Mrs O and I were at The Globe on Saturday evening, as I think I've made mention of before. Great Scott im Himmel but it was warm inside. Real quick-get-his-feet-above-his-head warm. And we were in the gods, in seats, where at least there was some respite from the oppressive temperatures and humidity. The great unwashed who had to stand at stage level must have been evaporating. It didn't help that the play, Julius Caesar, wasn't too big on belly-laughs either. It was rather long-winded if I'm honest. Can one say that about Shakie?
I'm sure we did this play at school. I can't really remember too much about it, except for the bit where Julius has a, presumably epileptic, fit in front of a vulgar rabble. To save face, it is later put about that the emperor was overcome by the bad breath of the pleb. How we laughed when we heard this as 14-year-olds.
Apart from this comic interlude, though, it's arid stuff. Even as a reasonably sober and serious-minded 45-year-old, I was struggling and my eyes glazed over at least eight dozen time during act one. Why on Earth did they choose this of all Shakespeare's play to inflict on a cohort of working-class cockney dunces like us? It's guaranteed to put you off literature for life. Luckily I'm a glutton for Elizabethan punishment, and so managed to rehabilitate myself.
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