The Merry Wives of Windsor and the National Gallery

Yesterday we all attended class and then left almost immediately for London. This will be my fourth time, I believe, and I'm learning the city more and more each time. I feel really comfortable with the Underground (Tube), and navigation isn't nearly as daunting or confusing. The bus dropped us off in front of The National Portrait Gallery, so we got out and spent a couple of hours there. I covered all of the floors from the Tudors to modern actors and actresses. I kept thinking how strange it would feel to know your picture hung in the National Gallery even while you lived. For example, Kate Winslet and Meryl Streep both have photos there among a hoard of Olympians, athletes, Hollywood actors and musicians. Some of the people I most wanted to see were Jane Austen, the Bronte Sisters, John Wesley, Henry VIII and his wives, Virginia Woolf, "Capability" Brown, William Hogarth and Queen Elizabeth. I love seeing pictures of authors I've read, because it's a profession when you imagine what they might look like but never see them physically in relation to their work. For any Rogues reading this, I went into the modern athletics room and saw pictures of Marlon Devonish and some other Olympic runners. I hadn't heard of him, but he's still living, so I thought you might have. One really cool artist did portraits of several people I'd never heard of, but the interesting part is that it was acrylic on linen and, from far away, it looked exactly like a photograph. Even close up it was hard to tell, but the lines were a bit blurrier than a photo. It was unbelievable, and they took up most of a wall each.

We finished at the National Gallery and went to dinner before making our way back to The Globe Theater for "The Merry Wives of Windsor". I was nervous about it because it was slated to rain hard, it had already sprinkled, and we had tickets to stand in the open section at stage level for the entire performance. The Globe looks like a big dome with seats most of the way around except for the part where the stage meets the wall. The stage has a covering, as do the seats around the edge, but in the middle, on the ground, spectators stand with cheaper tickets and watch at eye level. However, my apprehension melted once everything began. It did rain, but I had a rain coat and I was close enough to the stage that I was slightly covered by it. The play was hilarious and I laughed my way through the entire thing. Even in comparison to the magnificently produced "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in Stratford, it entertained me the most by far. The characters were so well-chosen and gave us a shining performance. The time flew by and then we were off to Oxford again. We arrived back at college at midnight, and today I'm going to Dublin, Ireland. I return Sunday night.