“History is for human self-knowledge … the only clue to what man can do is what man has done. The value of history, then, is that it teaches us what man has done and thus what man is.”      (R. G. Collingwood) 

I have always loved old things. The ghostly line of columns—all that remains of the Temple of Saturn—in the Roman Forum. The hand-made red and yellow fleur-de-lis tiles in Westminster Abbey’s Chapter House –tiles that Henry III walked across during The King’s Great Council of 1257 (in effect, the first English Parliament). I confess, I once laid my cheek against those tiles. I wanted to feel the heartbeat of the ages. Feel the thing that connects me to all living beings past and present.

Okay, so we’ve established I’m a little weird. But everybody’s got to be something.

This past May, Ed and I spent three weeks traveling through Greece. I was really psyched because it was a place I’ve always wanted to visit. Of course, we trudged up the long hill to the Acropolis to see the Parthenon. The place where Socrates and Plato walked. The source of the famous marbles that Lord Elgin saved or stole (depending on your viewpoint). And it was worth it, but what really blew me away were the Minoan ruins at Akrotiri, on Santorini, and the Palace of Knossos outside Heraklion, Crete.

Just to put things in perspective, habitation at Akrotiri goes back to the 5^th millennium BC, and the first settlement of Knossos predates even that by 2,000 years (though the Minoan Palace wasn’t built until 1900 BC). About 400 generations of men and women have been born, flourished or flailed, and died since the first Neolithic settlement there. We are talking old.

The staircases and roads and walls and rooms of these ancient places are open to wander through and marvel at, but the fragile stuff—the urns and pitchers, the bowls and murals have all been moved to museums. So, after touring the ruins, we headed to the modest Archaeological Museum of Thera and the much bigger Heraklion Archaeological Museum. As women keep telling men, size doesn’t matter. Both museums were filled with treasures that constantly made me stop to think. Call them love letters from the dead.

NECESSITY IS THE MOTHER OF INVENTION

The first item I saw at the museum in Heraklion was an intricately decorated plate that was made 7,000 years ago. The second item was a “bee smoker” of similar vintage. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. It’s the kind of object that contains a whole story in itself and offers a huge window on humanity. It’s the moment the light bulb went on. It’s the invention necessity was the mother of.

At some point, people noticed that beehives yielded delicious honey. They started keeping hives. Obvious problem: Bees get feisty when you mess with their hive. Question: Who’s going to sacrifice himself to collect the honey? Not a popular job. So, they argue and maybe draw straws, and each day some poor guy braves the angry buzzing and the stings.

Until …  the light bulb goes on. Someone notices (over a cooking fire? Smoking a cheroot?) that bees get really groggy with smoke. Fly slower. Don’t raise such a fuss. So this someone thinks, If I make something I can carry, something I can put a little fire inside, give it holes to let the smoke out  … Problem solved.

It’s how water jugs got spouts. And handles. It’s how the wheel got invented—and wasn’t that a red letter day, because people were already planting crops and herding domestic animals. You can almost hear some yeoman in the background, tired of hauling twice his weight over hill and dale, complaining, Come on, hurry it up already. We need that wheel!

Take a moment to look around you and imagine all the light bulb moments that occurred to invent all the stuff that fills your home. Necessity is the mother of invention. The mother of creativity. That we can respond to it is what separates us from the amoebas.

NATURE ABHORS A STRAIGHT LINE

The sort of glossy western civilization or world history surveys most of us got in high school laid out the timeline of humanity something like this: There were a whole bunch of millenniums of Neanderthal guys before the Egyptians settled the Nile for farming, domesticated cats, and built the Pyramids. Then nothing much happened until the Romans showed up with their grid-based cities, inter-linked sewage lines, and aqueducts. After the Romans (up to their necks in economic troubles, government corruption, and an over-reliance on slave labor—sound familiar?) took a fatal series of beatings from the Goths, Vandals, etc., the “Dark Ages” settled across Europe in murky mysteriousness for nearly 800 years. Until Michelangelo, Leonardo, and the Medicis brought the Italian Renaissance into glorious light in the 14^th century. After that, the printing press gets invented, Shakespeare bursts onto the scene, and then it’s pretty much a straight shot, an unwavering true line of progress from about 1700, growing ever more brilliant—and still rising.

Only it wasn’t. It isn’t. Progress in human history is NOT linear. It’s not even entirely cyclical, although that would be closer to fact. Consider that more than 10,000 years ago, people were cultivating crops in the Levant. Rice had been domesticated in China. And the people of Mesopotamia were already old hands at raising pigs and sheep. It’s not like people used to be so stupid and now they’re so smart. (I could offer you many examples to back this from contemporary society, but I feel certain you have a few of your own.)

Walking through the ruins of Akrotiri—streets and multi-room dwellings with windows and doors and frescoes—I saw a sophisticated Minoan Bronze Age city that enjoyed trade relations with other cultures in the Aegean until it came to an abrupt end with the Theran eruption around 1627 BC. 

Plague, famine (blame the weather gods), earthquakes. These unforeseen, and largely unpreventable, disasters sink civilizations. Stall or retard progress. Turn it in a new direction. Send it another people’s way. More cyclical, or at least predictably always in the wings are: Power struggles, corruption, jealousy, wars—all destroyers, or at least retardants, of civilization and progress.

Which brings us to the third lesson the dead have to teach us: The greatest number and magnitude of advances in human history occur in times of peace, tolerance, and cultural inclusion.

WANT TO GET AHEAD? TRY TOLERANCE. TRY INCLUSION.

We saw two amazing exhibits at the British Museum that underscored this truth: Sunken Cities (Egypt’s Lost Worlds), and Sicily: Culture and Conquest. In both cases, a long string of rulers had to govern societies that included citizens from multiple cultures (Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans), with religious customs and beliefs that embraced Greek gods, Egyptian gods, the Hebrew god, and eventually the Christian Holy Trinity. It wasn’t always easy, and those who were successful understood the value of good propaganda—one Greek ruler of the lost Greek/Egyptian settlement at Thonis-Heracleion had his public image chiseled sporting a traditional pharoah’s headdress.

The best rulers may have kept the peace (and inclusivity) to preserve their highly profitable trade with the Mediterranean world, but it permitted people dignity and art and invention. Men like Archimedes, advancing mathematics. Playwrights like Aeschylus. In 398, visiting Syracuse, Plato said that his Utopia could best be imagined, perhaps even realized, in Sicily.

So what brings the cultural co-existence, and its resulting progress, crashing down? Someone gets hungry for empire, and instead of inventing things or making art or legislating democratic laws, it’s war again. And everyone loses. Even those who think they’ve won, because they’re the targets of tomorrow’s predators. Archimedes was killed by an invading Roman soldier.

These are the things I thought about on my summer vacation. The lessons I learned from the dead.

 

 

 

 

 

“The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them.”  — Ralph Nichols

My dad was fond of saying, “You don’t learn much with your mouth flapping,” by which I always suspected he meant “Shut up and listen to me.” But his point was valid.

One of the great perks of traveling is the opportunity to discover what people around the globe are really thinking and experiencing. Our 24-hour news cycle favors angry pundits and eye-popping footage. It’s geared to win ratings, not enhance understanding.

During the last five weeks, as I traveled through Greece and London with my husband Ed, we talked to hundreds of people: waiters, cashiers, pub staff, shop owners, chefs, fellow theatre goers, strangers in the park, and even a British civil servant who works on humanitarian issues for the Home Office. We asked them about their lives, their homelands, their hopes, and the world as they see it.

On Their Minds

Our travels coincided with several big moments: the upcoming Brexit referendum (June 23) on whether the UK should remain in the EU, and the Greek parliament vote on a new round of taxes and austerity measures under pressure from Germany and the IMF.

No one had to be coaxed to talk.

Individually, opinions ranged widely about the best way to address these issues. Some Greeks we spoke to (especially the Athenians) felt Greece should have taken a cue from the UK, and kept its own currency when they joined the EU. They told us the purchasing power of real wages has fallen with the euro, and despite 12- to 16-hour workdays, they cannot keep up with the cost of living.

Others wanted out of the EU entirely, citing the sharp inequality of power among nations in the union. They resented the pressure to buy weapons from Germany when that country was insisting Greece cut healthcare and raise the already steep 23% VAT (value-added tax). Many expressed deep disappointment that the supposedly radical left Syriza party was about to sell them down the river (They did. The day we left Greece, May 22, the Greek parliament approved a raft of new taxes and austerity measures to appease their creditors.)

The View From London

Leaving the EU was a less popular idea among the Londoners we spoke with (although ours was a random sample, and decidedly not skewed towards bankers and big-business Tories). While some Londoners shared the Greeks’ view that Germany was lording it over everyone, most people favored EU membership for the rich cultural exchange it has fostered (in London alone, we conversed with people from Albania, Italy, Hungary, India, Pakistan, Hong Kong, Poland, Finland, Iran, Romania, the Ukraine, Turkey, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovenia, Latvia, and Austria). Their views were reflected in a recent letter of support for continued EU membership (signed by Benedict Cumberbatch and 250 other British entertainers): “Britain is not just stronger in Europe, it is more imaginative and more creative, and our global creative success would be severely weakened by walking away.” Many people saw in the EU a hope for unity and peace.

The EU also permits people from all member countries to live and work anywhere within its nations’ borders. This allows people to move to areas of opportunity, and young people from all over Europe have converged on London. (About 80% of all EU immigrants in the UK are working. Others come to study or join family members.) Many under-30s told us there were no jobs or hope for advancement in their homeland. They were drawn to London’s cosmopolitan culture and generally progressive values.

What Unites Us

Collectively, the people who shared their thoughts with us demonstrated an impressive knowledge of political history and current issues. Even when they had differing ideas on how best it might be achieved, their hopes were always centered on building a more peaceful and just world for everyone. We heard no words of hatred or bigotry. No hotheaded rants. Just the desire for global unity, mutual respect, educational and economic opportunities for the many, not just a few.

One final collective note: Everyone we spoke to expressed dismay and alarm about Trump. The question we were asked most often was: How can the U.S., being such a powerful country in the world, even consider Trump as a presidential candidate?

Good question.

Listening has its own rewards. I was moved by the generosity of spirit of the people we met. Many times, I was reminded that those who have the least often give the most.

So, I want to say a big thank-you to everyone who took the time to talk to us, to express and explain their opinions and thinking, who greeted us warmly and treated us well. You all give me great hope. We share this world. We share this fight. When I look into your faces, I see my own.

Something a little different in this space today. I have a guest: Author and educator Toni Rhodes. Recently, Toni interviewed me on her website The Writing on the Wall, a wonderful compendium of ideas and resources for teaching history (read the interview here ). Today, it’s her turn to sit in the hot seat while I ask the questions. Thanks for being such a good sport, Toni. (And for giving us such a terrific reading list!)

Amy: We share an intense interest in World War II, an event and time that continues to be the setting for much that is popular in both fiction and non-fiction. What do you feel is the great importance of this war? Why do you think it still speaks to us so strongly 75 years later?

Toni: In WW2 there was a powerful and clear evil that we were fighting. There was a sense that if we didn’t win, the world would become controlled and oppressed by Hitler and the Nazis, who were intent on killing or enslaving whole populations of people. To this day we are still trying to figure out how Hitler came to power and how so many seemingly ordinary Germans carried out his heinous plans. Perhaps that’s why there are so many Hitler-related shows still on TV.

Amy: One of the things we first bonded over on FB was that we were both writing novels set in World War II. You have written a number of nonfiction books (which we’ll get to in a minute), but I recall you saying that you found writing a novel a different kind of challenge. Can you talk about that in more detail?

Toni: I love reading historical fiction, and I’m trying to write historical fiction. I think what trips me up is the whole process of creating a true-to-life time and place. All the research involved is daunting, to say the least. Right now, I’m writing a MG (middle-grade) novel set in the small town of Clarkston, near Atlanta, during the early 1940s. Briefly, the story is about a boy in his early teens who is too young to enlist in the Army but wants to do his part, especially because his beloved older brother has gone off to war. The boy thinks he has discovered a local plot to aid the enemy, and enlists his friends to help. Anyway, the plot is evolving.

Amy: What inspired this particular story and its main character?

Toni: First, I was thinking about writing a story set in the late ’30s – early ’40s about a fatherless boy who is darker than his classmates. An older kid bullies him and claims to know that the deceased father was “a colored man.” I actually wrote a first draft of this story, but the project stalled because I’ve been having health problems and couldn’t devote the energy necessary to do the rewrite.

Lately, I’ve been thinking I would incorporate elements of this story into a more upbeat tale about the boy confronting his fears and the bully by hunting Nazi spies in his own little hometown. Oh, and there’s also a dog who rides the streetcar by herself, and a sidekick named Jerry, and a Jewish girl who wants to be a friend, too, and help the boys find the Nazi traitors. How in the world I’ll fit all these pieces into the puzzle is beyond explaining at this point!

Amy: You taught elementary school in the Atlanta area for 10 years, and you’ve written a number of books and articles for the educational market about various world cultures and their histories. Every writer brings a point of view to their work. What did you feel was important for students to understand about other people’s cultures and histories?

Toni: I know that history is usually the least-liked subject for most students. This is really unfortunate because so many decisions people make throughout their lives, including political decisions, should be informed by what happened in the past. Otherwise, they become susceptible to propaganda. My main goal in my writing has been to get children interested in history from an early age. Instead of only writing about dates, kings, and queens, I’ve tried to introduce unusual topics. For instance, in my Wonders of World Culture series for Walch Education (see here), I introduce ‘treasure’ and ‘wonders’ of various cultures, like the Rosetta Stone of Egypt, the Taj Mahal of India, and the Rock Art of the African Bushmen. My latest book is The Writing on the Walls: Discovering Medieval and Ancient Graffiti for Middle School Social Studies, published by Prufrock Press (here).

Amy: Writers are often teachers, or were teachers at one time. Why do you think these two professions so frequently go hand in hand? How do they complement each other?

Toni: I guess it’s just natural for some teachers to want to continue teaching even after they’ve left the profession. Teaching sort of gets into your blood, so to speak. I know in my case the activity I enjoyed most was sharing children’s literature with my students. How they loved to act out the picture book Caps for Sale!

Amy: Your father, Verlin C. Blackwell, was an artist who made a series of drawings and paintings while he was serving in northern Australia during World War II. They’re quite good, evocative of ordinary people in that time and place. Did your father ever talk to you about this work? What have these drawings come to mean to you?

Toni: Yes, my father talked somewhat about his war experience, but his drawings, paintings, and photographs speak for themselves. He served in northern Australia where, apparently, he had plenty of time to draw and paint what was going on around him, including a Japanese air attack, which he painted after climbing to the top of the city water tower! One of my projects is to write a memoir of my father’s experiences in the Army. In this way I hope to understand him better and somehow get closer to him. (He was a bit of an enigma.) I’ve been in touch with a person who is a military historian and works in a museum in Darwin [Australia]. I’m hoping he can help me interpret the material my father left behind.

Amy: What works of historical fiction or non-fiction have you most enjoyed?

Toni: I read so much historical fiction that it’s hard to pick out favorites, but here goes (in no particular order):

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (I hate to rank books, but this is one of my favorites.)

All the Richard Peck books

City of Thieves by David Benioff (This is a favorite, too, and not many people have heard of it.)

Symphony for the City of the Dead by M.T. Anderson

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing books by M.T. Anderson

All of the historical fiction by Laurie Halse Anderson

All of the historical fiction by Karen Cushman

All of the historical fiction by Avi

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larsen

The Watsons Go to Birmingham by Christopher Paul Curtis

Rose by Martin Cruz Smith

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

The Plot Against America by Philip Roth

The Baker’s Daughter by Sarah McCoy

The Good Lord Bird by James McBride

The Orphan Train by Cristina Baker Kline

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

Well, that’s probably enough for now. Happy reading!

Amy: Thanks, Toni! 

(NOTE: Featured photo is “Spotlight.” Watercolor of Japanese night raid by Verlin C. Blackwell. Copyright 2016 Toni Blackwell Rhodes and Andrea Blackwell Kautz.)

“In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.”     T. S. Eliot

I stand here befuddled by indecision. I love my jeans jacket, but it’s too laid-back for the Little Black Dress I need for the theatre, so … maybe I should go with the trendy green coat?

I could take both, but that won’t leave room for the navy cable knit sweater I must wear under either to keep from freezing at night in London. Besides, I can’t layer a chunky sweater over a cocktail dress.

And where on earth am I going to find room for the sundresses and tank tops I’ll need for Greece? LOL stuff them in my laptop case?

Down parka with sandals, anyone?

Welcome to my nightmare. I love to travel but I dread packing.

In my life, I have moved cross country in a VW Bug, raised two kids, taught first-grade children to read and write, dug by hand and terraced a quarter-acre lot, and penned a half dozen novels.  So, why am I traumatized by the very thought of luggage?

The Goal

My goal here is to somehow assemble a suitcase-size wardrobe (leaving room for books! And maybe a little souvenir I Love Athens shot glass) that will take me through the next five weeks, from chilly London to sweltering Greece and back to a (somewhat) still chilly London.

I dump half the contents of my closet across the bed, searching for the magic outfit that can go from the Waterlily House in Kew Gardens to an evening of Puccini at the London Coliseum, from the mountain trails of Crete to the beaches of Santorini. Something like a NASA temperature-controlled flightsuit. But with more panache.

It doesn’t help that my husband, Ed, has assembled a neat stack—two pairs of pants, four shirts, one sweater, a jacket, the shoes he stands up in—and announced he’s ready to go.

Men.

Packing should be considered an Olympic sport, with gold medals for bags that don’t exceed the limit at check-in, and event categories like “Weekend Getaway: Three items + a toothbrush.” Or “Two weeks with only one pair of shoes.”

Last year, I packed a suitcase full of slinky little summer dresses and jaunty capris for a May/June trip to Paris, only to wind up wearing the same jeans/sweater/wool jacket combo every day because the thermometer never topped 55. The Parisians could spot this “femme Américaine” a kilometer away.

At least, I was able to swap out the accessories.

Accessories and Other Junk

And that’s another area where men and women are on completely different planets. My husband wears his wedding ring. End of accessorizing for him. But I’m staring at 27 potential outfits and trying to figure out what is the fewest number of earrings, bracelets, and necklaces I can make it out of the country with. I want to believe that this year I will be strong and take only the silver hoop earrings. But I know I will probably cave at the last minute, and throw a bunch of unrelated earrings, bangles, and necklaces into my little travel jewelry thingie where they will fuse during the flight into a tangled ball of tarnished junk.

Several years ago, Ed purchased two sets of compression packing cubes to maximize and organize the space in our luggage (why he needs them, I have no idea). You really can pack A LOT in these cubes. Like bombs, they weigh a ton and explode on opening. But their true perk is they allow—almost—adequate space for THE BATH BAG, my name for the heavy-duty plastic drawstring bag (stamped with the name of a local clothing emporium) that houses the contents of what would be my bathroom cabinets. If I were so fortunate as to have actual bathroom cabinets.

NOTE: It is beyond the scope of current human capability to reduce THE BATH BAG to anything less than half the suitcase. And weirdly, the size of the suitcase doesn’t matter. THE BATH BAG, like some immutable law of physics, always takes ½ the available space.

Once again, where are the men on this issue? Ed dumps soap, razor, deodorant, toothbrush, and a mini-shampoo into his wee dopp kit, zips it up, and voila! off he goes to watch a Red Sox game on TV.

Leaving me to transfer economy size bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and make-up remover into tiny plastic vials, like Viktor Frankenstein at the cosmetics bar in Bloomingdale’s. Now I can squeeze in the jumbo canister of curling mousse needed to prevent massive frizz-outs, as well as a stash of hair ties (for days when the mousse fails), perfume, make-up (without mascara and brow pencil, you wouldn’t even notice a redhead has eyes), my Invisalign retainer (w/its own accessories and cleaners). And Q-tips. I don’t know how men travel without these, they are such a staple of life.

So, the eleventh hour’s upon me and I still haven’t winnowed down the mess on the bed. What’s a woman to do?  Limit her travel wardrobe to black? Vacation in a nudist colony? Or maybe just pick up a massive armful of the cotton, denim, silk, and knitwear strewn before me and dump it into my bag. Sort it out at the other end. Who knows? I might go to the opera in cropped jeans and sneakers. Or walk the beach in my little black cocktail dress (how Breakfast at Tiffanys!).

I only know there will never be true equality between the sexes until men have to tone in their eyeshadow with their outfit.

“We know what we are, but know not what we may be.”  (Hamlet)

April 23 marks the 400^th anniversary of Will Shakespeare’s death. Celebrations of the Bard, his life and work, are scheduled throughout the world, including the first-ever (!) opportunity to see his school room at the King Edward VI School in Stratford-on-Avon (I would probably walk in, drop to my knees, and kiss the floor).

Shakespeare was and is a BIG DEAL. He almost single-handedly put British theatre on the world map. Four centuries later, people still valued his work enough to rebuild the Globe Theatre near its original site in Southwark. Some 400 television and feature-length films have been made from the Bard’s work, according to the Guinness Book of Records (including Kurzel’s excellent Macbeth, 2015), making Shakespeare the most filmed author. In any language. Ever. Hey, I invested £2 to buy a “brick” for the reconstruction of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London back when £2 was a lot (to me, anyway).

 His wizardry with words is legendary. Without Shakespeare, those opposed to borrowing and lending money would have no recourse to the pithy line “Neither a borrower, nor a lender be.” Magicians could not announce that the rabbit “vanished into thin air.” Nor lawyers claim that their client’s innocence is “a foregone conclusion.” We could never grouse that we are “more sinned against than sinning.” And none of us would be able to say “good riddance” to Donald Trump.

As I considered how I would like to honor Will’s life in this space, it occurred to me to shine a light on two players in the shadows: John Heminge and Henry Condell. Together, they compiled and edited one of the greatest literary treasures in all history, the First Folio. Or, as it was titled in their time: Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies.

The First Folio: What Its Editors Had to Say

The First Folio appeared in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare’s death. That the 36 plays it contains represented a monumental undertaking for Heminge and Condell is proved by their own words in the Preface:

“It had bene a thing, we confesse, worthie to haue bene wished, that the Author himselfe had liu’d to haue set forth, and ouerseen his owne writings; But since it hath bin ordain’d otherwise, and he by death departed from that right, we pray you do not envie his Friends, the office of their care, and paine, to haue collected &publish’d them… ”

So, it was something of a royal pain to collect and get Will’s work into shape for publication, and the two editors got cranky on occasion, suspecting the Bard of taking the easy way out by dying and leaving the task to them. And yet, they did it. (Read the entire Preface here.)

So who were these guys?

Heminge and Condell

John Heminge came to London at age 12, where he spent most of a decade apprenticed to the City Grocer. He eventually became a freeman of the Grocer’s Company, and a year later he married the widow of an actor. Perhaps she exerted some strange influence or maybe it was the company she kept, but Heminge soon ditched produce for a life on the stage.

Less is known about Henry Condell’s early life, but by the early 1590s both men were actors in the theatrical company Lord Strange’s Men. There, they trod the boards alongside Augustine Phillips, Richard Burbage, and an aspiring young playwright, Will Shakespeare. These five men would continue to work together—first, with Lord Strange’s Men, and then The Lord Chamberlain’s Men  (which became The King’s Men after Elizabeth I’s death)—until Phillips died in 1605 and Shakespeare retired to Stratford in 1610.

Like Shakespeare, both Heminge and Condell had shares in The King’s Men, and Heminge was the company’s financial manager. Heminge also owned a share in the Globe Theatre where, in true entrepreneurial fashion, he operated a taphouse. When Shakespeare purchased the Blackfriar’s Gatehouse in 1613, Heminge was one of the trustees. He and Condell were bequeathed 26 shillings and eightpence in Shakepeare’s will to purchase mourning rings in his memory.

John Heminge and Henry Condell were much more than Shakespeare’s fellow actors and business associates. They had his trust. They had his back. They were two of his dearest friends.

Something of a Miracle  

To appreciate what a truly remarkable gift the First Folio is, you need to realize how easily it might never have happened.

Elizabethan theater was fast-paced and demanding. When not shut down for plague or political squabbles, eight or nine companies played to audiences six days a week. And they weren’t doing three-month runs of Hamlet or Dr. Faustus. The actors in these companies never performed the same play two days in a row, and rarely twice within the same week. In 1592, for example, Lord Strange’s Men performed 23 different plays in a four-month stretch

The leading actors, on average, memorized 800 lines of verse for each play. At six plays a week, that’s almost 5,000 lines they had to keep in their noggins.

Bottom line: They needed plays. LOTS of plays. Playwrights had to write, rewrite, and collaborate at high speed. Yet, of the thousands of plays estimated to have been written in the 80 years from 1562 until Parliament banned all theatrical performances in 1642, only a small fraction have come down to us. That no other English playwright from that era has a surviving canon of works to rival Shakespeare, we owe to the diligence and love of Heminge and Condell.

Plagiarism and Bad Memories

The dearth of plays that have come down to us from the Bard’s time has much to do with Elizabethan publishing practices and the nature of the theatre business. Only half of the First Folio’s 36 plays appeared in print during Shakespeare’s life. And, as Heminge and Condell lamented, these publications were often “stol’n and surreptitious copies, maimed, and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of injurious impostors.”

Copyright laws didn’t exist yet, so printers interested in making a few bob were not above pirating a company’s prompt book (the single transcript of a play used during performances, cluttered with stage directions, instructions for sound effects, and the names of the actors).

Worse yet, in terms of posterity, were the quarto editions reconstructed from the memory of someone who had seen the play. What could possibly go wrong there?

To answer that question, compare the opening lines of Hamlet’s famous soliloquy in these two examples:

The Real Shakespeare (from the First Folio):

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. To die, to sleep–
No more–and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. ‘Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. 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 “remembered” Shakespeare from a quarto of Hamlet, published 1603:

To be, or not to be, aye there’s the point
To Die, to sleep, is that all? Aye all:
No, to sleep, to dream, Aye mary there it goes,
For in that dream of death, when we awake
And borne before an everlasting Judge,
From whence no passenger ever returned

I’d continue, but I think you see what Heminge and Condell were up against and why they felt it so important to publish the original works.

Without copyright protection, playwrights had nothing to gain from publication, and the theatrical companies who purchased their scripts had everything to lose. A published play gave other companies access to their property. Rival companies might beat you to the punch, and suddenly there’d be four productions of Hamlet going.

The Real Gift

The First Folio was the first publication to group Will’s plays into comedies, histories, and tragedies. It gave us the Droeshout portrait of Shakespeare, considered a true likeness by scholars because it was chosen by two men who knew him well.

But the real gift of Heminge and Condell’s work is that the First Folio preserved 18 of Shakespeare’s plays that had never been printed before. If you think the work of a few people can never make much difference to the world, consider this: Without their efforts, the following plays would have vanished with Will’s death.

Macbeth  *  The Tempest  *  Twelfth Night  *  All’s Well That Ends Well

As You Like It  *  Antony and Cleopatra  *  Julius Caesar  *  Henry VI (1)

The Taming of the Shrew  *  The Winter’s Tale  * Measure for Measure

Two Gentleman of Verona  *  Comedy of Errors  *  Coriolanus

King John  *  Henry VIII  *  Timon of Athens  *  Cymbeline

And most of the others would be known to us only through cheap bootleg editions.

To say Will Shakespeare rocked his world and ours is an understatement. He defined romantic love with Romeo and Juliet. Weighed justice in Measure for Measure. Stared into the dark abyss of ambition in Macbeth. He explored our most base and best selves. Took mercy on our human failings. Celebrated our triumphs of spirit. He is funny, irreverent, honest, brilliant. I would give anything to buy him a beer at the Mermaid Tavern. If he were still here and it was still standing.

 What links a writer to posterity is no more and no less than his or her words on the printed page. And for that, in Shakespeare’s case, we owe everything to Heminge and Condell.