I needed a second copy of King Lear last week. Yes, a NEED.

My wife, Sandy, and I wanted to read it to each other before heading out to the Berkshires to see a production (July 21) of the play at Shakespeare and Company in Lenox. (Starring Christopher Lloyd!)

Before making an online purchase of a digital or inky version, I decided to wait until I got to an actual bookstore.

The opportunity surfaced when a son visited on leave from the Navy. On Friday, we drove to Worcester’s TidePool Bookshop, owned and run by my sister and brother-in-law, Huck and Josephine Truesdell.

As it happened, the store did NOT have a copy. (If I had known the line, I would have Leared, “I have full cause of weeping!”)

But Josephine had a solution. 

“I have five copies of King Lear at home,” she said. (Who among us can say that?)

She grabbed some car keys and headed out the door. I grabbed a wallet and headed out another door to buy four grinders for lunch. I looked forward to sinking my teeth into a gently-used Pelican paperback of King Lear.

She returned with two of her copies—fully 40% of her holdings. 

The newest one was published in 1881—part of a 20-volume “Harvard Edition” set, edited by the Rev. Henry N. Hudson and published by Ginn and Heath in Boston.

The older one was published in 1868– in English by the famous Tauchnitz operation of Leipzig.

I might have more to say about those, but I’ve been caught up in the most distinctive thing about the older volume, which includes Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, and Anthony and Cleopatra. (See the book’s spine at right.)

The book included something that readers will NEVER get from a Kindle.

When I opened the book, out popped a postcard that had been wedged for more than half a century between two pages of Hamlet.

The card was addressed to great-aunt Dorothy Lincoln and her husband, George. It announced the specifics of the November 9, 1959 meeting of The Shakespeare Club of Worcester, which was in the middle of its 73^rd season and is STILL running. The card invited members to attend a reading of Act II, Scene 2 of Hamlet at the Hurlburts’ home on Saxon Road.

Sometime on that Monday, Dorothy tucked the invitation inside her 1868 volume of Hamlet et al and headed north with George from their home in Woodstock, Connecticut.

I imagine that they and others enjoyed hearing fellow members read the scene, which includes the arrival of  Rosenkranz and Guildenstern).

At some point during the fairly-long scene, Dorothy’s mind must have wandered a bit. Was it getting too hot in the Hurlburts’ living room? Were some voices too weak? Did she wish she were home watching Father Knows Best or the Danny Thomas Show?

For whatever reason, Dorothy started looking around the room at the others in the audience. She noticed a stranger sitting nearby. Who the heck was this guy? A new member of the Shakespeare Club? A prospective member? Someone’s relative? 

For some reason, she could NOT WAIT for the scene to end. She could NOT WAIT for the post-reading social hour when members would gather around the “punch” bowl.

She needed to know NOW.

What to do? 

Dorothy, 72 years old at the time, could not whisper her question to—I’m guessing here—her 81-year-old sister-in-law. She did not want to disturb the readers or listeners. Of course, she had no iPhone to send a quick text. She could not slide into a DM. And, unlike other family members, she had not yet mastered any level of the Jedi Mind Trick.

But Dorothy did have some great tools for quick, stealthy communication: a pencil, a postcard, and a cooperative, knowledgeable respondent. (She did not want someone to reply the way Ophelia did to Hamlet’s missives: “I did repel his letters….”)

Holding the card upside down, as Ophelia, Gertrude, Polonius and the rest droned on, Dorothy jotted her question across the card.

In the style of any resourceful fourth-grader, she passed the card and to someone seated nearby who, fortunately, also had a No. 2 pencil and knew the answer to Dorothy’s furtive question. 

Here’s the exchange:

[Sitting

Dorothy.  “Who is the man in front of you?”

Unknown. “Mr Borger (New School Committee Man) Dean of Clark U.”

[Exeunt

Much as I wanted to dig into King Lear, I found myself more interested in the mysterious “Mr Borger”—a man who had caught Aunt Dorothy’s happily-married eye in that house on Saxon Road sometime after 7:45 p.m. on Monday November 9, 1959.

Here I offer some tidbits about the man, who certainly seems worth knowing about

—an academician, athlete, war hero and family man.

BEFORE the Hamlet reading:

Henry Charles Borger Jr. was born in 1911 in New York City. He grew up in Westwood, N.J. His dad was, among other things the president of a cotton manufacturing firm in the Bronx. He attended the Peddie School and graduated at Princeton in 1933, earning two varsity letters in baseball. He married Marian Flege of Brooklyn in 1936. 

He held a master’s and doctorate degrees from the Teachers’ College of Columbia University. 

During World War II, he served in the Army and earned a Bronze Star. He stayed in the Army Reserves and attained the rank of colonel. At some point he taught at Freehold Military School, Peekskill Military Academy and the Birch Wathen School in Manhattan.

He had been at Clark University since 1950, serving as a professor of education and then director of admissions. By 1959, he was dean of students.  He was elected to the Worcester School Board just before that Hamlet reading in November 1959.

AFTER the Hamlet reading:

I hope Dorothy got a chance to chat with Henry because he was days away from a sad family event. Nobody knew on that evening of November 9, that Henry Borger’s dad (Henry Sr.) would die THREE DAYS LATER on Nov. 12, 1959—at age 76 in Decatur, Ill.

Henry Jr., of course, continued his professional and civic work in Worcester. (Two years later he was the No. 2 vote-getter in the school-committee race, behind only the very popular Helen Bowditch.)

In 1965, Henry Borger became president of Leicester (Mass.) Junior College in 1965. He held that position until his retirement in 1975. He was very involved in Worcester’s civic life. He later volunteered as an interpreter at Old Sturbridge Village.

He died in 2002 in Beverly, Mass.

Now you, too, can respond to the question: “Who is the man in front of you?”

Hmmmmm.

How on earth can I bring this back to the King Lear production of this week. I got it.

It turns out that a son of Henry and Marian, named Frederick Borger, was a teacher at the Lenox School for Boys in 1966.

And by now you might suspect where Shakespeare and Company is located! Yes! On the campus of what was once known as the Lenox School for Boys.

Do I think someone in the crowd of Shakespeare-lovers will notice me and pass a message to friend who happens to be sitting right behind me? Might they text, “Who is the man in front of you?”

I really hope that the texter would not need to add: “Wake him up!”