I read this for the seminar at Stags Leap Wine Cellars. Unfortunately, I think I’m a little out of practice in seminar or maybe I was always that way and just don’t remember. Anyway, I noticed myself thinking that we were approaching the book in the wrong way. I tried to articulate my concerns but they came out all wrong: I said maybe we shouldn’t take the play so seriously but my comment was interpreted to mean that it wasn’t worth analyzing. That’s not really what I meant.

Fifteen years away from the Program gave me some sense of how transparent the ideological underpinnings are for some people. Someone actually brought up Plato’s divided line. I feel like someone brought up that metaphor in every darn seminar! I felt like taunting that guy and saying, “No! Shakespeare was not thinking of Plato’s divided line when he wrote As You Like It.”

Another person brought up Plato’s noble lie (was I in the wrong seminar?) and said that most of the problems in the world were caused by people of lesser quality (or some similar elitist description) having power. Did I not notice this kind of elitism when I was at St. John’s or was I just lucky enough to have seminar with a more democratically-minded group?