But the fall of Bo and his family hardly rises to the level of Shakespearean tragedy.

In the media, comparisons to Esau s theft of Jacob s birthright and to various Shakespearean tragedies began to abound.

In short, Germany during the World Cup is reminiscent of a Shakespearean midsummer night s dream, with a touch of Woodstock to boot.

In 1958 his family relocated to Urbana, Illinois, and his father and mother became college professors in Shakespearean studies and mathematics education, respectively.

The first was Oxford Shakespearean scholar A. C. Bradley's 1911 essay, generally regarded as the starting point for the serious academic approach to Jane Austen .

One example of this challenge is his Holy Sonnet X, Death Be Not Proud, from which come the famous lines Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so.

Since last year, he has been investing his time towards teaching high school kids about Shakespearean works and poetry as part of what he says is an attempt to keep them off the streets.

In short, Germany during the World Cup is reminiscent of a Shakespearean midsummer night s dream, with a touch of Woodstock to boot. Outside the stadiums, public screenings of the games have become joyous mass happenings.

In the latter, human experiences are described in terms of an outsized metaphor (a kind of metaphorical hyperbole), like the stock comparison of eyes to the sun, which Shakespeare makes light of in his sonnet 130 My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun.

This image, to me, is almost like from a Shakespearean play, with a man, surrounded by various influences, desperate to hold on to something true within himself, in a context of great suffering that he has created himself.

Nor will the shadow cast over the CCP by his high living, exiled son Bo Guagua and his homicidal wife Bogu Kailai simply disappear. But the fall of Bo and his family hardly rises to the level of Shakespearean tragedy.