Celebrate Creativity

Send us Fan Mail GEORGE: Before we start, I want to be fair to the truth. We do not have a neat, signed lease saying: “William Shakespeare, here is your first London room, congratulations.” In fact, Shakespeare’s early London years are famously foggy. What we have instead is a trail of documents — tax records, parish lists — the kind of evidence that proves you existed in a place even if doesn’t g...

Send us Fan Mail GEORGE: The Bills of Mortality—weekly printed tallies—turned death into public information, something people watched like weather. (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) WILL: And once death is printed, it becomes “real” in a new way. But it also becomes… manageable. A column of numbers fits neatly on a page. A grave does not. GEORGE: That’s the paradox: a bill can keep the dead visible— and it c...

Send us Fan Mail GEORGE: Today: How Plague Trained Us How plague trained Elizabethan culture—audiences included— toward certain fears and reflexes… and how COVID trained us in remarkably similar ways. GEORGE: Quick reminder: my Shakespeare can look back from the present day—films, scholarship, modern claims— but he cannot predict the future. No prophecy. WILL: Memory, yes. Foresight, no. GEORGE: N...

Send us Fan Mail GEORGE: Now, When I say “habits of mind,” I mean the reflexes that become automatic: how you interpret a cough how you feel about crowds what you do with your hands what you believe when you’re afraid what you do to feel safe who you trust, and how quickly you withdraw trust WILL: An epidemic trains a person the way war trains a person— not by speeches, but by repeated fear. GEORG...

Send us Fan Mail GEORGE: In this series we’ve treated plague as a character. We’ve treated fear as a character. We’ve treated rumor, policy, numbers—characters. Today I want to treat the audience itself as a character. Not a passive crowd. A living organism. WILL: Yes. A crowd is not merely many people. It is one creature with many hearts. GEORGE: And after plague, that creature is wounded. WILL:...

Send us Fan Mail WILL: When the theatre reopened, the audience came in carrying private funerals. They had lost parents, children, friends, patrons, rivals. They had seen doors marked. They had heard carts. They had watched the city grow quiet. So when they watched tragedy, they were not merely entertained— they were rehearsing mortality in public. GEORGE: That aligns with scholarship arguing that...

Send us Fan Mail GEORGE: Today: trust and betrayal— why people cling to rumors, why institutions lose credibility, and why truth-telling has to be humane… or it fails. GEORGE: Reminder: my Shakespeare can look back from today at his life on earth—films, scholarship, modern claims— but he cannot predict the future. No prophecy. WILL: I may remember what was. I may observe what is. But I may not spe...

Send us Fan Mail GEORGE: Today: the social contract. Who bears the risk, who gets protected, who gets blamed, and who gets forgotten— in plague-time England and in COVID-era America. Quick reminder: my Shakespeare can look back from the present day at his life on earth—films, scholarship, modern claims— but he cannot predict the future. No prophecy. WILL: Memory, yes. Foresight, no. GEORGE: When I...

Send us Fan Mail GEORGE: Today: Bills of Mortality in plague London— and COVID dashboards in our century. How counting the dead can help a society tell the truth… and how counting can also numb the heart. GEORGE: Quick reminder: my Shakespeare can look back from the present day. He can read scholarship, watch modern productions, react to modern claims— but he cannot predict the future. No prophecy...

Send us Fan Mail GEORGE (quiet): Now When people get scared, they don’t only ask, “What is happening?” They ask, “What can I do?” And if the honest answer is “not much,” we don’t accept it. We reach for something—anything— a charm, a potion, a ritual, a headline, a miracle. Isn't that true Master Shakespeare? WILL (dry): Yes, Humanity’s oldest hobby: bargaining with reality. GEORGE: Today: cu...

Send us Fan Mail GEORGE: Today is Episode Three of our plague-and-COVID series: Quarantine. Blame. Meaning. Not the medicine— the human weather. GEORGE: Quick reminder: my Shakespeare can look back from the present day at his life on earth— he can watch films, read scholarship, comment on modern interpretations— but he cannot predict the future. No prophecies. No spoilers. WILL: I may remember the...

Send us Fan Mail GEORGE: This is Episode Two of our plague-and-COVID series. Last time we met two invisible enemies and noticed how history doesn’t repeat itself— but it does rehearse. Today: what happens to art when gathering becomes dangerous. What happens to theatre when breath becomes suspicious. WILL: And what happens when the crowd—the glorious crowd— is declared a hazard. GEORGE: Quick remi...

Send us Fan Mail Before we start, a rule for anyone joining us: In my podcast, Shakespeare—the character—has the ability to look back from our present day to his life on earth. So he can react to films, modern productions, scholarship, the whole lot. But—this matters—he cannot predict the future in any way. No prophecies. No “coming attractions.” No magic spoilers. WILL: I may remember, yes. I may...

Send us Fan Mail In the second half of 1564, more than 200 inhabitants of Stratford are buried—about one-seventh of the town. MASTER SHAKESPEARE: One-seventh. GEORGE: Which means: you don’t get to pretend it’s somewhere else. And another Stratford record helps us track the rhythm of fear. The Folger’s documentation notes the outbreak breaking out that summer, deadliest in September, and that it wa...

Send us Fan Mail In the previous episode, I mentioned that I was going to talk briefly about Hamnet, Shakespeare's son.  Hamnet was a twin, and his sister's name was Judith. Now we do know that Hamlet died in 1596 - he was only 11 years old and was buried on August the 11th, 1596 in Stratford -upon - Avon.  Basically all we know is that he died and not the cause of death. There is a very...

Send us Fan Mail GEORGE: Close your eyes and stand with me in Stratford-upon-Avon—an English market town of roughly fifteen hundred souls, ringed by fields, sheep, mud, and gossip.  No phones. No streetlights. No “I’ll do it tomorrow” the way we mean it. And today, we’re not going to London. We’re not going to the Globe. We’re going to spend one ordinary day in Stratford— and watch how an ordinary...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to celebrate creativity - and this series is Conversations with Shakespeare.  Rhetorical triangle - part two In the previous podcast we talked about the three central parts of a rhetorical triangle - think of the rock group ELP or Emerson Lake and Palmer from the 70s and you have E for ethos P and L for logos. Hope you've got that down Now the three aspects of rhetori...

Send us Fan Mail I have decided to call a slight halt to episodes regarding Shakespeare's initial exposure to rhetorical devices for several reasons.  I wanted to concentrate on a few of the major rhetorical devices, and I have done so in the past few episodes.  And I certainly will talk about some of the rhetorical devices that were most important to Shakespeare during future episodes.  And...

Send us Fan Mail Tonight’s device is one I love because it feels human. It’s called aporia. GEORGE: Master Shakespeare, I’m going to pronounce it and then stare at you like a student: uh-PORE-ee-uh. SHAKESPEARE (approving): Aye. A word that already sounds uncertain—fit for its purpose. GEORGE: Listeners—plain definition: Aporia is when a speaker expresses doubt or uncertainty—real or performed—oft...

Send us Fan Mail GEORGE: All right, for the listener who doesn’t want a grammar lecture: antithesis is when you place two opposing ideas side by side—often in a balanced structure—so the contrast hits hard. Like: light and darkness, love and hate, life and death. Well let me see let's say give me a famous example one that listeners will recognize    SHAKESPEARE: Aye. Two wrestlers in one ring...

Send us Fan Mail SHAKESPEARE: Aye. The mind loves threes. Beginning, middle, end. Birth, life, death. Knock, knock, knock. GEORGE: I knew you’d do that—three examples to explain the “rule of three.”     SHAKESPEARE: Would you have me offer four? That way lies chaos. GEORGE: So why does three work so well? What’s the magic? SHAKESPEARE: Because one is a point. Two is a choice. Three is a pattern. G...

Send us Fan Mail GEORGE: Master Shakespeare, are you with us? SHAKESPEARE (warm, amused): Indeed, sir. I am ever at your elbow—though I confess, your age is wondrous. In mine own day, men grew old chiefly by avoiding theaters. GEORGE: Ha! We’ll take the win where we can. All right—anaphora. I’m going to pronounce it slowly so I don’t embarrass myself: a-NA-pho-ra. SHAKESPEARE: A fair stumbling, sw...

Send us Fan Mail GEORGE (to mic, playful): All right. Confession  Some people hear the phrase “rhetorical devices” and immediately reach for the nearest exit sign. But over the years I have learned that rhetorical devices are not decorations. They’re not lace on the edge of language. They’re engines. They’re how a speaker makes an audience feel the truth— even when the truth is… being negotiated....

Send us Fan Mail George: Stratford-upon-Avon is not London. Not even close. London is noise—argument, urgency, ambition. London is a place where a man can vanish into a crowd and become someone else by lunchtime. Stratford is… remembered. Stratford is: “Ah, there he goes—John Shakespeare’s boy.” Stratford is: “Did you hear what the Ardens are up to?” Stratford is: “Mind your tongue—your aunt will...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Celebrate Creativity. I’m George Bartley.  For the next section of this podcast, I’m beginning a new series I’m calling Conversations with Shakespeare.  And tonight's episode is called get here anyone who ever try to do the right thing    Transition to Shakespeare. I want to start with something simple—something honest. I’m doing this now because I’m seventy-five y...