If We Shadows Have Offended: Shakespeare, Traditions and Ducks

One of my annual traditions is seeing the outdoor Shakespeare play every summer in the Shakespeare Garden. I like that woods in Paris have a Shakespeare Garden and lest the anglophone influence seem TOO strong, it's next to a fancy French restaurant catered by French gastro giant La Nôtre.

I come every year, rain or shine. Rain is often more likely, given terrible flip change rain-sunshine-rain again summer weather. One year they did Hamlet and during the scene when Claudius is trying to pray and repent for murdering Hamlet's father and failing, when he says, 'oh, all the rain in heaven couldn't wash my sins away,' there was a downpour. Everyone laughed, as we frantically dug out our umbrellas.

Last year they performed Macbeth and I found the witches slightly disappointing. This year, they did a comedy, A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is probably my favorite comedy and it was the best play I"ve seen in a long time. I laughed until I cried. I also really like this one because I was in a school production of it once, so I still know a lot of the lines. And the ridiculous acting troupe who perform the play within the play are just plain hilarious.

Confused lovers wandering through a forest-- it's kind of the human condition... The stage is a landscaped hill and part of the garden, so it was arguably the play that best used the natural decor to its advantage.

The play about the enchanted forest was really performed in a forest, the bois de boulogne just outside of Paris. This is the woods where I run around the lake and I love it. I find it a mildly transcendent place, in fact, on the days when I push myself and I've run some great races here. These woods are also the home of many an illicit tryst and lots of rough-looking prostitutes live in vans parked on the property.


Transcendent and squalid, fitting place for a Shakespeare play, then, largely about love, sex, fairies and manipulation...


After the play, we strolled about the garden and admired nature: we saw a mother with her baby ducks and everyone gathered around to ooh and ahh take pictures and admire the fluffy ducklings. Were they perhaps Shakespearean creatures of an enchanted forest? Or maybe they were only ducks.

Here are some of the more quotable lines from AMN'sD, from philisophical musings on the nature of man and love and the apology at the end.

The course of true love never did run smooth.--Lysander

Lord, what fools these mortals be!-- Puck/Robin Goodfellow

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this and all is mended.
That you have but slumbered here
While these visions did appear. --Puck/Robin Goodfellow