'Drown themselves in riot!' Anarchy, Street Violence, and Timon of Athens

'And gentlemen in England now a-bed...will hold their manhoods cheap': Shakespeare and the 2020 campaign rallies

The campaign season is upon us, and President Trump and former Vice President Biden are on the campaign trail giving speeches designed to rally the faithful and draw the undecided to the cause. Shakespeare as usual has already been there. His most famous offering is from Henry V, when the king addresses his troops to rally them prior to a battle with the French. Let's get straight to it. 

Henry starts by assuring the troops that their service is entirely voluntary.

Henry V: "That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us."

No modern military goes this far. While enlistment in the U.S. is currently voluntary, soldiers cannot seek to be discharged just prior to battle, but Henry has a Henry goes on:

"This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'"

Well, Henry does offer his soldiers one reward if they stay with him and fight, but it isn't a reward that he himself will bestow; it will be bestowed by their neighbors in the form of admiration and praise. A modern parallel is obvious here as well; future generations will either praise or condemn today's generation of soldier - OK, voters - depending on the wisdom of their choice. 

Henry has more to say:

"Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd."

It's a stirring speech, and it goes on: 

This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:"

Be he never so vile. A fair number of the soldiers would have been reformed, or unreformed, criminals, and Henry is telling them that their actions on the day of the election, or rather the day of battle, can provide them with a form of redemption. This day shall gentle your condition. 

Then Henry compares his fellow soldiers, his band of brothers, to non-voters; I mean non-soldiers:

"And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day."

Enjoy the campaign - and vote!

The quality of mercy is not strained: Justice and Supreme Court justices

A changing of the guard at the U.S. Supreme Court is approaching, now that conservative jurist Amy Comey Barrett has been nominated to fill the seat held for 27 years by liberal jurist Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Passions are running high across the political spectrum, and, as always, Two-Hour Tours will look to cool those passions by offering the bard's perspective, today on the subject of judges and justice. 

Why not take a break from the fever swamp and take a look?

We'll start with what is probably Shakespeare's most famous courtroom speech, given by Portia, while she is dressed as Balthasar, a fictional lawyer introduced to the court through forged paperwork. She and the Duke of Venice are trying to persuade Shylock to show mercy to Antonio, the play's Merchant of Venice, who has failed to repay a loan to Shylock. The loan terms permitted Shylock to cut a pound of flesh out of Antonio should he fail to repay. Here's Portia's speech:

Portia: “The quality of mercy is not strain'd, 
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven 
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest; 
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes: 
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes 
The throned monarch better than his crown; 
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, 
The attribute to awe and majesty, 
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; 
But mercy is above this sceptred sway; 
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, 
It is an attribute to God himself; 
And earthly power doth then show likest God's 
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew, 
Though justice be thy plea, consider this, 
That, in the course of justice, none of us 
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy; 
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render 
The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much 
To mitigate the justice of thy plea; 
Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice 
Must needs give sentence 'gainst the merchant there.”

The main point is clear enough; mercy is an attribute of the divine that elevates and ennobles those who extend it. Probably only once sentence needs some explanation: "...in the course of justice, none of us/Should see salvation." Regular, everyday justice merely reapportions value in accordance with the law; only mercy can offer salvation. 

There's really no ironic subtext that undercuts this message, but that doesn't mean Shakespeare is endorsing the messenger. Much as he does with in Hamlet, when he allows the flawed and feckless Polonius a lovely speech of paternal advice to his son Laertes, here he allows Portia to offer wisdom without actually embodying it. 

Portia says that if Shylock declines to show mercy, the court must enforce his contract. In fact, however, she is in fact laying a trap for Shylock that will result in his destruction. And she will manipulate the law to the point of strangling it in order to ambush Shylock in a way that costs him all his wealth, and that results in his forced conversion to Christianity. 

And why does Portia do all this? She has recently married Bassanio, the man who came to Antonio for the loan. But she has figured out that Antonio also loves Bassanio and, in his financial and emotional distress, Antonio is willing to be killed by Shylock to demonstrate his love. 

Portia can't have this. Shakespeare as always is interested in the human heart, and so is Portia, if only in Bassanio's. If Antonio dies for Bassanio, that will be a sacrifice for love beyond any she could ever offer. And that is her motivation for destroying Shylock. As Michael Corleone would say in The Godfather, "It's just business."

Bringing this all back to the U.S. Supreme Court, we can ask if those of us who are disappointed in the likely elevation of Justice Barrett will be able to accept her appointment with at least the same grudging level of acceptance that the other side of the political divide showed to the late Justice Ginsburg during her tenure on the Court. 

"...we do pray for mercy; 

And that same prayer doth teach us all to render 

The deeds of mercy."

A plague on both your houses! Shakespeare and the COVID pandemic

The Elizabethans were rather more stalwart than we are when it comes to fatal communicable diseases. London was stricken with - wait for it - the bubonic plague repeatedly during Shakespeare's time, specifically in 1563, 1578, 1582, 1592, and 1603. The first and the last of these each killed roughly one-fourth of London's population. 

And when not scurrying away from the plague, smallpox stalked the land, claiming no less a victim than Elizabeth herself when she was 29, leaving her with deep scars requiring that famous white makeup, and taking away with it her hair. Oh, and they didn't have a cure for syphilis, which when uncured is a fatal disease. 

Shakespeare naturally refers to these maladies in his plays, most famously in Romeo and Juliet, when Mercutio, mortally wounded because a love-besotted Romeo stepped between him and Tybalt during their duel, cries out:

"A plague on both your houses!"

Though Mercutio is a friend of Romeo's (well, not so much on that day), Shakespeare carefully describes him as connected by blood to neither of the two feuding houses. He is, unfortunately, connected to the Prince of Verona, which spurs the Prince to banish Romeo. 

But let's get back to the pandemics. The bard gives us bleak but comic take on plagues in Measure for Measure, when Mistress Overdone, a madam in a house of ill repute, or in today's parlance the business manager of number of sex workers, complains to the audience about many the headwinds her industry is experiencing (custom means revenue):

Mistress Overdone: "What with the war, what with the sweat, 

what with the gallows, and what with poverty, 

I am custom-shrunk."

While the scene takes place in Vienna, the references are to life in Elizabethan era, and scholars have used this comment to try to date the play, or at least its first performance, reasoning that it would have had to have been staged when London was experiencing war, an epidemic involving fever, a crackdown involving hanging, and, of course, poverty. Many different years would qualify. 

It's a curious fact that in the face of this relentless series of highly fatal pandemics, London was able to fight off the Spanish Armada, elevate itself into a major maritime power, and still find time to create and celebrate some of the finest poetry and drama of the English language, extending beyond Shakespeare to encompass Spencer, Marlowe, Sidney, and Ben Jonson, and Walter Raleigh, to name but a few. 

It's worth taking a moment to look at ourselves from a Bard's eye view. We are facing a pandemic that we thought could take the lives of two million Americans, and we're successfully reducing the death toll to around a tenth of that number. But even two million would be well below one percent of our nation, while the Elizabethans saw the equivalent of 80 million Americans die (1/4 of the U.S. population), twice, in the span of 40 years. And that's just the record of one of their many maladies. 

Time to count our blessings. 

And as always, if you'd like to take a deeper but still quick and painless tour through one of Shakespeare's plays, please leaf through the Two-Hour Tour titles to the right...

Had I plantation of this isle, my lord: The Tempest and the 2020 Riots

 

Yesterday, even as our televisions were overheating with images of Portland, Oregon and other cities aflame, we took a look at Shakespeare's treatment of anarchy and disorder, shown in the history play Edward VI, Part 2. 

With the riots showing no sign of winding down, we'll stick with the subject. Today we'll look at another anarchistic utopian vision, presented by Gonzalo in The Tempest.

Societal collapse was very much on Shakespeare's mind as well, after all. While we think of Elizabeth's reign as spanning England's steady rise and a cultural golden age, that was hardly how England saw herself. There was a reason that those three Edward VI plays were among the earliest Shakespeare wrote. The civil strife they describe (across 15 excruciating acts!) was still fresh in people's minds, and are today filed under the heading of the War of the Roses. 

Moreover, Elizabeth inherited the schism with the Catholic Church that her father had initiated, with the result that her nation found itself with a mere 50 years of Anglican faith sitting atop a thousand years of Catholic ritual. One false move, such as beheading her Catholic sister Mary Queen of Scots, could form the pretext for Phillip  II of Spain to launch his armada, which of course happened in 1588.

To retain control, Elizabeth executed Catholics at a faster rate than Spain itself was doing during its famous Inquisition, although the Inquisition went on far longer. Elizabeth executed around 800 people across 40 years, or 20 a year, while Spain average 15 a year during its era of religious oppression.

A Catholic theocracy based in feudalism and extending across Europe remained a vision of utopia for many. 

Gonzalo's utopian vision is more modest. Shipwrecked on an island in the Mediterranean, he is the councilor to Naples’ King Alonso. For a brief moment in the play, he forgets his courtly obligations and fantasizes about what he would do if he were the ruler of the island:

Gonzalo: “Had I plantation of this isle, my lord, -”…

And were the king not on't, what would I do?”

Sebastian: “'Scape being drunk for want of wine.”

Gonzalo: “….. I would by contraries

Execute all things; for no kind of traffic

Would I admit; no name of magistrate;

Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,

And use of service, none; contract, succession,

Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;

No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil;

No occupation; all men idle, all;

And women too, but innocent and pure;

No sovereignty;--

Sebastian: “Yet he would be king on't.”

Antonio: “The latter end of his commonwealth forgets the beginning.”

Gonzalo: “All things in common nature should produce

Without sweat or endeavour: treason, felony,

Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine,

Would I not have; but nature should bring forth,

Of its own kind, all foison, all abundance,

To feed my innocent people.”

Sebastian: “No marrying 'mong his subjects?”

Antonio: “None, man; all idle: whores and knaves.”

Gonzalo: “I would with such perfection govern, sir,

To excel the golden age.”

Sebastian: “God save his majesty!”

Antonio: “Long live Gonzalo!”…

This is Shakespeare’s comic take on the idea of utopia. Gonzalo’s vision of a perfect and harmonious commonwealth involves the total prohibition of law, technology, and labor. Pol Pot tried something like that in Cambodia in the late 1970s. Shakespeare next conjures a scene that, though it employs some fantasy, shows how politics plays out in the real world. 

The First Thing We Do, Let's Kill All The Lawyers: Edward VI, Part 2 and the 2020 Riots

It's riot season in the United States, and with a large portion of our young adults spending their nights in a deadly duet with the police across many of our cities, we thought we'd look at how Shakespeare viewed anarchy, which he sees as linked to the eternal youthful ideal of a perfectly constructed society. 

Shakespeare visits this idea in quite a few plays, and today we'll look at one of the Edward VI plays (the second one), where he has an avowed anarchist, Jack Cade, dream of overthrowing the existing order. It's actually Cade's henchman, Dick, who says the famous line, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." The conversation Shakespeare puts that line into gives us Cade's vision of the world he would build once his revolution is complete:

JACK CADE. "Be brave, then; for your captain is brave, and vows reformation. There shall be in England seven half-penny loaves sold for a penny: the three-hoop'd pot shall have ten hoops; and I will make it felony to drink small beer: all the realm shall be in common;...and when I am king,– as king I will be,–"

ALL. "God save your majesty!"

JACK CADE. "I thank you, good people:– there shall be no money; all shall eat and drink on my score; and I will apparel them all in one livery, that they may agree like brothers, and worship me their lord."

DICK. "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."

JACK CADE. "Nay, that I mean to do..."

It's fun to dream, and Shakespeare seems to be having fun as well. Is bread too expensive? We'll order the price be lowered. Seven half-penny loaves sold for a penny. Cade's dream was the 20th century's reality: the Soviet Union of course forced prices to remain at a standstill for decades. And despite the disastrous results, The U.S. imposed "wage and price controls" in the 1970s. It didn't work here either. 

How about: "the three-hoop'd pot shall have ten hoops"? Shakespeare loves the idea of just ordering something you don't like to be something else. When Petruchio is taming Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew, he tells her the sun is the moon, and won't rest until she agrees. The Soviet Union took the hint, and would routinely change the days of the week it was. Next week's Saturday would be  turned into a Wednesday by order of the Politburo, for example.\

But back in Edward VI, part 2, Cade and Shakespeare aren't done. "There shall be no money; all shall eat and drink on my score." Cade doesn't explain how everyone can eat on his score, or tab, likely because he can't, but the idea of going through life like Queen Elizabeth, never carrying money, and yet having all of your needs met, is enduringly attractive. Guaranteed basic income, anyone?

Even though all shall be equal, as symbolized by their wearing identical clothes (I will apparel them all in one livery, that they may agree like brothers), Cade somehow feels it proper to anoint himself as monarch, just to ensure the equality continues, we can assume. And that's when Dick chimes in with the suggestion that we kill all the lawyers. Can't have that pesky rule of law interfering with a nice millennial dream...

Shakespeare and the Coronavirus

This one is easy, because the plague was an ever-present threat to Shakespeare's London, and it shows up periodically in his plays. Now that the deadly coronavirus has emerged from Wuhan province in China, we can travel to fair Verona, where Romeo and Juliet's Friar Laurence found his entire plan to unite the Montagues and Capulets undone by the major infectious disease of his time.

First, let's have Frian Laurence explain his plot in his own words, and then we'll see how it was undone by the plague:

Friar Laurence: "...in my cell there would she kill herself.
Then gave I her, so tutor'd by my art,
A sleeping potion; which so took effect
As I intended, for it wrought on her
The form of death: meantime I writ to Romeo,
That he should hither come as this dire night,
To help to take her from her borrow'd grave,
Being the time the potion's force should cease.
But he which bore my letter, Friar John,
Was stay'd by accident, and yesternight
Return'd my letter back."

That was the plan, but Romeo and Juliet shifted from a comedy to a tragedy as a result of a postal service failure. Why exactly was that Friar John "staye'd by accident"? Here's the scene:

Friar Laurence: "This same should be the voice of Friar John.
Welcome from Mantua. What says Romeo?
Or if his mind be writ, give me his letter.

Friar John: "Going to find a barefoot brother out,
One of our order, to associate me,
Here in this city visiting the sick,
And finding him, the searchers of the town,
Suspecting that we both were in a house
Where the infectious pestilence did reign,                 
Sealed up the doors and would not let us forth,
So that my speed to Mantua there was stayed."

Friar Laurence: "Who bare my letter then to Romeo?"

Friar John: "I could not send it, — here it is again, —
Nor get a messenger to bring it thee,
So fearful were they of infection."

The rest, as they say, is history, or rather tragedy. Romeo, never learning that Juliet was in fact alive and only appeared dead as a result of a potion given to her by Friar Laurence, kills himself in her tomb.

It was a grim ending to a love that began with a sonnet that both lovers contributed to:

Romeo {taking Juliet’s hand}:
“If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.”

Juliet: “Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.”

Romeo: “Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?”

Juliet: “Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.”

Romeo: “O then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do.
They pray: grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.”

Juliet: “Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake.”

Romeo: “Then move not while my prayer’s effect I take.”
{He kisses her.}

Calling her hand a holy shrine, Romeo says that if he profanes that shrine with his own “unworthy” hand, he stands ready to make amends with his lips, which he likens to two blushing pilgrims. He doesn’t explain why his lips (blushing pilgrims) have a higher status than his hands (unworthy).

Juliet responds with encouragement – saints, by which she means the images of saints venerated by pilgrims, have hands that pilgrims’ hands may touch. And because the actual pilgrims of that time who went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land would return with a palm leaf, Juliet puns on the word “palm” to say that the holding of hands, the touching of palms, is the kiss of holy palmers (another word for pilgrims).

Seeing that Juliet has accepted his offer to take her hand, Romeo makes a further offer. Don’t saints have lips, too? Juliet slaps him down; saints may use their lips only in prayer. Romeo naturally then casts Juliet as a saint, and asks if lips may do what hands do (that is, pray).

Juliet answers that saints do not “move,” and that’s true, since she’s referring to the venerated images of saints, who have long since shed their human form. What she really means is that they don’t take the initiative, although they will grant prayers. Romeo takes the hint, and kisses her. Here what they say after kissing:

Romeo: “Thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purged.”

Juliet: “Then have my lips the sin that they have took.”

Romeo: “Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urged!
Give me my sin again.”{He kisses her again.}

Juliet: “You kiss by th’ book.”

Shakespeare completes his fusion of romance and religion by having Romeo say that his sins have been purged by kissing his Saint Juliet. Juliet answers logically, and with theological soundness, that in that case his sins have now fallen on her. Romeo accuses her of urging him on, sweetly of course, to a second trespass, required in order to reclaim his sin and re-purify her in her sainthood.

While “You kiss by th’ book” sounds to modern ears like a gentle or even ungentle criticism, as if to say, “you kiss in too formal a manner,” it was most likely a straightforward compliment. Scholars seem to agree that at the time, by the book simply meant “expertly.”

The Tempest and Puerto Rico

What would Shakespeare have thought of the news from Puerto Rico? It seems that the people there discovered that the local government was concealing hurricane relief supplies in some warehouses. The local anger is so great that Puerto Ricans are erecting guillotines in the public squares.

As with so much else, Shakespeare was already there, in a passage from The Tempest, where the townspeople attacked Sycorax, a witch who was Caliban's mother in a kind of villagers-attack-the-Frankenstein-monster scene.  Let's have a look:

Prospero: Where was she born? Speak. Tell me.

Ariel: Sir, in Argier.

Prospero: Oh, was she so? I must
Once in a month recount what thou hast been,
Which thou forget’st. This damned witch Sycorax,
For mischiefs manifold and sorceries terrible
To enter human hearing, from Argier,
Thou know’st, was banished. For one thing she did
They would not take her life. Is not this true?
This blue-eyed hag was hither brought with child
And here was left by th' sailors.

They were ready to take her life but thankfully (and let's hope for the same result for the governor of Puerto Rico) for one thing she did they would not take her life.

Specifically, Sycorax became pregnant with Caliban. Of course, she did this not out of love, but to avoid being killed by the people of Algiers, who had had enough of her sorcery and witchcraft. I'm not sure the governor of Puerto Rico can secure his constituents' sympathy in the same way.

Prospero's most famous speech comes at the end of the play, when he imagines something like the end of the universe as predicted by modern physics:

Prospero: Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve;
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."

Let's hope that, in the interim, we deliver to each other more justice and kindness than seems to have been delivered recently by the government of Puerto Rico to its people.

Hamlet and Jeffrey Epstein Have a Chat

Hamlet deserves to keep better company, but seeing as Jeffrey Epstein died recently, and his death was ruled a suicide, and Hamlet has given the most famous speech in the language contemplating suicide, we have to wonder what the two of them might talk about in the afterlife.

Hamlet: I'd prefer not to keep company with a man credibly accused of serial sex crimes with children. Honor was central to my life.

"Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honor's at the stake."

Epstein: Good stuff. Not my cup of tea though. I hobnobbed with the great and powerful, and word has it that after supplying them with underage partners, I blackmailed them. Nice work if you can get it.

Hamlet: And yet here you stand, dishonored and dead, having taken your own life. You really weren't facing what I was facing, though, when I contemplated doing the same:

"To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them."

I had a sea of troubles. My dead father told me my uncle, now king, killed him, and the only way to exact revenge was to kill the king, which not even a prince may do. And how to show his guilt to Denmark, in order to preserve my own honor?

Epstein: Not my circus, not my monkeys.

"To die—to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd."

Hamlet: I suppose Mr. Epstein, that your feelings were running along those lines.

Epstein: Well, actually...

Hamlet: Let's look at more of the speech. It really is good. When you're under stress, sometimes the best stuff comes out:

"To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there's the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause—there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life."

The mortal coil means your body. I understand yours was wrapped in a bedsheet, or at least your neck was. You must have been desperate.

Epstein: Well, actually, Mr. Hamlet...

Hamlet: Let's go on:

"For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th'unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin?"

A bodkin is a knife, but you didn't have one available in the prison cell.

Epstein: No, but that's not really the point...

Hamlet: A fardel is a bundle, but I use it here to mean a burden. And, you know, "Who would fardels bear" is just the old-style word order. Today it would be "Who would bear fardels." Also bourn means journey, or journey there. Listen:

"Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovere'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?"

Well. you're in the undiscovered country now, Epstein.

Epstein: I preferred my undiscovered island.

Hamlet: You harmed so many people.

Epstein: You drove Ophelia to death, caused the death of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and killed Polonius, Claudius, and Laertes outright.

Hamlet: They were all fictional characters. I don't deserve to be stuck in a conversation with you.

"Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action."

By conscience I meant consciousness, though I can't prove it from my current address. My enterprise of great pitch and moment was supposed to be the wise governance of Denmark. Your enterprise was something evil and vile. No wonder your conscience, and consciousness, caught up with you, and you decided...

Epstein: No, they didn't catch up with me, and as I've been trying to say, I didn't kill myself.

Two-Hour Tours has been launched

The Two-Hour Tours of Shakespeare series launched this week with our first eight titles, and we have plenty more in store. This blog is where we will filter modern life through a Shakespearean prism to see how it might have looked to the bard.