Today is Shakespeare’s 448th birthday, so I thought I would briefly share my favorite Shakespeare memory.
The summer after my senior year of high school, my grandma asked me if I wanted to go with her to a Shakespeare play at the American Players Theater in Spring Hill, WI. My grandparents would go every year, and she always talked about how beautiful it was. The theater is outdoors, and it is set up in the manner that theaters were set up during the bard’s time.
She was so excited to take me there. At the time, I wasn’t a huge Shakespeare buff, but she knew I liked poetry, and so she thought I would really enjoy it. She talked about it nonstop.
The summer between high school and college is a crazy time as you are straddling the precipice – one foot in your past while the other heads off towards your future. Nothing feels sturdy anymore. And perhaps the emotional intensity of that time is why that trip still lingers in my memory. But more likely it’s because of the company I kept. Either way, it’s etched in my heart.
Happy birthday Shakespeare!
“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind”. Midsummer’s Night Dream
(Photo from www.mainstreetstage.org)