Hating Mondays is almost universal, so many were disappointed when Halloween fell on a Monday this year. However, Robert Sawyer’s Shakespeare course made the best of it with a costume and pizza party.
Sawyer said this isn’t the first time he has held a Shakespeare-themed costume party for his class.
“We’ve done this on a semi-regular basis for the last nine years whenever Halloween is on a class day,” Sawyer said.
His reasoning behind having a costume day is to give his students a little mid-semester break.
“It can be really intense for students to do this Shakespeare course, so we try to do something fun and entertaining for them,” Sawyer said.
The tradition has led to a lot of fond memories for Sawyer. He even has a mug that he keeps on his desk which showcased a picture of a previous class all dressed up in Shakespearean garb.
Sawyer’s students really got into the Halloween spirit with the majority of the class dressing up in Shakespearian inspired outfits. The costumes ranged from Titania from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” to Hamlet; some students chose to dress up as characters from Christopher Marlowe’s “Doctor Faustus.”
One student, Coby Atwell, even used a pun as the inspiration for his costume.
“I dressed up as a bee to represent Hamlet’s ‘to be or not to be’ speech,” Atwell said.
At one point the chair of the Literature and Language Department, Katherine Weiss, dropped in to pass out candy and show off her own costume.
“Everyone looks so great!” Weiss said.
After passing around kit-kats and twix, Weiss let everyone know of other fun Halloween activities planned by members of the English department.
“The graduate students will be doing an all day scary story reading downstairs in Burleson today that’s open to anyone,” Weiss said.
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