HOW WE DO IT
American Friends supports the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust (“SBT”) in programs and projects to preserve Shakespeare’s heritage in Stratford-upon-Avon, U. K. We seek to enhance educational opportunities for American students and faculty to study in the birthplace of William Shakespeare with the world’s preeminent scholars.
American Friends’ primary objective is to work with schools and organizations in the United States to promote studies in Shakespeare’s life, work and times. Since 1999, American Friends has enabled 28 undergraduate and graduate students to study at The Shakespeare Centre and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Stratford-upon-Avon, U. K.
Our aim is to introduce American high school students to the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust where they will learn about Shakespeare’s works, visit the area where he and his family lived, and become familiar with the bard through first hand knowledge of text and stage.
Lakeside School, Seattle, WA launched our high school program in 2010; within two years 84 students participated in a Shakespeare Course in Stratford-upon-Avon, UK
“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him;
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones,
So let it be with Caesar … The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answered it …
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest,
(For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all; all honourable men)
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral …
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man….
He hath brought many captives home to Rome,
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then to mourn for him?
O judgement! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason…. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me”