Introduction: At Long Last, the Bard

A couple of anecdotes to start us off: Twenty years ago, I and the woman who is now my wife were in that early-to-middle, feeling-out phase of courtship, when the talk turns to existential matters of life and death, art and religion. I told Dorte — that being the name of the love of my life — that I wasn’t in any sort of way conventionally religious, although I preferred to call myself an agnostic rather than an atheist, due to a gut feeling that there are more things under Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in the philosophy of Science. (This is largely the way I still feel today, by the way, although I have become friendlier toward the notion of organized religion, to the point of attending Sunday church services from time to time.) “You’ll certainly never catch me carrying a Bible around with me,” I said back then. “But you already do,” replied Dorte, who has a way of cutting to the chase. “What? What do you mean?” I asked, genuinely puzzled. “That big Shakespeare Complete Works…