1. To prepare for Sunday's Zoom session with the Westminster Basement Study Group, I watched Episode 2 of The Hollow Crown. It's a shortened version of Henry IV, part 1. The way the makers of this film presented HIV, 1 intrigued me, especially their move to open the play with Prince Hal and Falstaff and not the way Shakespeare opened it with a monologue by the troubled and somewhat incoherent King Henry IV.
I'm not sure how serious I am about what I'm about to write, but here goes.
Back in the fall of 1974, I took my first Shakespeare class, at Whitworth. Prof. Dean Ebner taught the course and, for reasons I'm not sure of, the first play we studied was Henry IV, part 1.
As a complete novice, I opened my Signet edition and started to read the play and couldn't make any sense out of King Henry's opening monologue. For starters, I didn't know anything about the royal "We", so when Henry begins his speech, "So shaken as we are, so wan with care", I didn't know who the "we" might be and I'm sure I didn't know that "wan" simply means pale.
I'd have to say I was also used to stories beginning with a "once upon a time" opening, but Shakespeare didn't begin the play this way. He begins it in the middle of things and it's only later that he the play goes back and fills in details about the different rebellions going on in Henry's kingdom. In addition, I hadn't read Richard II, so I didn't know that Henry had hoped to launch a crusade to the Holy Lands as an act of penance for seizing the throne from King Richard II and I had no idea why he was talking about the Holy Lands in this opening speech.
So, I wondered today, as I watched Episode 2 of The Hollow Crown get underway if those who edited and rearranged the play thought viewers might be eased into the play more readily by beginning it with Falstaff and Hal.
Ha! I wondered if they had viewers in mind who might be like that 19 year old kid in Westminster Hall back in Sept. of 1974 who, upon trying to understand the opening of Henry IV, part 1, couldn't and thought about dropping the class, genuinely thought he wasn't intelligent enough to "get" Shakespeare.
Well, that 19 year old hung in there. I went to the library. I listened to the play on audio tape -- a great help -- and, in time, the words, the lines, the passages, the plays clicked and my lifelong immersion in these plays began.
2. As if I needed further proof of how differently teams approach baseball games than they did even, say, ten years ago, Game 4 of the 2021 World Series came on the Vizio.
The Braves, thanks in part to the broken lower leg suffered by Charlie Morton, are fresh out of what we used to think of as starting pitchers. The Astros lost Lance McCullers to injury in an earlier playoff series and they are also short handed when it comes to "starters".
But, in today's game, unlike for decades previously, starting pitchers are expected to pitch a limited number of innings, throw a limited number of pitches.
And, now, teams don't even pretend to roll out a traditional starting pitcher, but sometimes parade several relief pitchers to the mound from the first inning until the ninth.
So, tonight, the Astros started 38 year old Zach Greinke, a former Cy Young Award winner, a pitcher with a long history as a starting pitcher, but who is now in the twilight of his career. The Astros started him hoping he'd give them about three innings of work and then they'd turn the game over to a bunch of pitchers coming out of the bullpen.
The Braves started the game with Dylan Lee, a pitcher who threw his first major league pitch on October 1st. Over the course of his career, including post season play, Greinke had pitched 3,219 innings in the major leagues; Dylan Lee had pitched 4.2 innings -- and he was assigned to start a World Series game!
The Braves sent Lee to the hill to do one thing: get three outs and then be done for the night.
Well, Lee didn't do that. He retired one batter. He surrendered an infield hit, struck out the struggling Alex Bregman, and walked two batters.
Top of the first inning. One out. Bases loaded. The Braves pulled Dylan Lee and replace him with Kyle Wright who pitched all of 6.1 innings during the regular season and had pitched one inning in this year's World Series.
Miraculously, Kyle Wright wiggled the Braves out of this potentially disastrous first inning by giving up only one run. The inning foreshadowed the Astros' failure to drive in runs for the rest of the game. Tonight, they left 11 runners stranded over the course of the game.
The Astros got four solid innings out of Greinke and Kyle Wright pitched 4.2 innings for the Braves and the game became a battle of the bullpens, a common sight in 2021. I don't know if we'll ever see a starter pitch a complete game in the World Series again -- I mean in game 3, Ian Anderson pitched no-hit baseball for five innings and, so he wouldn't face the Astros hitters a third time in one game, was pulled.
Relief pitchers aren't relievers very often in today's game. They are either game openers or game continuers. It's a huge change -- driven by numbers, percentages, and analytics.
Game 4 turned in the Braves' favor thanks to back to back home runs by Dansby Swanson and Jorge Soler in the bottom of the seventh off of the fireballing Christian Javier. Javier had been untouchable up to this point. He had not surrendered a single run in the 37 postseason innings he'd pitched in the playoffs and World Series.
Wild!
Then, in the top of the eighth inning, with two outs, Jose Altuve, who'd homered already in the top of the fourth smashed a line shot to deep left field. Eddie Rosario chased it and at the last possible nanosecond stuck his glove out toward the ball's flight and to the astonishment of all viewers -- and to Rosario himself -- caught it.
Closer Will Smith put down the Astros in order in the top of the ninth, securing the Braves' 3-2 win, putting them up 3 games to 1 in the World Series.
Honestly, a reasonable person would say the Braves had no business winning this game given all the runners the Astros put on base and given the pitchers the Braves turned to early in this game.
But, baseball is not a reasonable game.
It's whacky.
And on this night, whacky worked in Atlanta's favor.
3. During the early innings of the Astros/Braves game, I also wrote and published some thoughts and questions on on our Westminster group website, questions we might talk about in out Sunday Zoom session.
I had an old and familiar feeling return.
When I taught the Shakespeare course at Whitworth, U of Oregon, and LCC, I often felt a sense of failure, a sense that these plays of Shakespeare were way beyond our ability to fully comprehend, to fully examine, to fully discuss and write about.
I know our Zoom discussion will be really good and the class discussions we had in my classes were really good.
At the same time, we always left so much about the plays untouched on, so much unexplored.
The closest I ever got to feeling like I got to work with others and come to a comprehensive experience with these plays was when I was cast into plays as an actor and our director, Sparky Roberts, worked with the whole play, word by word, line by line, scene by scene, act by act to arrive at how to bring each moment of the play alive on stage.
And even with all of that work on a single play, after weeks of rehearsal and multiple performances, we could have always done more.
The plays were and are always much bigger than our efforts to fully understand them or even bring them fully to life on the stage.
Happily, I was pretty good at turning this mild sense of futility into wonder and ended up doing my best to trade the sense of being overwhelmed for the feeling of awe I feel every time I read, teach, act in, or watch any of Shakespeare's plays.
An October 31st limerick by Stu:
And apples made tan, ‘stead of green.
For girls cut in half,
Ring the bell, run and laugh.
Yes, it’s way more than just HALLOWEEN!
Halloween, National Caramel Apple Day, National Doorbell Day, National Magic Day
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