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Now when I started this podcast I knew that I wanted to use a somewhat similar device WHERE I interviewed THE characters in Shakespeare's play - that could be very instructive and lots of fun. But first I wanted to get the relatively tedious stuff out of the way first - starting with rhetorical devices. And then I DELVED into several episodes dealing with the plague in England during Shakespeare's time. Interestingly enough topic the all important subject of the plague was not even discussed in my Shakespeare courses in college. But then again, that was before Covid. And I thought it would be especially interesting to compare Elizabethan societies reaction to the plague with contemporary reactions to Covid.  Both were deadly airborne diseases, and while Shakespeare's contemporaries how to comparatively primitive understanding of how the plague was spread, the dynamics of the plague were surprisingly similar to the dynamics of Covid - showing that people are basically people - no matter what the historical period. Oh and by the way, since the subject of death could often be very heavy I thought the best way to approach it was to have relatively brief episodes - lasting approximately 15 minutes each.

But for a good part of the rest of this podcast series I went to continue a conversation with William Shakespeare, and next month start a look at the writers works, and a series of conversations with various characters - and some of Shakespeare's characters were fascinating individuals

GEORGE (quiet):
But first. You might say that We like to imagine Shakespeare alone with a quill, serenely producing masterpieces.
But the theatre didn’t run on serenity.
It ran on deadlines.
A play had to be ready.
Actors had to learn parts.
Costumes had to exist.
A crowd had to be fed a new story—often constantly.

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