Shakespeare Saved My Life

Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard is a 2013 memoir from Laura Bates about her experience teaching the works of Shakespeare to prison inmates. It focuses in particular on the story of prisoner Larry Newton, who responds profoundly to her literature lessons. Eventually, Newton helps Bates to put together prison workbooks on Shakespeare—becoming a peer to her on the subject.

The book is structured like a workbook itself, showcasing the lessons Bates learned from her work, the responses prisoners had to her teachings, and the universal implications of Shakespeare’s plays. She uses deliberate quotes from his plays to illustrate certain anecdotes or lessons learned.

Most of the story takes place in Indiana prisons. Bates’s program gets its start when she is teaching freshman-level English classes for prisoners in the general population. She learns, however, that no education programs were available for prisoners in the restricted supermax unit. Bates knows that she wants to be the first to bring supermax prisoners an education—that perhaps they are the ones who need it the most.



With help from the warden, Bates talks her way into access to those restricted prisoners, often thought of as “the worst of the worst,” to begin a voluntary program teaching them the works of Shakespeare. She chooses plays that she believes might speak to them: for instance, Macbeth, which deals with violence, guilt, and war. There’s also Romeo and Juliet, which, as Bates points out, is not only about teen romance but also about teen violence and anger. Romeo kills multiple people over the course of the play.

Over time, Bates begins to develop a friendship with one prisoner in particular: Larry Newton. Newton has a reputation: he is a convicted murderer and has spent much of his life beyond bars for various offences. He is serving a sentence of life without parole. He is a violent prisoner and has spent years in segregation and solitary confinement for his dangerous actions.

But when Newton attended the Shakespeare classes, Bates saw not a hardened criminal but an intelligent literary scholar, someone whose insights into the plays surprised her. She writes that she “had never heard such an enthusiastic Shakespearean discussion in any college class.” Though Bates fought for her educational program, she never expected to meet a mind like Newton’s behind bars. She, too, was conditioned to expect much less than that from convicted criminals.



It is Larry’s life that Shakespeare saves; he tells Bates this. At first, she thinks he is joking, but he is serious. He tells her much later that he had been reaching a breaking point in solitary, so desperate for a way out that he contemplated suicide. When Bates came to him with her classes, Shakespeare offered something to do, something to think about and challenge himself with for the first time in years. Shakespeare did stop him from ending his life.

Bates points out that Larry’s situation is not unique. Shakespeare has helped some offenders turn their lives around. In doing so, they save not only their own lives, but those of their potential future victims had they continued down a criminal path.

Shakespeare’s insights into human nature and human behavior helped Bates’s prisoners understand themselves better. With that understanding came reflection, and in some cases a desire to do better and be better.



It isn’t possible for Larry to seek freedom. But he finds meaning in helping Bates to put together workbooks on Shakespeare and his life. As the program goes on over the years, both teacher and student evolve. Guards notice the change in Bates, the lack of violent behavior from him, and admit that they’re impressed at what a little Shakespeare can do. Shakespeare’s works, for Newton, help to remind him of his own humanity.

But all’s not well that ends well. Bates experiences setbacks along the way, and not every Shakespeare student undergoes so dramatic a transformation. Worse, just as the Shakespeare program achieves national recognition, the state of Indiana cuts off funding for prisoner education. Bates’ program is a volunteer one, so her funding cannot be cut, but the irony isn’t lost on her. She notes that this last twist is “the true tragedy behind many stories of crime and punishment.”

Shakespeare Saved My Life received widespread positive reviews and publicity from critics. Publisher’s Weekly called the book “gratifying” and “effective,” while Kirkus called it “an eye-opening study reiterating the perennial power of books.” Bates’ program continues to flourish, and she has begun to inspire other teachers to bring their own programs to prisoners.