Seven Shakespeare Comedies Seminar Course

A weekly seminar course led by Fr. Bob Sprott, OFM (scholar-in-residence)

Summertime.  It’s a time for travel, for light entertainment, and for taking it easy.  Nobody can take us farther afield and with more enjoyment than Shakespeare, and in these seven plays we will find ourselves in Renaissance Italy, ancient Greece, a corrupt and rancid city of Vienna, and a truly otherworldly kingdom on a small and invisible island in the Mediterranean.  The settings may be exotic and the action appalling or enchanting, but the destination is always the same, for Shakespeare is still our best guide to and through the labyrinth of the human heart.

?June 5   Introduction
June 12   The Taming of the Shrew
June 19   Love’s Labor’s Lost
June 26   A Midsummer Night’s Dream
July 3   NO CLASS
July 10   Much Ado About Nothing
July 17   As You Like It
July 24   Measure For Measure
July 31   The Tempest


Fr. Bob Sprott, OFM, is a member of the Order of the Friars Minor (Franciscans).  He holds a PhD in linguistics from the University of Chicago, and his work in ministry has led him to the American Southwest, working with Pueblo and Hispanic villages, the Canadian Arctic, working in the Diocese of Churchill-Hudson Bay, and Guatemala, teaching and providing spiritual direction at a minor seminary run by the Benedictine monks near the city of Quetzaltenango. In 2000 he returned to the U.S. and began ten years in Chicago, many of which were spent at St. Peter’s in the Loop. He has taught numerous adult education courses at the Newberry Library and at area parishes.