Sara Swanson

Shakespeare Club inaugurates its 2024–25 Season

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submitted by Joan Gaughan, Shakespeare Club

On September 24, the Shakespeare Club opened its 2024–25 season with lunch at Cleary’s Pub in Chelsea where we caught up on news of our summer, including the news of the release of Paul Whelan, the son of Club member Rosemary Whelan. Chris Kanta, the club secretary, also distributed the Agenda booklets for the coming year.

As a corollary to Mrs. Whelan’s presentation on Fabric at the penultimate meeting of the club in April, the October 8 meeting featured Joan Gaughan’s observation of the sheep trade in medieval England. The backbone of the English economy in the twelfth and thirteenth century, raw wool was so important that noble and ecclesiastical holdings counted their wealth in sheep. Some of the wool was turned into cloth in England but most of it went to weavers in Flanders and Italy. Politically, wool had enormous impact. Without the taxes that he placed on wool, Edward III would have been hard pressed to engage in the Hundred Years’ Wars, which were, at least initially, a matter of protecting Flemish weavers who were some of England’s best customers from their French overlord. A reminder of the importance of wool is the woolsack upon which the Lord High Chancellor of the House of Lords still sits when Parliament is in session.

The October 22 meeting welcomed a guest, Reed Breight, the husband of club member Linda Breight, whose illustrated tour of New Zealand was colorful enough to make us feel that we had been traveling with the Breights on their self-drive tour (on the “wrong” side of the road) in March 2019. The tour  began at New Zealand’s largest city, Auckland, then wound through the capital, Wellington, where they visited a hatchery featuring Australia’s beloved bird, the kiwi, who visits the world only at night. After crossing to the South Island by ferry, they visited Kaikoura, where they witnessed a whale watch, and then on to Christchurch, which is in an earthquake zone. There they saw a park with 85 chairs commemorating the victims of a deadly earthquake in 2011. Along their route, they saw Maori rock drawings, yellow-eyed penguins, black swans,  a thermal wonderland, beautiful scenery and — keeping our sheep theme alive — many sheep. New Zealand has three 10,000-acre sheep farms and it is estimated that there are 10 head of sheep for every New Zealander.

The two meetings in November will belong to Shakespeare as we watch King Lear featuring James Earl Jones.

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