Today such a mechanistic, two-dimensional model is of course electronically obsolete, and I might now display an imaging map suggesting the tremendous interconnectivity of the cerebral cortex. I found that they quickly caught on to the overarching complexity of Shakespeare's dramatic language. The next day I unfolded the schematic diagram that accompanied the equipment, and invited the students to imagine the play in terms of integrated circuitry, to envision it as a vast map of linkages and interconnections. One evening while wiring up a new hi-fi system, however, I happily hit upon the global image I needed. The traditional "organic" approach to the plays-seeing each one as a living thing in which all parts coalesced into a unified whole-failed to inspire the imagination of my technologically oriented students. By this I did not simply mean the discovery of recurring metaphors or patterns of imagery I hoped instead to open up for inspection a poetic and dramatic interrelatedness-passage echoing passage and scene mirroring scene-of such magnitude that the only authentic response could be astonishment. I wanted them to set aside for a moment abstract ideas ("revenge") and personality traits (Hamlet's "procrastination") and concentrate instead on the intricacy of the play as a whole. When I was teaching Shakespeare years ago to bright but culturally disengaged engineering students, I remember searching for an effective way to help them appreciate the awesome complexity of the plays.
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