Last night I went off to Wadham college with Paul and his american girlfriend Jenn (who is flying back to South Carolina tomorrow) to see the open air production of Shakespeare’s “As You Like It.”
As 400 year old comedies go it was quite fun. However, it shows its age.
I know that many people would call it sacrilege to say this, but to me it seemed very primitive as stories go. Also, due to the way English pronunciation has changed since 1600 most of the comedy (which are puns) don’t now work. Also, a great deal of the references the play uses for extra comedic value which would have been obvious to an observer of the time fall flat and go unnoticed.
It would be like taking a satire about the early 1970’s Heath Conservative government set on a around the world racing yacht and playing it to a bunch of today’s generation. However good the writing and the comedic references to the captain of the yacht it would fall flat as none of the audience would get the link. (Mr Heath was an enthusiastic captain of a yacht. His yacht, Morning Cloud was well known at the time but is lost in history now.)
In my opinion, Shakespeare is over hyped. It was good and ground breaking at the time but it is of its time.
Today, Rachel, Graham and little Christopher came visiting. They came so that I may show them all the camera shops in Oxford so they could play with digital cameras.
After some tea and some chatter, we got into town at about midday. We visited Morton’s baguette shop in Broad Street for lunch (which was enjoyed by all) before popping off to first Jessop’s the Dixons and finally Morris Photographic.
Jessop’s, as expected, was useless. We stayed in the shop for about 2 minutes if that. Dixons, however, was a different matter. They had the Olympus E10 and E-20p cameras in stock. At £900 and £1300 then with 20% off they were good value. OK, they don’t have replacable lenses but they do have a proper optical through the lens viewfinder. Anyway,, after looking at these cameras it was decided to look at what Morris Photographic had on offer and to have a think.
Morris Photographic tried to push a full £1400 (+£300 lens) Olympus. The salesman was pushy and condescending and didn’t really understand what Graham was saying.
After escaping there we trotted off to Christchurch meadow where we say watching tourists comically fail to punt and discussed digital cameras. The upshot of which was that we went back to Dixons and Rachel bought the E-20p (using Graham’s money).
We came home, played with camera, ordered and ate delivered pizza from Domino’s and drank tea. After this debauchery, they went home.