1. It's how I have fun. I fix myself some oatmeal, wash down cupboards and other kitchen surfaces, put clean dishes away, and load the dishwasher while listening to episodes from the podcast Shakespeare Unlimited. First, I listened to Columbia University professor, James Shapiro, discuss his book, The Year of Lear. Shakespeare wrote King Lear, along with Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra, all in 1606 and it was a tumultuous year for King James I, a year in which a terrorist plot to blow up the parliament buildings was thwarted. The podcast episode is right here.
Back in my graduate school days and the years that I taught Shakespeare, I never took much interest in how the editions of Shakespeare's plays we read today were edited. It's a bit over my head. This morning, however, I listened to an episode of Shakespeare Unlimited that covered this very subject and it piqued my interest in the conundrums of editing his plays. For starters, the two interviewees, Suzanne Gossett and Paul Werstine were congenial, pleasant to listen to, and humble in the face of the difficulties presented by the task of editing Shakespeare. They explained clearly the history of editing the plays and clarified why new editions of the plays continue to be published.
Recently, I purchased the fairly newly minted 3rd edition of the Norton Shakespeare. As with most Shakespeare collections, scholars introduce each play with an essay, including an explanation of the history of the different texts that were published while Shakespeare was alive and not long after he died, entitled "Textual Introduction". I've never paid very close attention to the textual introduction of the plays, but, after listening to this podcast episode, I read the textual introduction to Othello with more understanding than I've ever had and confronted the question as to whether, after Othello told Desdemona the tales of his adventures as a warrior, she covered him with "sighs" or with "kisses".
If you'd like to enter into this aspect of studying Shakespeare and listen to this excellent episode, just click here.
2. I continued to putter around the house and switched from Shakespeare to baseball. In today's game between the Brewers and the Cubs, both starting pitchers are on my League 2 fantasy team, so I was very interested in how Zach Davies and Cole Hamels would perfor. Both pitched beautifully. Both earned me a nice bunch of fantasy points. Both pitchers were long gone, however, by game's end. The game went fifteen innings, lasting nearly five hours. I can't say that I listened closely to every pitch and every play, but I had the game on my smart speaker the whole time and just couldn't bring myself to turn it off. I loved having the sounds of Wrigley Field in the house and I was definitely curious how this marathon would end.
The Cubs won the game, 2-1, when Wilson Contreras slammed a walk off home run.
3. Listening to Shakespeare, listening to baseball, and doing this and that around the house meant that I hadn't exercised all day. I took care of that by walking uptown to the Inland Lounge, enjoying some Rolling Rock beer, and walking back home. I racked up nearly 4000 steps, nearly two miles, and knew that a good night's sleep lay ahead. I was right.
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