Title: Hamlet's dresser
Description: "Bob Smith grew up in a town named for Shakespeare's birthplace: Stratford, Connecticut. His troubled childhood was spent in a struggle to help his devastated parents care for his severely retarded sister. But at age ten, Smith stumbled onto a line from The Merchant of Venice: "In sooth I know not why I am so sad." In the language of Shakespeare, he had found a window through which to view the world.".

"When he was a teenager, the American Shakespeare Festival moved into Stratford and Smith became Hamlet's dresser. As he watched the plays from backstage, his life's passion took shape, "I was a lonely, screwed-up kid, but the circus had come to town," Smith writes. "It had put up its strange tent, and I was being seduced to run away with it."" "Here, in prose Smith tells the story of a life shaped by poetry."--BOOK JACKET.
Subjects: Acting teachers, American Shakespeare Theatre (Stratford, Conn.), Biography, Family relationships, Influence, People with mental disabilities, Stage history, Study and teaching, Theater, Education, American Shakespeare Festival Theatre and Academy, Shakespeare, william, 1564-1616, influence
Places: Connecticut, Stratford, United States
People: Bob Smith (1941-), William Shakespeare (1564-1616)