Professor Was Talented, Caring Teacher

To the editors:

I was deeply saddened to learn of the death of Dr. Richard C. Marius (News, Nov. 8). I was his student in two classes (and otherwise, in more ways than I can count), but I am lucky to have met him at all. When I arrived to shop his seminar on Shakespeare's history plays, the room was bursting with senior English concentrators. Thinking that I would never get a seat in the class, I almost left. When Marius arrived, he asked, mixing drawl with happy surprise, "Are you all here to study Shakespeare?"

"Yes," we mumbled in that awkward student way. "And, you all want to study Shakespeare with me?" Yes again. When he further discovered that most of us were seniors, he chuckled and hollered out, "Well, I cannot send a senior from this Yard who has been denied the chance to study Shakespeare. I'm not sure what to do, but I sure can't do that." So, instead of teaching just one seminar, Richard invited the leftover half of us into his home. Every Monday evening we met to talk and think and write and study Shakespeare. I have never had a better course.

Come to think of it, it does not much feel like luck that we met. That would imply that his second seminar was an aberration, when in fact it was a reflection of how much he loved language and literature and of how much he loved his students. Even in the last few, difficult months, Richard always had time, and what's more, wisdom, for us.

He was greatly respected and greatly loved; he will be greatly missed.

Jarrett N. Blanc '97-'98

Nov. 8, 1999