Let’s Take a Moment to ‘Love’ Shakespeare on the Day of His Birth…and ‘Death’

We often learn to read literature by looking closely at a text. You know: focusing our attention on a word or a sentence and exploring why the author might have written it that way and what it means to you as a reader. There’s value in that. But there’s also value in distant reading, where we move away from the text in order to gain what I like to call algorithmic altitude. In honor of the Bard’s birthday and deathday, let’s look at the words “love” and “death” in one of his best known tragedies.

What insights and questions about the play emerge for you?