You’re not waiting for “Intellectuals” to start a Shakespeare reading group with, are you?

Did you start your Shakespeare reading group yet? Let us know how it's going!

If you haven't started one yet, what's stopping you?

Sometimes people say to me, “Oh, I don't have any friends who are intellectual enough to want to read Shakespeare!” That's the sad thing that has happened to Shakespeare in the past 75 years—what used to be a regular part of the family reading circle in the evenings or an important social gathering outside of work or the home is now perceived as something that only supposed “intellectuals” would indulge in.

But think of the latest movement in Shakespeare outreach—to prisons, including maximum security prisons. Not many of those prisoners would call themselves intellectuals, yet they dive in with a purpose and determination that profoundly impacts not only their own lives but the lives around them. Check out the iReadShakespeare.org page on Useful Books to discover two books about Shakespeare in prisons—one in a supermax facility in Indiana, and a subversive group that read Shakespeare on Robben Island, South Africa.

If that's not stopping you, what is? Let me know in the Comments below!