The Good, The Bad, The Shakespeariance

Sorry it's been so long since my last post... I've encountered a few technical difficulties! It appears as though my laptop has met an untimely demise... sad day, I know. Luckily, I have found the computer lab that ASU students are allowed to use at St. Catz!

I've managed to see two Shakespeare plays in the past week... needless to say, I've been a very happy girl! The first one was an experimental performance of Macbeth with only two actors and a bunch of dolls. It was inspired by a women's psychoanalytical studies of the frightening relations of children's play and dark and twisted subjects like murder. Yeah. Let me just say, if you ever get the chance to see experimental Shakespeare, I would say pass on that one! However, the next night I got to see Shakespeare performed at the Globe!!!! I felt like a little kid at Christmas!! I'll say more about this in a bit, but first let me backtrack.

Thursday was our class field trip day, and we spent the morning in Greenwich at the Maritime Museum and the afternoon in London. Before we looked through the Maritime Museum, we got to look at books that were, if my memory is correct, dated all the way back to the 1500's! It was so entertaining to watch a room full of college students get so excited about old books... but that's what happens with a group full of English and History majors! What was really awesome is that we weren't just looking at the books, we were actually able to touch the pages, flip through them, even smell them! It was amazing.

After having lunch and touring through the museum we set off for London! We went exploring through the city and got to see Westminster and Big Ben, Trafalgar Square, and The Globe! We had just finished reading King Henry IV, Part 1, in my Shakespeare class, and then we got to see it performed! When the play ended I was speechless. I can't even describe how wonderful it was to sit in a theater that I have heard and learned so much about, and to see Shakespeare's play performed where it was meant to be performed... absolutely amazing. So far this has probably been my favorite experience of the trip! The actors were amazing, especially the man who played Falstaff. He was a comedic genius! I loved looking around the theater, wondering what it would have been like to be alive during that time. Instead of airplanes flying overhead it would have been carts rattling out in the streets. Instead of seeing a performance at 7:30 when things started to cool off, it would have been at 2 in the afternoon. The standing room at the floor was only 1 penny, instead of £5 (still not bad, though!). And instead of having a maximum capacity of 1,500, it would have been closer to 3,000! Yes, things are different, but being in that theater made the past seem not as far away. Part of the magic of the Globe, I guess :)

A majority of the students decided to stay in London that night. Some stayed in hostels, but 6 of us decided that we'd feel a bit safer in a Bed & Breakfast. We learned quickly that B&B's in London are actually more like a slightly sketchy hotel that lets you have breakfast in the morning... but what it came down to was that we each had a bed to sleep in, access to a bathroom, and a room with a lock on the door. And the best part was that we got to wake up and spend another day exploring in London!

This time we started with a walking tour that took us past Buckingham Palace, where we got to see the band play before the changing of the guard. Then we walked past some parks in the area (did you know Anne Boleyn was a hunter?!), we saw Sting's house and the oldest street in London, and then ended at Westminster Abbey. It was pretty incredible to stand in Westminster and to look around such a historical building. We saw the tombs for Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, numerous kings and queens of England, and memorial markers for Shakespeare, the Bronte sisters, Jane Austen, T.S. Elliot, and more. It was fantastic!

After lunch in Chinatown (brought back some interesting memories!), we went to the National Gallery where we saw Rembrandt, Monet, Michelangelo and Van Gogh. I couldn't believe how ridiculously huge the building was! More and more corridors kept opening up, each full of so many breathtaking works of art. After a couple of hours spent wandering through here, we met up with more people for dinner. We dined at Simpson's, a beautiful old restaurant that was once a chess and coffee club back in the 1800's. Historic greats such as Winston Churchill, Arthur Conan Doyle (and Sherlock Holmes!), Charles Dickens, Vincent Van Gogh, and George Bernard Shaw have all dined there. Again, you simply walk into a restaurant and you're immediately surrounded by incredible history... again, it was amazing!

After dinner we headed back to Cambridge. We had one last stop to make though, at King's Cross Station. The tribute to Harry Potter at Platform 9 3/4! Two of the girls on the trip sheepishly walked up to a worker there and started with, "So this is a bit embarrassing but we were wondering..." The worker smiled broadly and simply asked, "Harry Potter?" Apparently since they've put that tribute up, he is asked about that more than anything else! We successfully located it, took a plethora of touristy pictures, and then headed back home to Cambridge.