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LISTEN TO THE INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW AUDIOBOOK, Narrated by Steven Cooper
1) CLICK THE LINK ABOVE
2) CLICK THE LINK AGAIN WHEN THE NEW WINDOW OPENS
UNDERSTANDING
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DYING TO ENTERTAIN
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Why is it that killing, mayhem, destruction, murder, blood & guts, war and death in general are called “entertainment”? It’s not just on television. Dying horribly has featured as the prominent theme in books, magazines, newspapers, plays, movies and every kind of “entertainment” ever conceived. A couple thousand years ago we used to go to arenas all over the Roman Empire to watch people slaughter each other and innocent animals by the thousands! Bloody “sports” like boxing, wrestling, sword fighting, and jousting have been popular for thousands of years. More people have been slaughtered on battlefields all over the world throughout human history than by any other cause (except disease and old age).
Why are homo sapiens are utterly fascinated by, and relish violent, dramatic death? Why is death entertaining?
My guess is because we don’t really die. We just keep on coming back and doing it all again. What we really love about death is the drama, the mystery and the pain of playing a game.
— Lawrence R. Spencer, 2012
William Shakespeare, The Gangster
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“Exploring this unlighted lane in Shakespeare’s life means, first, looking at the crucial document. “Be it known,” the Latin text begins,
The 1596 writ charging Shakespeare with making death threats, discovered in Britain’s National Archives by the Canadian scholar Leslie Hotson in 1931. The second of the four entries is the one relating to the playwright.
that William Wayte craves sureties [guarantees] of the peace against William Shakspere, Francis Langley, Dorothy Soer wife of John Soer, and Anne Lee, for fear of death, and so forth. Writ of attachment issued by the sheriff of Surrey, returnable on the eighteenth of St Martin [November 29, 1596].
A few pages away in the same collection of documents, there is a second writ, issued by Francis Langley and making similar charges against William Wayte.
Who are these people, each alleging the other was issuing death threats? The scholar who unearthed the document—an indefatigable Canadian by the name of Leslie Hotson, best remembered today as the man who first stumbled across the records of the inquest into the highly mysterious murder of Shakespeare’s fellow playwright, Christopher Marlowe—uncovered a squalid tale of gangland rivalries in the theatrical underworld of Queen Elizabeth’s day.
READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE ON SMITHSONIAN.COM:
WISDOM DOESN’T EQUAL HAPPINESS
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“WISDOM DOES NOT EQUAL HAPPINESS. A THOROUGH UNDERSTANDING OF THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE DOES NOT MEAN YOU WILL BE HAPPY. YOU WILL OBSERVE THAT THIS UNIVERSE IS DEVOID OF EMPATHY, AESTHETIC, JOY AND EQUANIMITY. IT IS SIMPLY AN AMALGAMATION OF INSENTIENT, CALLOUS, INDESTRUCTIBLE FORCES.
PLEASURE AND BEAUTY IN ANY UNIVERSE IS WHAT YOU CREATE AND ENDOW.
A SPIRITUAL BEING IS THE SOURCE OF JOY.”
— Lawrence R. Spencer —