"The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve..."
Just as we're learning to live with endless wars, warming oceans and a new series of Traitors, along comes a nerdy scientist who tells us that AI might possibly destroy humanity. Thanks for cheering me up mate.
Of all the worries that we have to face in the world, our everyday struggles and anxieties, there's nothing more guaranteed to raise the blood pressure than this little snippet of jollity reported recently that 'there's a 10 per cent chance the world is about to be destroyed by robots.'
How on earth are we supposed to get on with our lives with all this nonsense screaming in our ears? Shakespeare may have wondered this too, living in an era when the end of the world was expected every second Thursday.
Shakespeare found a number of ways to deal with the doomers and gloomers, not always with fun and laughs - although joking about it certainly helps. He also dared to confront the new King, James the first who was himself a true believer in the apocalypse, with plays that explained how every problem happening in the world was not created by celestial conjunctions, evil devils or the big hand of Him, but almost invariably a human being. A person, just like you and me.
I know I'm supposed to be reassuring you and I've probably just made things worse. But we have survived 180 separate predictions of the world's end since 1500 alone so you never know, there's life in the old planet yet.
Plays mentioned in today's show: Macbeth is the biggie, but honourable mentions also for Richard the Third and a selection of Sonnets dealing with the end of the world as we know it.
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