For writer Stephen Humphries, reporting on how two men in prison found Shakespeare and changed their lives reminds him how perilous it is to judge others.

My cover story is a sequel, one that’s almost a quarter century in the making. In 2001, the Monitor reported a story about inmates performing Shakespeare plays in a Kentucky prison. It inspired filmmakers Hank Rogerson and Jilann Spitzmiller to create the hit 2005 documentary “Shakespeare Behind Bars.” In turn, they invited the Monitor to join them this summer in Louisville, Kentucky, for the filming of a sequel, “Shakespeare Beyond Bars.”

Staff photographer Melanie Stetson Freeman and I spent five days with Jerry Guenthner and Sammie Byron, pivotal figures in the earlier article and in the documentary. Both men had been imprisone

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