804 Shakespeare and Loss (with Sarah Beckwith) | My Last Book with Caroline Lea

The History of Literature

Jacke Wilson

History, Arts, Books

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 25 May 2026

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It's Memorial Day in the United States, a day devoted to remembering the soldiers who have died in service. Together, the society grieves, mourns, and attempts to unite. Similarly, communities can come together through actions like loving; giving; marrying; conversing; acting and doing; and speaking to one another. But what happens when individuals are blocked from the processes that bring a community together? In this episode, Jacke talks to author Sarah Beckwith about her book Shakespeare and Loss: The Late, Great Tragedies, which looks at Shakespeare's use of protagonists who are driven out (or drive themselves out) of family and society in plays like Hamlet, King Lear, Timon of Athens, Macbeth, Coriolanus, and Antony and Cleopatra. How (and why) does Shakespeare portray individuals who have lost their access to these vital concepts of human bonding? And what can we learn from Shakespeare's examples? PLUS Caroline Lea (Love, Sex, and Frankenstein) stops by to discuss her choice for the last book she will ever read. The music in this episode is by Gabriel Ruiz-Bernal. Learn more at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠gabrielruizbernal.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Help support the show at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/literature⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠historyofliterature.com/donate⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the Podglomerate Network and Lit Hub Radio.
0:09.2	Hello, it's Memorial Day here in America, a holiday devoted to soldiers who've died in service.
0:16.1	A day for cemeteries and flags and flowers on graves, red poppies inspired by a poem in Flanders Fields,
0:24.7	which a Canadian doctor, poet, and soldier wrote over a century ago. And yet, like many holidays,
0:32.2	we forget the original cause. Christmas as the birth of Jesus can be overwhelmed by Santa bringing his presence.
0:40.8	Labor Day, a hard-fought holiday earned by workers, becomes the official end of summer.
0:46.7	The time for one last trip to the beach, just as its cousin Memorial Day marks the start of the season,
0:53.0	with backyard barbecues and picnics and weekend
0:56.8	trips to see relatives. It was harder to forget Memorial Day in the 70s and 80s. When I grew up,
1:04.5	there were parades of soldiers, veterans of World War II, and the widows of veterans who came to the school and spoke of things
1:12.8	like freedom and democracy and sacrifice. We kids might not have been mourning, but it was clear
1:20.6	that they were, and we were quiet in their presence, listening respectfully, or we earned
1:27.1	the wrath of teachers and principals who knew what
1:29.9	we students were capable of at our worst. As a group, we could be irreverent, disrespectful, awful
1:38.1	to grown-ups, impatient, but not on that day. We sat still. We were quiet. Because for the people who came to the
1:48.2	school sent by the American Legion wearing uniforms, this was not a time to face squarely kids.
1:56.0	They were grieving. They were remembering the loss of brothers and sons and dads and friends, husbands, and wives.
2:05.0	They wanted to memorialize and pass along those memories,
2:09.7	and to believe that the sacrifice was not lost on us or lost in general.
2:16.5	These people, World War II, was just 30 or 40 years before, and Korea and
2:22.6	Vietnam even more recent. These people turned to the community in the wake of their grief,
2:28.9	and in a sense they affected the community, wove this loss and these acts of remembrance into the fabric of
	...

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