Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome to Conversations. I'm very saddened to report to you the death of

Paul Cantor, a distinguished professor of literature at the University of Virginia,

a good friend of all of us at Conversations and a frequent guest on Conversations.

Here's our first conversation with Paul for back in 2013. We talk about Shakespeare,

which was always the focus of one of the major, the major focus of Paul's work.

And we talk about Paul's interest in Shakespeare, how it came from and outlined at least his

important work on Shakespeare. In the subsequent years, we did nine more conversations with Paul

ranging from Shakespeare to popular culture. That was kind of the other pole of his intellectual

efforts explaining that popular culture was worth the also of serious study and movies and TV

and also popular novels. So I think if you listen to those conversations, Paul would have what

did you do? He was proud of them and he really is a wonderful teacher, which I do think comes

through. Paul also curated an excellent website devoted to Shakespeare and Politics in our Great

Thinkers series, which you can find at Shakespeareandpolitics.org or you can go to thegreatthinkers.org

and find Paul Cantor on Shakespeare. So it's sad to report Paul's death, obviously,

but I'm very pleased that we were able to have these conversations and also film his lectures

at Shakespeareandpolitics.org as a living memorial to Paul.

I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome to the next in our series of conversations. We have with us today

Paul Cantor, who I've known for many years and I'm thrilled to have him as a guest. He's a

professor of literature at the University of Virginia. I took his course, I think, on in the English

department as when I was an undergraduate and he was a young assistant professor at Harvard

many decades ago. At the time, he had already done work on Shakespeare and he's continued

that work for the next three, four decades. So we're going to talk about Shakespeare. Paul,

...