King Lear and Professor Tayler

Although at age 19 I had little understanding of Professor Tayler’s lectures on Shakespeare’s great tragedies, I knew enough to copy what he was saying as completely as I could. I recall him standing at the lectern, hovering over the yellowed pages of his notebook, held together by tape of various kinds. I recall the way he paused occasionally to look up from his notes, as if to see if we were still with him. When we reached King Lear after a year-long journey through three-quarters of Shakespeare’s plays, he seemed to change right before my eyes. As he read excerpts from the play–“pray you, undo this button”–and paused as tears welled in his eyes, Professor Tayler seemed to move a little slower, seemed to age right before my eyes.

The way this play touched him stayed with me, and when I had the opportunity, after five years of teaching high school, to take over the senior AP Literature course, I added King Lear to the syllabus. I went back to the notes I had taken, read through the fragments of ideas I had captured, and filled in the incomplete sentences with what seemed the logical conclusions. In places, though, I felt like the archaeologist who finds the fragmented tablet with the teasingly partial message that can only be speculated on.

In the end, I had to lead my classes with my own fragmented understanding, and we worked together to discover the meaning for ourselves. Still though, I can’t pick up King Lear without recalling vividly the days spent furiously scribbling as Professor Tayler impishly shared his knowledge of Shakespeare with a wry smile and a patience that I try to emulate every time I stand before a group of slightly distracted adolescents.