Shakespeare Club meets

submitted by Joan Gaughan 

The Shakespeare Club’s first meeting of the year 2024 was a video presentation on the recovery of Shakespeare’s First Folio. The Folio was put together by John Hemings and Henry Condell, who had been actors and shareholders in Shakespeare’s King’s Men and who published it in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare’s death. In addition to 36 of his plays, that Folio also contained Martin Droeshout’s portrait of Shakespeare. It then lay in obscurity until 1785 when Isaac Reed came into possession of it. The Folio was then sold to a JW for £38 in 1807. Initially, 750 copies were printed but only 235 have survived, including two of which were not discovered until 2016. The Folger Library in Washington, D.C., now has two of them. One does not want to contemplate the paucity of our cultural heritage had that Folio not been recovered. We never would have heard of the mischievous Puck, Macbeth’s witches, Hamlet’s ghost, Lear’s ungrateful daughters, the ill-fated lovers Romeo and Juliet, or the raucous Falstaff. 

Snowy weather canceled the Club’s second meeting in January, but the February 13 meeting was nonetheless … wet as Sallie Anderson took us on a cruise down the Columbia and Snake Rivers. For two weeks in the summer of 2023, Sallie and her husband, John, took a boat tour that began in Astoria, Oregon, the oldest American settlement west of the Rockies, and included views of Mount Hood and Mount St. Helens, and went through seven dams and the Columbia River Gorge, Hell’s Canyon, fisheries, and the National Sign Museum. The dramatic scenery included an impressive forest fire and the majestic Multnomah Falls, which tumble 620 feet into the river. In the Roll Call, which asked each member to name her favorite river, several rivers in the United States and Europe were named once. The River Raisin, however, was mentioned three times!! 

Chris Kanta’s presentation on February 27 was an overview of the types of Artificial Intelligence, its history and development, its influence today, and the possibilities for the future. Because AI can do many of the things humans do — and some that humans can’t do — many jobs will be affected as we saw in the issues involved in the recent writers and actors strikes in Hollywood. Responsible action must be taken for the ethical development and deployment of AI, including addressing biases in AI algorithms and ensuring transparency and accountability.

AI is changing our lives and promises to change society at all levels at an exponential rate. Chris emphasized that in five to 10 years, AI will not be a small part of our lives; rather, it will be a major factor in how we live and go about our daily business.

Below is a poem generated, not by a human, but by the Artificial Intelligence of ChatGPT:

The Shakespeare Reading Club

Limerick by AI 

There once were ladies so refined,

In the Shakespeare Club, they’d unwind.

With sonnets and jests

They put all to the tests,

Bard’s words made them witty and primed!

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by Sara Swanson

Sara Swanson is an editor, writer and founder of the Manchester Mirror.