That he would learn to love himself and see his self-worth.”

  What would you say if you felt safe enough to say it?

  “I love you, but you are making me hate you.”

  “You are making me miserable, but I’m too scared to leave.”

  “Please see me as an equal. My feelings count.”

  “You need help.”

  “Bye!”

  These dialogues continued, back and forth, for nearly a year. It was a powerful experience for both groups. The women felt like they were being heard for the first time, and the men were beginning to see how their actions have affected people in their own lives. They recalled the victims of their crimes, as well as the girlfriends, wives, mothers, and sisters they had hurt, whether physically or emotionally. Hearing from one another, through my mediated messages, both the women and the men working on this project often broke down in tears. I felt privileged to be permitted to observe such personal and profound experiences. I also felt fortunate, after listening to the most horrific stories of abuse, to be able to return home to my loving husband.

  “This is a groundbreaking endeavor for the facility,” the superintendent proudly told the media in an interview.

  But as we prepared for the performance of the play adaptation that the men had written in collaboration with the women, anxieties among the members of the drama group ran deeper than usual. They were less focused, less disciplined than ever before. And nothing I could do seemed to help. I knew that what they needed was an internal leader, a peer who could motivate them like no outsider ever could. After several stressful weeks, one member voiced what had been on everyone’s minds: “We need Larry.”

  CHAPTER 69

  Full Circle

  Mr. Newton!”

  I was standing outside of Larry’s SHU cell, wearing a bulletproof vest to talk through a pegboard steel door with someone I had sat with alone in an unsupervised room for the past several years. It felt surreal. But I was pleased to see that he was not sleeping or watching TV, like most of his neighbors. He had his light on—and he was reading his Shakespeare book.

  “Yes!” he replied, jumping up and coming to the cell door. One more time, I was impressed with his respectful demeanor toward the officer that he assumed was at his door, calling him by his last name. Instead, who he found standing on the other side of that familiar pegboard cell door was his Shakespeare professor.

  “Oh, man,” he said with a wide grin. “I don’t believe you!”

  We weren’t permitted face-to-face sessions, and this brief “house call” was unofficial, but we were eventually allowed to have video visits, in which we communicated via real-time video hookup while sitting in two different areas of the SHU building.
The assistant superintendent also encouraged us to continue our work through correspondence. I saw that as an opportunity for Larry not only to stay positively focused, but also to demonstrate to the administration that he was serious about this work and, in so doing, earn the right to return to the program. He was serious. He sent at least twenty pages every week, never missing a week.

  (Photo credit: Indiana State University)

  CHAPTER 70

  Tragic Kingdom

  The cell phone was never proven to have been Larry’s (his cell mate submitted a statement swearing that it had been his, not Larry’s), but as a result of the possession charge, Larry spent six months in the disciplinary cell house in general population, while the Shakespeare group prepared their performance of The Taming of the Shrew. After that, he spent another six months in the SHU, without a conviction or even a hearing on any charge. He spent that time not sulking or fuming, but writing another workbook, the most ambitious of all, covering all nine of Shakespeare’s history plays: Richard the Second; Henry the Fourth Part One and Part Two; Henry the Fifth; Henry the Sixth Part One, Part Two, and Part Three; Richard the Third; and Henry the Eighth. Arguably the most difficult plays in the collection, they are rarely read by students and infrequently examined by scholars. At sixty thousand words, Larry’s workbook was longer than my PhD dissertation. And, in one important respect, it was also better. Doctoral dissertations are a composite of others’ ideas, with footnoted material almost as long as the text itself. In Larry’s work, all sixty thousand words represented his own original thinking on these plays, without the crutch of professional scholars’ writing.

  He began with the observation: “Sitting there on your bunk, you may find it difficult to relate to a king sitting on a throne. But we are all the same people, just in different places.”

  Like King Richard the Second, imprisoned in a windowless concrete isolation cell, Larry sought to “people [his] little world” with his own thoughts, as he studied how he might compare kings from English history with his world of contemporary convicts. Imprisoned in isolation cells, the prisoners incarcerated in the nation’s many segregated units were the intended audience for this book. Segregation can have detrimental psychological effects on the prisoner that can foster resentment and hostility that inspire further criminal activity. Or it can offer an unprecedented opportunity for intellectual activity, introspective reflection, and personal growth. Such positive outcomes could be further enhanced by the use of this workbook, written as an advanced course to follow our previous workbooks.

  All of these books follow our mission to use the classic plays of Shakespeare to provide incarcerated—and most especially, segregated—readers with an intellectual exercise that can also raise life-changing questions. As readers engage in an analysis of Shakespeare’s characters, they cannot help but engage in an analysis of their own character, motivations, and objectives. In this advanced course, we challenged the reader with deeper questions that examined the very core character of a man, whether he is a king or a convict; questions that could indeed change a prisoner’s life—even while he is incarcerated in a windowless concrete isolation cell.

  King Richard the Second relates to prisoners in several ways, beginning with his obvious uncanny depiction of a supermax solitude. Of great interest also is when Richard says, “Throw away respect, tradition, form and ceremonious duty, for you have but mistook me all this while: I live with bread like you, feel want, taste grief, need friends: subjected thus, how can you say to me I am a king?” It is that relation to normal that we need to restore in the convict! The convict may not sit on a throne, but he shares the same affliction with Richard. Everyone treats Richard as a king, until he is no longer Richard. He sees himself as nothing but the role, the position. The convict eventually loses himself as well and becomes nothing but the role, the position. Everyone treats the convict as a monster, until even he eventually accepts that he is a monster. But underneath is still the innate human desire to be normal. Convicts need to understand that they are not their deeds! They are not the roles that they are playing! They do not need to be defined by others’ perceptions. The best of men—kings—share the same human qualities with us.

  Richard the Second is our launching pad that brings convicts back to normalcy. Then we break the curse that they are defined by their deeds with Henry the Fourth. After that, we build in them the potential for greatness with Henry the Fifth. In Henry the Sixth, we teach them to keep that potential grounded in realistic options. And with Richard the Third, we show them that it is essential that they follow their intrinsic motivations. Richard the Third is the consequence of not being rewarded as one thinks he should be. He is the consequence of extrinsic motivation. We do not live in fantasy worlds, and adversity will always exist, especially when one has a history such as ours, but when we are intrinsically driven, as Henry the Eighth is, the adversities do not have breaking power!

  Larry’s interpretation of Shakespeare’s villain king is most startling of all:

  There is no mistaking that Richard the Third is a wicked man, but Richard is the rarest form of wicked because he simply wants to be loved!! Sound crazy? Well, it is, and it makes Richard one of Shakespeare’s most complicated characters. Long before the FBI or any of the great social scientists, Shakespeare understood the environment most productive to create a killer! Richard devoted himself, and spilled his blood, to make his brother king. And what has it all done for him? Nothing! He is still the monster of England! He is still a mere “crookback”! He is still shown no respect, no admiration, hell—no love, whatsoever! Until this very moment this man has been nothing less than a great son, a great brother, a great soldier, a great citizen, a great patriot—but not a single one of these qualities is identified with him. Instead, he is merely a crookback cursed by god to harvest evil. Well, if you tell a man he is something for long enough, he will become that. I was told all of my life that I would end up in prison—and sure enough, I did not disappoint.

  Richard has not given in to the suggestion that he is less than he wants to be, but we all have breaking points. Like Hamlet, Richard’s father has suffered a great dishonor, and just as the ghost of Hamlet’s father obligated Hamlet to revenge his dishonor, Richard’s father has obligated him to revenge: “My ashes, as the phoenix, may bring forth a bird that will revenge upon you all.” He was bred for revenge! Once he has revenged his father and his family, what is left for him? That’s right: to revenge his own dishonors. Who’s to blame for them? Yes, everyone!! How can you expect a man cultured for revenge not to revenge? The world has created him, and the world will suffer his revenge. The moral of Richard’s story is not to identify other Richards before they happen, but rather that inhumanity will only create greater inhumanity. Am I supposed to feel sympathy for what Richard will do for England? Well, I feel sympathy for what England has done to Richard!

  The workbook concludes with a final consideration:

  After our long investment in these plays, let’s not overlook how these kings compare to us. We are not monsters, and we are not saints, and yet we are both. We are much more similar to Henry the Eighth and like him we have to find a balance between satisfying our selfish impulses and considering the footprints we leave in other peoples’ lives. The world does not belong to us, and we have to figure out how to enjoy it within the confines of a society, if we are not doomed to continue reliving the nightmares that we have been. Much as Henry did regarding his marriage, we need to get sick of the “same ol’ thing.” The main question to leave this study with is: What will it take to get you to drag yourself out of your grave?

  The history plays workbook was truly a remarkable achievement, undertaken in the most challenging of conditions.

  And then, conditions got worse.

  (Photo credit: Indiana State University)

  CHAPTER 71

  “Stay Strong”

  I arrived at the prison on an especially cold and blustery day in January of 2010. Walking acro
ss the snow-covered prison yard toward the SHU building, it occurred to me that I was about to begin my second decade in solitary confinement. When would this ever end? How would it end? For the time being, I brushed those thoughts aside. I knew that we still had work to do—important work.

  I was expecting to have another video visit with Larry, as arranged by the assistant superintendent. At his request, Larry and I were preparing an entirely new program that would bring Shakespeare to the most difficult population in the prison: the SNU (Special Needs Unit). The criminally insane. The one unit that my husband—and even Larry—cautioned me about. Despite their concerns, I was optimistic. I took a full day off from my campus commitments to meet with the director of the SNU, as well as the officers and psychiatrists and even some of the prisoners of the unit. Everyone enthused about the materials that Larry and I had developed thus far. They were so committed to our impending program that they had posted an announcement and sign-up sheet in the cell house. Even though I had to admit that working in that unit would be risky, I felt confident that this monumental endeavor, undertaken on behalf of the facility, would finally earn Larry the right to return to general population.

  So imagine my surprise when I arrived at the SHU and the secretary informed me that “Offender Newton was transferred.”

  I might have asked, “When?” I should have asked, “Why?” Instead, I asked, “To where?”

  Larry believed that he would never be sent back to the other supermax at Westville Correctional Facility in Michigan City because of his two escape attempts. But he was. Again I asked why, and again I was told that the information was “confidential.” As an outsider, I cannot assume to understand the complex workings of the criminal justice system, but it did strike me as risky to send a prisoner back to a facility from which he had had two successful escape attempts. Furthermore, the unit manager who had been in charge during his escape attempts of twelve years earlier was snatched up from his position down-state and sent back to Westville. What kind of treatment could Larry expect in his hands? This manager knew nothing of our Shakespeare program or of the good work that Larry had done for the past eight years. He knew only what a problem Larry had been twelve years ago, and this was his long-awaited chance for revenge—ironically, to be inflicted on the very prisoner who had spent years turning prisoners away from their impulses toward revenge!