It is unlikely that Romeo & Juliet would be part of the Christie curriculum, as it is pretty universally studied at the high school level, at least in the Ontario educational system.

Even so, that wouldn’t prevent the campus presentation of a performance of Shakespeare’s immortal play. Universities host such cultural offerings in an attempt to make students better rounded. I chose this play for my mythical Stratford Festival touring company to put on in the Christie Arts Centre because it is both one of my favorites as well as being in the public domain.

Since Romeo and Juliet is in the public domain, it wasn’t necessary to find a lawyer and enter negotiations before being able to quote from it. Since the story called for the play text to run concurrently with the action on the catwalk above the theatre, this was an important consideration.

MIT hosts the complete digitized works of Shakespeare online, which helps to both preserve and make them easily available to all.

Don Quixote mock-up of a book cover picturing a windmill

Christie English Curriculum

The Frosh English class that Amelia, Mouse and Eric are in is studying Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra’s novel ‘Don Quixote’

As often happens with classics in the public domain, this work has been format shifted to live theatre with the musical play “Man of la Mancha.” The original work is intended to be more comedic than the play, which I believe strives for sharper social commentary.

I gained some interesting insights into the story from Kelly Lynn Thomas’ From Amadis de Gaula to Don Quijote

If you’ve never read this book and are curious, this classic novel is one of many public domain works that have been digitized by Project Gutenberg. This fabulous volunteer organization which makes more than 100,000 digitized public domain books freely available worldwide, including Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra