It was around this time in the interview that all hell broke loose. After sharing that I had made the trip from Los Angeles expressly to see her Lear, I told her that she had helped me to hear a line from the play as if for the first time. When Lear painfully acknowledges a lifetime of neglecting the vulnerable poor (“Oh, I have taken too little care of this!”), it seemed as if Jackson’s political and artistic commitments merged in a rich understanding of the play. “I didn’t write the line,” she roared. “Why do you dismiss Shakespeare?”