Do you like Shakespeare?

guidomerkinsrules said

I’d actually put Shakespeare (and most playwrights - August Wilson and Arthur Miller in particular) in history classes
To study Elizabethan era obviously - highlighting the contrast of learning through imagination vs learning through information-
But also to look at his takes on history and discuss unreliable narration and art as propaganda

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The last is a fair point, though one has to realize that artists were heavily under the eyes of censors in that era of history. Shakespeare wrote what he was allowed to write in his histories, even though I'm sure he knew some of it was quite inaccurate.

We in the opera world always try to make productions of Verdi's "Un ballo in maschera" closer to what he originally intended before the censors made him change everything from Sweden to Boston. The Italian government of his day absolutely refused to allow his opera to portray the assassination of a Swedish king, especially in the light of said king forgiving his killer, and all being "okay" in the end. They thought it was way too dangerous for the common people to see such a plot.