Laura Bates, an associate professor of English at Indiana State University, teaches college courses at Wabash Valley Correctional Facility, but her Shakespeare workshop is a rarer undertaking, with a startling history. About six years ago, an inmate in one of her college-degree courses was sent from the general population to the "SHU"--the "segregated housing unit," a euphemism for solitary confinement. To prevent the student from failing, she obtained permission to enter the SHU to explain his final assignment to him. What she saw motivated her to tackle the daunting task of teaching in a netherworld where successions of barred doors within billows of razor wire mock even the concept of free will. Ms. Bates's students include murderers, rapists, burglars, and a narcotics dealer. But the professor does not actively inspect her students' records. Instead she deploys Shakespeare to help "these forgotten human beings retain their sanity and connect with their humanity." This article describes how inmates at the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility find common ground with Richard II and Macbeth.