Slightly West of Shakespeare

Shakespeare in the park. In his park, actually.

Thus far, I've touched on the periphery--the swine, the poutine, and the death of a small Canadian town--but not the real reason for our trip to Southwestern Ontario.

No, this wasn't the reason.

We came for the theater/re. Every summer, the cultured Canadian (and non-Canadian) masses flock to this quant, small town for Shakespeare, etc. Being the ugly, uncultured ducking among the masses, I was a bit nervous. I've struggled with the bit of Shakespeare that I've been exposed to: the plot and themes are interesting, but I've always found the language really hard to follow. LSB, on the other hand, was raised on the stuff.

Throughout her childhood, her family would pack up the car and drive close to 7 hours across the border and over Lake Ontario, to Stratford for the annual Shakespeare Festival.

Signets upon Avon

To better prepare myself, I Googled my way through various plot synopses of the plays we planned to attend--Shakespeare and others--and printed out my own Cliff's Notes prior to the trip. I had read and seen (in movie form), The Importance of Being Earnest. I had recently seen a peformance of another Chekhov play, The Seagull, so I felt relatively prepared for Three Sisters. However, I was frightened by the Scottish play.

Chinese and Canadian Food

We spent a pleasant few days wandering around Stratford, eating frozen yogurt and poutine, lingering in Shakespeare's Garden, sitting by the river (Avon, of course), eating delicious meals, and going to plays.

Tower of calf's liver

All of the plays were quite good, although MacBeth was a bit non-traditional and pretty intense, as it was set in the violent Africa in the mid-20th century. While I didn't completely solve my Shakespeare problem (I found myself seriously considering the "Shakespeare for Dummies" book in the festival gift shop), I found I could follow what was going on, for the most part. Though, I imagine that Shakespeare's original version of the play didn't have as many explosions or machine gun fire.