Guest column:

“O Cruel, irreligious piety!” cries the vengeful Gothic Queen Tamora in Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, as her eldest son is brutally sacrificed by Titus’ in thanks for his victory. It is a chilling moment, characteristic of Shakespeare’s rhetorical ability to turn a phrase and rend our hearts. The Bard was naturally gifted. But his gift was likely honed in rhetoric classes at the Stratford Grammar School where it is thought he studied.