The Globe

While I am in London I am taking a course on Shakespeare and Elizabethan Literature. I've had the opportunity to see The Merchant of Venice and Love's Labour's Lost performed at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. The experience is unforgettable because it has allowed me to vividly imagine how the work would have been performed in Shakespeare's day. With the "groundlings" or "penny stinkers" standing through the whole performance and the actors playing to the crowd, the comedies became much more real and tangible. Our professor reminded us that when we first encounter Shakespeare, typically as high school students, we are told that he is a genius and that we will love his work - which often inspires us to find him boring and hard to understand. And while the student sitting next to me at the play said just that - "We are meant to read Shakespeare. He's so boring." - she was just as delighted as I to watch the words come alive on stage. What a glorious way to experience the life of the Elizabethan era in the present day.