(Richard Ouzounian’s article appeared in Waterloo Region Record, 9/12.)
Camille Paglia readily agrees with William Shakespeare that "all the world's a stage": she just wants to be the director.
"When I was in 4th grade, I directed a production of 'Hamlet' with my friends," recalls the outspoken, dissident feminist scholar and author from her office in Philadelphia. "I had a perfect Hamlet, a boy with blond hair; I had plastic fencing foils; I thought I was all set. But it was a fiasco. Nobody knew their lines."
There won't be any worries of that happening on Sept. 20 when she takes to the Studio Theatre at the Stratford Festival for a Forum event called The Dark Women of Shakespeare.
Paglia will talk about "the whole issue of misogyny in Shakespeare, real and imaginary."
"They had spoken to me about this as a problem of interpretation in Shakespeare's plays. They were finding how resentful an audience with generally liberal, supposedly feminist views, found a lot of the material.