St Rose Students Learn About ‘The Bard’

Nat Angstrom and Mike Racioppa from Shakespeare Productions in Waterbury asked St Rose of Lima Students on Thursday, February 10, what they know about William Shakespeare.

He was “an actor and a playwright who wrote over 30 plays,” said Mr Angstrom after students listed a few things that came to mind when the name Shakespeare was invoked.

Sometimes, as Mr Angstrom admitted, Shakespeare can be hard to relate to or understand, but, he continued, if the writing is broken down, the meaning falls together like a puzzle. Unmuzzle, for instance, means to talk. Wisdom refers to knowledge. And combined, “unmuzzle your wisdom,” as written in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, means to express your knowledge.

Mr Angstrom and Mr Racioppa also shared some similes and metaphors that can be found in Shakespeare’s works, along with explaining why personification is needed in most of Shakespeare’s plays. The students learned acting, in Shakespeare’s time, was done mostly on a bare stage, and other facts from the time period.

“In Elizabethan England,” said Mr Angstrom, “it was illegal for women to be on stage, so the men had to play all the women’s parts.”

Mr Angstrom and Mr Racioppa visited multiple classrooms during their time at St Rose of Lima School, performed a number of scenes from different works by Shakespeare, and taught student volunteers how to act in a Shakespeare play.