Reading Shakespeare’s Mind: A Conversation with Steve Sohmer

**Philip Rowe** (0:09)
Welcome to The History Of European Theatre podcast, and thanks for joining me on this journey through millennia of theatrical history. Episode 216, Reading Shakespeare's Mind, A Conversation With Steve Sohmer.
For today's guest episode, I had the pleasure of talking to Steve Sohmer, author of a book titled Reading Shakespeare's Mind. In his book, Steve examines how Shakespeare's relationship with several contemporary authors is exposed in his plays. This involves a very close reading of the text and an endlessly inquiring mind, and it is fascinating to read through Steve's thought processes to understand the conclusions that he has come to. As I was preparing for this recording, which you will notice was made before I got into the recent episodes on the so-called problem plays, I saw that Steve had an extensive biography before he got into Shakespeare's study. So, rather than read through it here, I thought I would open our conversation by getting Steve to tell me about his working experience.
I spoke to Steve over Zoom from his home near Stratford-upon-Avon.

**Steve Sohmer** (1:16)
Well, I led my life backwards. I, instead of, you know, graduating from college and getting married and getting a job and having children and so on, and getting on with it, I quit school when I was in my junior year. I went to New York because I wanted to be a writer, a professional writer, and studied at Columbia. I had good luck to study with Stanley Kunitz. And from there, I went on to writing advertising, promotional materials, all kinds of professional work like that. And I wound up at head of advertising and promotion for CBS Television Network. And then I went, where did I go after that? I went to NBC.
And then I became president of Columbia Pictures.
So I was running a movie studio for the Coca Colas, who owned it in those days. And when I got fired from that job, I decided I would write and produce for television, which I did for a while. And I got bored with that. Finally, I came home from lunch one day and said to my then wife, I quit work today and I actually took my Rolodex and threw it in the wastebasket. So I really signed out. Oh my god, she said, what are you going to do? I think she was afraid that I was going to be staying home every day.
So I said, no, nothing to worry about. I'm going back to college.
So I went back to college and I did a Masters in Creative Writing at Boston University, which was very interesting and stimulating. But I had begun reading Shakespeare. And I asked my professor, Bill Carroll, how I could continue with my study of Shakespeare. He said, well, you either have to go to the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford or maybe you can go to Oxford. So I applied for both of these places, both wonderful places, by the way, except Stratford upon Avon is such a tiny town. I thought to myself, if I come to school here for two or three years, I'm certain to get in trouble. So I better not come here. I go to Oxford, which has all kinds of asexual recreations from punting to rugby and everything else. So I went and I did my masters and then a doctorate at Oxford.
And I had bought a little house in a Cotswold village called Shipton under Witchwood. When I came to the house for the first time, from the road signs, I could see that Stratford-upon-Avon was right up the road. And I thought, geez, I'm now living 22 miles from where William Shakespeare is buried. I think he's the greatest writer that ever was. I think, myself, I'm a writer. How come I don't know anything about him? So this made me intensively read the plays and then the commentaries on the plays. And then there are actually commentaries on commentaries. Many of them are articles in professional journals. And I read all this. I was reading all this stuff and I said to myself, by God, you know, most of what I'm reading here among these experts is wrong. I mean, it's just absolutely wrong. And most scholars, not to diminish scholars, some of them are absolutely great, but by golly, they've never written a play. I mean, they have no idea what it's like to physically actually write a play. And I thought to myself, there must be a better way to do this. And so I started writing Shakespeare criticism. And really, I completely backed into it. That it takes me five minutes to describe how I backed into it. But that's really how I got here.