As has been reported a number of times, I am an avid reader and while most of my reading is done in fiction; there is frequently a good bit of factual information to be found.
One such example is a book called “Arden”, a book about how William Shakespeare began his career as a playwright. The book is written around the historical accounts with the dialog fictitious.
I, like most people know of Shakespeare, but knew little of his personal life. It seems the new movie “Hamnet” (I haven’t seen it) was appropriate timing.
In “Arden” I learned about Will’s (that is how he was known in the book) wife and children. Before he became a playwright, Will came from a family of glove makers – something he was not very good at doing.
In the book, the theatres were closed three separate times due to the plague and I got a bit of a snicker when they said the city and theatres would open once again when less than 300 people died each day.
These days William Shakespeare is considered one of the greatest bards in history; but when he was alive…not so much.
But isn’t that how it always seems to be for artists, composers, poets, and playwrights???
My Kindle has a highlight feature and there are some of my books that have lots of yellow highlighted passages of things that I have learned or want to be able to find easily.
One of the television shows I liked was “NCIS: New Orleans” with Scott Bakula as the head of the office and he was always telling his people to go out and “learn things”.