Laura Bates offered herself to teach Shakespeare in the maximum security section of a prison in the state of Indiana. What resulted was that the inmates liked the English writer.
Bates decided to share its experience in her book “Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years of Solitary with the Bard. Interviewed by Michael Martin of NRP news, Bates shares the central idea of teaching Shakespeare in a maximum security prison. Bates comments that for many inmates was easy to make sense of some passages of Shakespeare’s works because they had lived something similar or could relate to. Something that scholars found complicated to relate with.
Bates sets the example of “Macbeth”, in which the prisoners related to the story for the inner struggle of the main character and their personal situations. When prisoners got into Macbeth character, that helped them to got inside their own characters.
