Brush Up Your Shakespeare

Today was your typical rainy English day. I slept until 10ish, spent a few hours in the library, and then walked around the city looking for a place to eat. Turns out this was a mistake as Cambridge is absolute mayhem on a Saturday afternoon. There were tourists everywhere. And then since it was raining, everyone had their umbrellas out and it was just this huge mass of bodies to get through trying to make my way up the streets.

Speaking of tourists, I should mention that they aren't just outside the college. Do people pay to enter your school grounds and take pictures of the architecture? Yeah well that's about every day here. I live right by the river which is also a big tourist attraction and let me just say that I never realized punting was so loud. There seems to be a lot of shrieking involved. Anyway that was the afternoon, I went to the library, got a minimal amount of reading done and then went out for dinner and a Shakespeare play with friends.

Yes, that's right. I'm so cultured.

See there's a Shakespeare festival going on in Cambridge for the entirety of July and August with several plays going on every night at different collages around the city. So tonight a bunch of us went to see The Winter's Tale. We were a bit dubious when we arrived and saw that the whole thing was taking place outside with minimal props and only about fifty audience members but it was really fun. And I actually understood it! Here is the blerb from the website describing the production:


Leontes, King of Sicilia, is driven mad with irrational jealousy, convinced that his wife, Hermione, is having an affair with his childhood friend, Polixenes, and that the child she is bearing is not his own. Polixenes escapes to Bohemia, whilst Leontes orders that the child, a daughter, must be abandoned on a desert shore. Leontes assumes the child has perished - but sixteen years pass before the truth is uncovered. The beautiful setting of Downing College gardens provides the backdrop for Shakespeare’s masterful study of suspicion and obsession. Watch out for some comic twists and turns, too... and a bear!

To be honest I'm not really a huge Shakespeare fan. That's one of the things that made me realize that maybe being an English major wasn't my calling. I understood this play the same way I understand French. Specific words flew over my head, but the general meaning was (for the most part) clear. There were parts when all of us were looking at each other shaking our heads like 'can this really be in the script?' because they definitely took some liberties with the blocking. For instance, apparently the bear (oh yes! '...the bear!") chases the kings servant for 16 years, the Prince and Princess make out on the grass for several minutes in front of their parents and the king's friend carries a ukulele. The biggest mystery for me though was not the fact that Hermione was somehow preserved as a statue for 16 years. No, the biggest disconnect for me happened when somehow the banished princess is reunited with her father as if nothing has ever happened and they (apparently) recognize each other for who they really are and proceed to take a bunch of happy family portraits.

Basically it was confusing and loaded with modern British humor which was a bit bizarre but I feel that I got a very authentic experience of contemporary British theater.

Here are some pictures I took after it finished:

Me, Brooke and Rob. You can see that my sweatshirt singles me out as a tourist.  No native would ever wear that.

This was the stage! It was a cool tree, so Mom I included this especially for you!