SAN QUENTIN, CA - Leaping from a crouching position like some kind of beast, San Quentin Prison inmate Ronin Holmes exploded at the Santa Clara University student. The convicted murderer was raging, seemingly furious.

"Toads, beetles, bats, light on you!" he bellowed, as dozens of his fellow prisoners cackled.

The scene at San Quentin State prison Monday could only be described as Shakespearean. That's because Holmes and three other inmates were acting out scenes from Shakespeare's "The Tempest."

The program, in collaboration with the Marin Shakespeare Company and Santa Clara University, is a unique effort to introduce one of the world's greatest writers of tragedy to the people who have lived tragedy, in some cases the unspeakable variety.

"I feel everything when I do this," said Holmes, 42, who still cannot talk about the murder he committed 13 years ago. "It's difficult to get in touch with your emotions here. We are in prison. But everyone feels. If you say you don't, you're lying."

That feeling came out on stage Monday through Caliban, Shakespeare's infamous savage. It also came out in a scene from "Hamlet," in which Holmes said the "to be or not to be" question often comes up among prisoners contemplating suicide.

Such pent-up emotion is exactly what Jonathan Gonzalez, the education director for the Marin Shakespeare Company, was looking for when he started the Shakespeare classes at San Quentin two years ago.

Gonzalez, a professional actor, got the idea when he performed at San Quentin 15 years ago. He was exhilarated at the time, he said, because the prisoners seemed to listen more intently than other audiences, soaking up every nuance despite the confusing English of early 17th century England.

But prison budget cuts and a tough attitude on crime, spurred by the new "three strikes" law, killed the idea. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently changed the name of California's crisis-riven prison system to the "Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation."

Gonzalez, seizing on this new emphasis on rehabilitation, took the opportunity to reintroduce his idea. He recruited Aldo Billingslea, an accomplished Shakespearean actor and an associate professor of theater and dance at Santa Clara University, who secured a $3,000 grant from the university's Bannan Center.

Last year, a small performance was held. On Monday, four Santa Clara students and four inmates performed several sonnets, bits from "Hamlet" and "Othello" and four scenes from "The Tempest" on a church stage in front of about 100 inmates taking classes at the San Quentin's Robert E. Burton High School.

"It's collaborative, it's healing," said Gonzalez. "They are working together, depending on each other and that allows for vulnerability."

The vulnerability was apparent in every scene. Michael Willis covered his face but could not hold back the tears as he finished a powerful scene from Act II of "As You Like It."

"Shakespeare made me take a look at myself," the 44-year-old convicted burglar said later. "He was very conscious of human nature, of fear, of jealousy, things we all deal with. The more you read Shakespeare, the more you identify with Shakespeare."

Louis Branch was also moved by Sonnet 30, which he performed with a command strikingly similar to that of actor Samuel L. Jackson. "Prisoners wake up at 3 a.m. and wonder what they've done with their lives," said Branch, 59, who was first imprisoned on Nov. 8, 1968 for kidnapping and robbery in Alameda County. "They think about loves lost and times wasted, friends who have died. That's all in Sonnet 30. I relate it to my own life."

The audience, at first skeptical, seemed to warm up to the performance, laughing and cheering. They erupted with laughter when inmate Willis, as Trinculo, stood over Caliban and declared, "A fish. He smells like a fish."

They cheered later when 63-year-old convicted murderer J.B. Wells uttered the famous line, "We are such stuff as dreams are made on."

Still, the actors are sometimes faced with the kind of machismo that is normal in the yard and elsewhere in the prison. Last year, when the audience was told which Shakespeare sonnet Holmes would be performing, a big, mean-looking inmate bellowed, "You better do it right."

"He came by later and said, 'You did it right,' which made me feel pretty good," Holmes said. "You gain their respect for doing something that they wouldn't even think about doing, and respect is very important in prison."

Willis wasn't embarrassed by his tears, which he said came from a place inside of him that he had never really tapped, a place of compassion and love.

"I have a daughter. She's 10, and I want to make her proud of me," he said. "This is an opportunity, something that gives me hope and a reason to change my life."

Gonzalez said he used to wonder why, with all the financial hardship, he became an actor until he started teaching Shakespeare at San Quentin.

"I've learned about humility and about appreciating what matters in life," he said. "They have nothing to gain from this except the work they do on their soul. That's what it's all about for me."