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101 Heard Any Good Ones Lately? #4

8/30/2017

I WAS thinking about discussing my thoughts on the current (sad) state of affairs regarding First Amendment (Free Speech) issues, but considering the recent devastation along the southern coast, I figured that everyone could use something a bit lighter. So, I went into my file of jokes and cartoons which I collect from a variety of sources (all are the property of their original creators who I hope won’t mind my stealing them for what I hope is a good purpose) to find some stuff which might give folks a smile of a chuckle. I hope they do…

Maybe if people are told that the brain is an app, they'll start using it.

My father taught me about TIME TRAVEL.

            "If you don't straighten up, I'm going to knock you into the middle of next week!"

My mother taught me RELIGION.

            "You better pray that will come out of the carpet."

Things that go through your mind when you can't sleep...

If you attempt to rob a bank you won't have any trouble with rent/food bills for the next 10 years, whether or not you are successful.

Do twins ever realize that one of them is unplanned?

What if my dog only brings back my ball because he thinks I like throwing it?

If poison expires, is it more poisonous or is it no longer poisonous?

Which letter is silent in the word "Scent," the S or the C?

Why is the letter W, in English, called double U? Shouldn't it be called double V?

Every time you clean something, you just make something else dirty

The word "swims" upside-down is still "swims."

Intentionally losing a game of rock, paper, scissors is just as hard as trying to win.

100 years ago everyone owned a horse and only the rich had cars. Today everyone has cars and only the rich own horses.

The doctors that told Stephen Hawking he had two years to live in 1953 are probably dead.

If you replace "W" with "T" in "What, Where and When," you get the answer to each of them.

Many animals probably need glasses, but nobody knows it.

If you rip a hole in a net, there are actually fewer holes in it than there were before.

My mother taught me GENETICS.

            "You're just like your father."

My father taught me about JUSTICE.

            "One day you'll have kids, and I hope they turn out just like you!”

America is the only country where a significant proportion of the
population believes that professional wrestling is real but the moon landing was faked.

Q:         What do you get when you cross a dyslexic, an insomniac, and an agnostic?
A:         Someone who lies awake at night wondering if there is a dog.

A husband and wife were driving through Louisiana. As they approached Natchitoches, they started arguing about the pronunciation of the town. They argued back and forth; then they stopped for lunch.
At the counter, the husband asked the waitress, "Before we order, could you please settle an argument for us? Would you please pronounce where we are very slowly?" The waitress leaned over the counter and said, "Burrr-gerrr Kiiing."

Lead us not into temptation. Just tell us where it is; we'll find it. – Sam Levenson

There are some people who, if they don't already know, you can't tell 'em. —Yogi Berra

A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married. — H. L. Mencken

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. — Oscar Wilde

Make crime pay: become a lawyer. —Will Rogers

Wine is constant proof that God loves us and loves to see us happy. – Benjamin Franklin

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please. - Mark Twain

O Lord, help me to be pure, but not yet. – Saint Augustine

Roses are red, violets are blue, I'm schizophrenic, and so am I. – Oscar Levant

Nowadays we make quick work of our courtships; it's our divorces that we spend a lot of time on. – Richard Moore

No sensible decision can be made any longer, without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be. – Isaac Asimov

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.
                                                                                                            Dorothy Parker

People my age are so much older than I.....
                                                                                                            Anonymous

An elderly, but hardy cattleman from Texas once told a young female neighbor that if she wanted to live a long life, the secret was to sprinkle a pinch of gunpowder on her oatmeal each morning.    

She did this religiously and lived to the age of 103.  She left behind 14 children, 30 grandchildren, 21 great-grandchildren, five great-great-grandchildren and a 40 foot hole where the crematorium used to be.

I’d sure like to be able to do this!

Parents (probably especially Dads) will understand this:

Cat Lovers Owners will understand:

Lots of different types of people will get this, but I found it in an office at WCU:

LLAP

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100 August 19, 1692 – Witch-hunts and Related Matters

8/17/2017

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There’s been a lot of talk in the news about “witch-hunts” fairly recently. I confess that I find the use of this term a bit upsetting, as I know something about such things, having engaged in some study of the most infamous witch-hunt in North America (Salem, MA, 1692). A “witch-hunt” is neither a laughing matter, nor something to be taken lightly (at least in my opinion). The Salem witch-hunt grew out of many factors, but it ended up as a toxic mix of social/political/religious factors which led to hysteria, violence and legally sanctioned murder. At its foundation was a belief that SOME people (us “good” people) were right, true and goodly, while others were not (and so should be destroyed), mostly because we, (the “select” people) SAID this was the case.

As you may know (I’ve said it before and it’s on the “About This Web Site” page of this site), I have ancestors who were among the accused of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. One of them, Martha (Allen) Carrier, was executed by hanging on August 19, 1692, three hundred and twenty-five years ago this weekend. Another, John Alden (son of two of the Mayflower passengers, Priscilla (Mullins) and John Alden, was charged and imprisoned, but escaped and was not killed. Anyway, I have made it a habit in recent years of taking this date (Aug. 19) as a day of remembrance of the injustice of the Witch Trials and to celebrate the need for sanity and rationality in our public discourse and actions. To me, that means refusing to pay attention to so-called “alternative facts” and be aware of the idea that, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan is believed to have said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”

I suppose that suggests a need to define the term “fact.” Wikipedia (not the strongest source, perhaps, but one that, I believe, may be appropriate for commonly used meanings and common information) says:

A fact is something that is postulated to have occurred or to be correct. The usual test
   for a statement of fact is verifiability—that is, whether it can be demonstrated to
   correspond to experience. Standard reference works are often used to check facts.
   Scientific facts are verified by repeatable careful observation or measurement (by
experiments or other means).

This seems to me to exclude a fair number of ideas, which we often find, especially on the Internet, from sources which engage in the preservation of various conspiracy theories (the moon landings were faked, the CIA killed Kennedy, aliens landed in Roswell in 1947) and a lot of other stuff. These theories are often “supported” by “evidence” which is often highly questionable at best, and which, on occasion, has been proven to be complete fabrication. Still, some folks seem inclined to believe such stories, for reasons which I confess I don’t understand. After all, just because we hear something often or someone insists that only they know the “real” truth, doesn’t make it so. “Truth” (the first meaning of which is “fact”) should be able to meet the tests above as fact, not just accepted as such because we’d like it to be, or someone says it is. Even if it is widely repeated.

Now, people do have the right to believe (and even repeat) whatever they wish to, as long as they do no harm. (Even “free” speech does have limits, the classic case being that of yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theatre.) That’s what the First Amendment is all about. But I take issue with those who insist that these beliefs are “facts” unless they can produce evidence which demonstrates that the idea meets the test indicated above. Is it verifiable? Is it repeatable? Does it, in fact, correspond to experience? If not, it is opinion, not fact! This is true even in matters of religious beliefs, which is why religious ideas are referred to as beliefs!

There is a problem, of course, in that knowledge is constantly being expanded, so what appears to be fact can, in fact, change as new information comes to light. There was a time when the ideas of the Earth being flat and the center of the Universe were accepted as fact. We now don’t accept those ideas as facts any longer because we have evidence (which does meet the above test) that they do not “correspond to experience.” There also was a time when it was widely believed that witches were alive and well in the world and were doing the bidding of Satan in North America (and in many other parts of the world).

Having a personal interest in the “witchcraft trials” at Salem, I’ve done a bit of looking into the scholarship which has studied the available evidence from these trials. There is, in fact, a considerable amount of primary source material which has survived and been studied. Recently, I’ve been reading Emerson W. Baker’s book, A Storm of Witchcraft, which is a fairly recent (2015) study of the available facts about the trials by a history professor from Salem State University (located in Salem, MA) and published by the Oxford University Press.

This book draws from original sources and much of the earlier scholarship and presents what strikes me as the most comprehensive look at both the facts and the various theories which have arisen to explain the Salem phenomenon. It suggests that this experience may be a bit more complicated than some of the other scholarship seems to think; a complex twist of social, political, religious concerns arising out of life close to a rather dangerous frontier, the difficulties of changing conditions in social structure, and the conflicting interests between various factions within the religious community. One must understand that the Salem colony was founded as a civic/social experiment in establishing a specific sort of religious community.

That community was, over time, challenged by a variety of factors including changing economics locally and by changes in the political scene in England (the parent country). Salem was founded as an attempt to create a Puritan “city upon a hill.” To them, that apparently meant that they had the right (perhaps they felt it was an obligation) to be intolerant of anyone who disagreed with their religious beliefs. Unfortunately, at least by the time they got to 1692, what had developed was somewhat less than universally accepted commonality as to those beliefs. There were also numerous private squabbles which had developed over property lines; other forms of debt; how to define church membership in a time when that was of considerable importance to one’s place in civic affairs and when the “younger generation” seemed to be less supportive of the idea of the community being religiously dominated; conflicts between the “town” folk, who were becoming more merchant oriented, and the “country” folk, who were more dominantly agrarian; and a number of other sorts of personal and public disagreements. And, on top of all this, there was the ongoing and overriding danger to the colony from the French and their Native American allies, which cost the community lives, property and high taxes.

It’s also worth noting that there were strong family ties among a fair number of (especially the earliest) accusers, a good many of the accused and certainly among those who were assigned to be the judges, who were not (at least for the most part) trained as lawyers, but were merchants and/or members of the clergy. It’s hard to say how those connections may have influenced the outcome, but it is worth noting that not one of those who eventually “confessed” to being witches was hanged (witches were, in fact, never burned in North America), but all those who refused to admit to witchcraft, were. This is, I have been led to believe, the complete reversal of the experience of witch-hunts elsewhere throughout the world. There are theories as to why this occurred, but there does not appear to be any clear explanation.

Ultimately, largely on the basis of “spectral evidence,” nineteen people were hanged and one, who refused to accept the validity of his trial, was pressed to death. An additional five died in prison. The use of “spectral evidence” is, at least to me, the most damning part of the entire Salem experience. This was, of course, based on the “ability” of some people (the accusers) to see the spectres (phantom, wraith-like figures) of those they accused of doing them harm. This would often end up, however, as an assumption of guilt on the part of the judges, based on the premise that the accused must be guilty because it was so often stated by the accusers that they were the ones doing the “harm” (which may have been faked). One doesn’t have to look far into the trial records to find the judges asking the accused questions along the order of “Why do you hurt these children?” or “What spirits are you familiar with?” which (obviously) includes the presumption that the accused could answer such questions because they were, in fact, hurting the children or were familiar with spirits, which was supposed to be the point of the trial to discover.

It’s hard to believe that well-educated people of the time would engage in such activities, but they did, just as educated people today believe similar things in spite of a lack of any supporting evidence, simply because they have heard such things repeated so often that they must be true, right? Personally, I agree with my ancestor, Martha that “It is a shameful thing that you should listen to these folks who are out of their wits.” But, when respected, educated people get caught up in a frenzy of fanaticism, strange things happen and go unchallenged. After all, one of the leading religious figures of the colony, Cotton Mather (the son of the President of Harvard), maintained that Martha was a “rampant hag” and had been promised by Satan that she should be the “queen of hell.” He said that these things had been reported to him by “confessed” witches. My question to Mr. Mather would be “Why should we believe them?” “You are the one making the statements, how do you know them to be true?” “If others produced this sort of evidence against you, would you be convinced?” Of course, no one posed such questions at the time, but I certainly wish someone had. It might have led to a different ending.

Still, the lesson of Salem, it seems to me is that we must strongly consider the difference between fact and opinion. Facts can be proven on the basis of other facts (as we understand them) and/or can meet other tests intended to demonstrate their veracity. Opinions probably should be based on facts, but don’t have to be and may NOT be. Salem should, I think, teach us to question almost everything we hear, especially from sources which have an agenda. Various news sources can (some do) have an agenda besides simply reporting the truth as they can discover it. That doesn’t make them wrong, even if we don’t like their agendas. But, it doesn’t make them factually accurate! All too often, our society seems to wish to take interpretation (opinion) as fact. It is not! The political history of the world is filled with examples of people using these sorts of tactics to strengthen their hold on power. After all, if “we” can make “those people” out to be “wrong,” then “we” MUST be “right,” right? This seems to be an especially persuasive argument when it can be tied in some fashion to religion. Perhaps it was to discourage this that the Founding Fathers put freedom of religion as the first right in the First Amendment. It’s also worth noting that they placed no barriers to practicing any religion (or not practicing any religion) as well as forbidding the establishment of any religious preferences in the First Amendment.

If we wish to act in the way that our Constitution seems to demand, we must be willing to listen to all sides of an issue and make an honest attempt to determine what are the facts. Only then can our opinion (and our vote) show that we are not listening “…to these folks who are out of their wits.” I think this is important. It’s probably more important today than it was in 1692. The actions at Salem cost some lives and eventually contributed to the destruction of the very society which those actions were intended to save. Why? Largely because intolerance, bigotry, pettiness and a refusal to accept that their behavior was based on a sort of fanaticism for their cause blinded them to the idea that they could be making a mistake. It’s worth noting that one of the “judges” actually resigned from the “court,” apparently because he was opposed to the procedures being followed, but the other eight went right along condemning people to death.

It would be nice to think that we, as a country, won’t make such mistakes again, especially when nuclear codes are at stake. Still, it’s hard to be sure that this isn’t going to happen when so much of our national rhetoric is based on bullying and braggadocio. It’s not really comforting….

LLAP

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99 Charlottesville, VA -- August 12, 2017

8/13/2017

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After the distressing scenes of the protests and counter-protests from Charlottesville, VA, which have been all over the news for the last day, or so, I feel I have to say something. I could have been a part of similarly tragic news when the Westboro Baptist Church came to Cullowhee to protest Western’s production of The Laramie Project. The Westboro church is, of course, famous for demonstrating that everything that is wrong in the USA is a result of the fact (their term, not mine) that “God Hates Fags.” Therefore, God must hate the USA because it tolerates the existence of such people.

Anyway, since Laramie Project treats the brutal torture and death of a homosexual sympathetically, this group announced that they were going to show up in Cullowhee to protest the production. They went through all of the appropriate steps to be duly authorized to engage in their protest on campus, which meant that there was no legal reason to not allow them their Constitutional right to do so. What I remember about this incident, however, was that Gene McAbee, Chief of campus police at the time, whom several of us met with out of concern for the possibility of violence developing, strongly urged us to simply ignore them and to encourage our students to do so. He suggested that what they wanted most was publicity, so the idea of counter-protests would simply contribute to making their story more important. There was interest shown by students and others during their demonstrations, but there was no violence and relatively little noise. Mostly, as I remember it, there were simply a few protesters, waving their signs and chanting their slogans and a few folks watching them, or simply passing by.

I was reminded of this idea while watching the news from Charlottesville yesterday. Or rather, I came away with the idea that the “protesters” (white supremacists, neo-nazis, KKK members, etc.) came for the purpose of causing trouble. Why wouldn’t they? If they could goad “counter-protesters” into raising a stink, they were almost guaranteed to have a bigger news story than otherwise, and they sure got their way.

Now, I have nothing good to say about people from outside a community assembling for the purpose of creating trouble (hence publicity) within that community. But, as long as they only assemble peacefully, that is they don’t engage in physical action dangerous to others, they do have the Constitutional right to do it. Of course I think it’s highly probable that they went to Charlottesville to try to cause trouble, but that’s very hard to prove legally. Personally, I think the City authorities of Charlottesville have the right to place or remove any statue they own on Charlottesville city property for whatever reason they wish. After all, it’s their statue and their land. If they decide that it’s in their public interest to remove that statue, it seems like it’s their business. Still, even outsiders do have the right “…peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

On the other hand, the “protesters” rights don’t diminish the rights of those who disagree (the “counter-protesters”), but I wonder if any of us would look upon this weekend’s events with much more than a laugh if the “protesters” had just marched around empty streets and closed businesses in front of nobody but the media (which, obviously, assembled in the hope of a “good” story, which usually means lots of good pictures of people screaming and beating each other up). What would have happenned if the good citizens of Charlottesville had just said to themselves “They have a right to protest, but we don’t have to pay attention to them. After all, most of them don’t live here, anyway. We can avoid being a part of their story and, in the process, make their story less interesting.” Unfortunately, that isn’t what happened, so we have a much bigger story than was deserved and one which the pundits will be talking about for days. I think that’s too bad.

I KNOW how hard it is to just walk away from someone speaking in favor of that which we consider to be abominable, but Aaron Sorkin had it right when he had Andrew Shepherd say “America isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship. You've gotta want it bad, cause it's gonna put up a fight. It's gonna say ‘You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man who's words make your blood boil, and who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours.’” We WANT to express our opinions. But, perhaps (just perhaps) there are times when silence can speak louder than words.

It’s an idea worth thinking about, perhaps even spreading.

LLAP

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98 A Fairly Recent Book Worth Reading

8/6/2017

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Every so often I find a book that is so interesting, that I find it hard to put down and even harder to stop thinking about. One such book, which I recently discovered, is ‪Hamlet, Globe to Globe: Two Years, 190,000 Miles, 197 Countries, One Play by Dominic Dromgoole. The book is, in large part, the story of a Shakespeare’s Globe production of Hamlet which toured literally all over the world starting in 2014 and finishing in 2016. At the time, Dromgoole was the Artistic Director of the Shakespeare’s Globe theatre in London where he was in overall charge of this production as well as the “Globe to Globe” festival as part of the Olympic festivities in 2012 and also saw to the opening of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse (the indoor “private” theatre next to the Globe) in 2014.

So, since I am a bit of a Hamlet “nut,” did some touring while I was doing my Master’s work, and found the idea of a true “world” tour rather intriguing, I was surprised to find that this book was quite different from what I had expected. It is, of course, something of a journal of the tour, which Dromgoole apparently visited quite frequently during its travels, but it also includes a good deal of commentary about the countries visited, reactions of people encountered on the tour, and thoughts about a good many aspects of the modern theatre in general and ideas relating to productions of Shakespeare in general. As I AM rather interested in all of these things, I found many of these comments to be of special interest.

At the very end of the tour, as a part of the celebrations of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, the company was visited by President Obama, who saw a special performance at the Globe back in London, and had a chance to meet the company (and Mr. Dromgoole). As a part of that performance the actor playing Hamlet delivered the famous “Advice to the Players” speech directly to Obama. After the performance, the President joined the company on stage and discussed Shakespeare with them. As Dromgoole says; “I ask him if he has ever acted, and he comes straight back with ‘Have I ever acted? I act every single day. Every time I go down to Congress, I’m acting. When I sit down with certain world leaders, I have to do a lot of acting.’” (p. 32) While I’m sure this is an honest statement, I found it quite refreshing that a President would be so straightforward about admitting that politicians have to act quite so much.

A bit later, Dromgoole goes on regarding the “Advice to the Players” speech; “These words, Hamlet’s celebrated advice to the Players, delivered before they perform his lamentable play, are, of course, lessons in acting rather than oratory. They are the prayer offered up by every playwright on the eve of each first night since. They can be brutally compressed into ‘Oh, please, stop acting and just say the f***ing lines.” (p. 33)

A couple of pages later, Drumgoole is talking about starting the rehearsal process; “Before anything else, you read the play, sit round a table and make sure of one thing: that everyone understands every single word of each scene they are in. There is nothing more depressing than a stage of actors who have no idea what is coming out of other people’s mouths, nor even sometimes their own.” (p. 34) Now, while I have to confess that I haven’t always done this myself, while acting as a director, I wish I had thought about this more when I was directing, especially when, as Dromgoole says just a bit later; “ If we are to have any theatre of meaning, we do not need to learn how to mime bottles into babies, how to monocycle, or how to scream and shout; we need to be precise and clear about language. Language is what is remarkable about us, language is what makes us and our world, not our ability to wave our arms around in the air.”(p. 35) He goes on; “When we start hearing that theatre is not about language, we are often dealing with people who secretly hate it.” (p. 35) I think there is a good deal of truth in this.

He continues, discussing how he feels that Hamlet (the production being discussed was, after all, of that play) is, and has been, in his opinion, frequently misconceived. So he states; “There is such a glut of ideas about how to present particular plays, it is sometimes most radical to have no idea. This is hard for many to negotiate, since without a concept, or an argument, they have nothing to talk of afterwards but the play itself, a nudity which they find embarrassing to look at. Our job at the Globe was always to tell the story cleanly, to judge the relationships impartially, and to let the language do the work.” (p. 38)

I would argue that, with some plays (Hamlet being one) there are so many possible meanings to some of the words (Does “nunnery,” for example, [in the “get thee to a nunnery” speech] refer to a convent or a brothel, or both?) that it’s quite difficult to be sure that we all completely understand (and agree on the meaning of) every word, so that we can just “be precise and clear” about the language, but I do suspect that it may be worth the effort to deal with questions about this sort of thing.

I’ve probably touched on the notion of “concepts” in contemporary theatre production before in these posts. It is a notion with which I have struggled for a fair number of years. I DO think it’s important for a director (and the rest of the production team) to have an overall focus in their approach to whatever play they are working on, but I think that it is also quite easy for the “concept” to distort the playwright’s creation into something quite different from that which was originally intended. The playwright has, after all, created the story and the characters, even when the events are historical and the characters have the names of real people. To me (and I know this has probably infuriated some of my colleagues and students at times) this suggests that theatre production is, essentially, an interpretive act. That, at least in my mind, does NOT mean that this work is not creative, but that production should endeavor to present the playwright’s ideas (the ones in the play) in a manner intended to be most effective for a particular audience at a particular time, not to impose our own, personal beliefs on the playwright’s creation. That manner MAY include traditional methods, or changes of time period, costume/scenic style or a number of other alterations of the methodology of the original production. To me, the important thing is to make sure that we are being faithful to the playwright’s creation and are not distorting it into something it is not.

Dromgoole does mention this idea, at least in passing, in a couple of places. He says; “There’s a fashion in theatre now for creative elements to dub themselves theatre-makers. ‘I’m not an interpreter of plays; I’m a theatre-maker,’ they tell you rather shrilly. Fundamentally, this seems to mean they tell other people what to do, while they furrow their brows earnestly behind fashionable spectacles and practice some happening hand movements. Give them something to actually make – to sew, to clip together, to lift, to light, to attach – and they will break down in tears.” (p. 63)

In discussing a radio interview related to Shakespearean production, Dromgoole explains; “Producing Shakespeare has always relied more than anything on joy, on innocence and on enthusiasm. But try arguing for those three at a congress of Shakespeare scholars. Without looking like a blithering Pollyanna. For many of the academic community, but not all, these beautiful words left flimsily on paper cannot be just that – beautiful words on flimsy paper. They have got to be about territorialism and control and ownership, fundamentally because those arguing the case want more than anything else to be the owners. They want to be the hieratically ordained priest caste, who can tell others how to enjoy them. The circumstances of the play’s productions have to be about power and influence and negotiation, so that they can be the arbiters of how such transactions take place.” (p. 193)

If these ideas sounds a bit like those I tried to express in my post #52, it’s probably because there are pretty similar, at least I think so, but I also think they are worth repeating. Certainly there are aspects of many of the plays which do (or might) make one think about ideas which are current in contemporary society. If they make us think about them, I don’t see any problem with that, but I don’t think that The Tempest was written as a commentary on imperialism and slavery, even though the Prospero’s treatment of Caliban and Ariel is presented as achieved by his magic and does involve them as, essentially, his slaves. So, the idea IS present in the script, but I have grave doubts that it was Shakespeare’s intention to make the play ABOUT these ideas. I strongly suspect that Shakespeare wouldn’t have considered it improper in any way for educated, Christian, Europeans to subjugate other (non-educated, non-Christian, non-European) people. I’d even go so far as to suggest that he wouldn’t even think about such an idea. After all, British colonials settling in North America not many years later didn’t. Do you think it’s likely that a man who earned his living by creating stories for a popular audience would create a work which would so fly in the face of common opinion? The “Manifest Destiny” of the US, less than 200 years later, was an expression of justification for the conquest of the First Peoples of North America. It was just a basic part of accepted thought. Such things might well be worth thinking about today, but they are NOT what Shakespeare intended in creating the play.

Once again, I think it’s important to remove the plays (especially the plays) from being the property of English professors and “Shakespeare scholars.” One can make a strong argument that Shakespeare’s poetry WAS intended to be serious works of ART and let them be viewed as such. But the plays were written to be performed by actors and to put “butts in seats.” Such stuff was NOT considered to be “works of art at the time, although Ben Jonson did publish a folio of his “Workes” in 1616, the year Shakespeare died, which contained masques and plays as if they were serious work, but it was quite controversial. It may well have helped ease the way for general acceptance the First Folio of Shakespeare, however, which contains only plays.

Now, I’m not going to suggest that Shakespeare’s plays don’t contain a wide variety of ideas, but were they intended to be philosophical, religious, political treatises? I don’t think so. IF that had been the case and, IF they had made it past the censor, I doubt they would have been likely to have attracted much of an audience to the theatre, which I certainly believe was their purpose. Why else would someone write a play, as opposed to an essay, or even a novel? After all, a play requires all sorts of people and stuff which are NOT required by a poem, essay, or novel. But it’s unlikely that I can convince some people, and probably most of those who would agree with me, already do, so I won’t belabor the point.

In any case, I found these ideas, and MANY more worth thinking about and so I found the book very much worth the effort to read. It’s not always a light, easy read, but I did find it worthwhile. You might find it worth taking a look at as well. I’d encourage it.

LLAP

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101 Heard Any Good Ones Lately? #4

100 August 19, 1692 – Witch-hunts and Related Matters

99 Charlottesville, VA -- August 12, 2017

​98 A Fairly Recent Book Worth Reading

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98 A Fairly Recent Book Worth Reading