COLUMBUS — A club celebrating the Bard of Avon is having its own celebration this year: Columbus’s Shakespeare Club is honoring 120 years of fandom and scholarship of the legendary playwright.
Begun in 1899 as a ladies’ academic and social group, the club sought to promote appreciation of literature in general and Shakespeare in particular, through group study and presentations.
Today, these traditions continue, but with an important new element: men are now allowed to join.
One newer member is Terry Maloney, who first discovered the club when it was hosting a Shakespeare birthday event at the Bartholomew County Public Library in Columbus.
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“I am a member because I love Shakespeare,” he said. “When I was a kid in high school, my best friend gave me a recording of Richard Burton’s “Hamlet.” I wore out the grooves on the record and can still recite every soliloquy on my own,” he said.
Maloney and his wife moved to Columbus four years ago from the Chicago area, and both his professional life and experience in community theater have deepened his passion for the Bard.
“For the last eight years of my working life I was a tutor … As part of it, I had the opportunity to teach highly advanced seventh-graders, where I taught them Shakespeare,” he said.
Some of his teaching prepared him for a turning point in a trivia game where he kept getting the questions right. He began advancing ahead of the other contestants — game organizers started to pay attention.
“They said, ‘we want you to join,’ he said.
Club activities are a wonderful way to spend time with others who share in his passion.
“It’s been said that Shakespeare was the world’s first psychologist — he got into people’s heads, and not only some of the good, but dark sides, of people,” Maloney said.
Shakespeare’s characters’ relationships among one another and to human nature in general is singular, Maloney added. The more you study the plays, you realize how far-reaching his influence continues to be in the present day — and how relatable the work remains.
“You see what monumental achievements his plays were,” he said. “With every play, you realize for all the high-flying language and all the themes he touches upon, he was appealing to two different audiences — the educated, well-to-do and what they called the ‘groundlings’ — audience members who paid the cheapest price to stand and watch the play.”
One audience group appreciated the morals and cultural themes in the plays and the other loved the plays on words that conveyed off-color humor, Maloney said.
“He could appeal to widely different audiences,” he added. “The relationships between people and situations still occur all the time; the basic human elements are still there.”
Long-time member Natalie Roll joined the Shakespeare Club in 1960 — back when only women were members, but not just anyone could join. Meetings were formal affairs that often lasted all day. Members dressed up in hats and white gloves to attend.
Back in the 1960s, getting into the club was a big deal — you had to be voted into the group — and some people weren’t so lucky, Roll said.
“When I was young, there were all these old ladies in the club,” Roll said, laughing as she remembered her first impressions of the group. She and her husband, Dale, were new to Columbus, having moved from Oxford, Ohio to Columbus in the late ‘50s.
“When Dale and I moved to town in 1957, we were 26 years old and Cummins was bringing in all these young people,” she said. “But my (older) next-door neighbor was so nice — she was from Tennessee and she belonged to Shakespeare Club. They were lovely people who were into the theater and arts.
“Shakespeare club was a big deal back then, and she wanted me to join but I didn’t want to do that — I’d just had a baby and said ‘no thank you.’”
Eventually, however, Roll decided to give the group a try — and she’s been involved constantly ever since.
“It’s very casual now — but it’s much more fun,” she said, adding that a few things are much less formal about the club than it was many years ago. We used to have the Lord’s prayer said at the beginning of every meeting.
“It was like sororities in college — one vote would blackball a person — I witnessed it one time. You had to be very careful; three members would have to write you letters of recommendation before you could join.”
What’s endured through the years, however, is how much she and other members continue to enjoy learning new things about the Shakespeare canon at every meeting.
“I’m still learning about Shakespeare,” she said. “As the centuries since he died have passed, it’s fascinating to see the changes in language that he brought about. The language was beautiful and really complicated. Every time I go to a meeting it’s like going to school.”
Recent topics the group has studied include Broadway musicals based on Shakespeare, music inspired by the work of Shakespeare, including that of Duke Ellington, Shakespearean actors, Elizabethan clothing, and many other related types of art impacted by the Shakespeare canon.
Shirley Lyster has been a member of the club for just under 10 years. She hosted the meeting at her home on Nov. 19.
Joining was natural for Lyster, as she was chairwoman of the English department at Columbus North High School for over 30 years.
But she wasn’t encouraged to join until much later. Lyster agrees that the more relaxed nature of the club, which now has about 15 active members, including five men, makes learning and the camaraderie of the group more fun.
“Shakespeare has so many magnificent themes that just perpetuate and are in everybody’s life, no matter the era — the themes are so important and are presented over and over again,” she said. “I think it’s just the magnificence of his work and brilliance of awareness of man and his foibles and strengths and weaknesses (that make his work so enduring).”
During the November meeting, club member Ingrid Askerberg gave a presentation on several sonnets, which were read by another member, Doug Stender, a professional actor, who helped bring the language to life.
Some of the poems were about his Shakespeare’s wife, Anne Hathaway, in which he extolled both outer and inner beauty.
“In the end he says his beloved, even though she’s not perfect, is the most phenomenal thing he has,” Askerberg said.
Another sonnet was a play on the words, “Will” and “will” — puns scholars have puzzled and studied over for centuries.
“It’s tremendous what he has given to the language, of course,” Askerberg said. “But reading Shakespeare today gets you out of your daily grind of reading, whether it’s newspaper reading, or book reading, gets you into a different literary experience.”
The group brings together others who share the same excitement for the timeless classics.
“That’s what makes it nice,” Askerberg said. “Some people are extremely knowledgeable — we may be in totally different life orientations (or backgrounds) but we all have something in common — Shakespeare makes us have something in common.”
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What: Columbus Shakespeare Club
Where: Columbus, various members’ homes throughout the year. In January and February, the group will meet at 11:30 a.m. at Papa’s Grill and Deli, at Third and Chestnut streets, Columbus. Anyone interested is welcome and invited to attend.
Who can join? Anyone with an interest in learning more about and sharing information about Shakespeare, the playwright’s life and times, culture and more.
How do I get more information? Call 812-799-0448
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