A Traveler's Journal: My 40-Year Affair with Will - Oregon Shakespeare Festival

We had been advised that it could get cold at night in the outdoor theatre, so we had a backpack full of clothing layers to add as the show continued. It didn't take long before a cool breeze reached our seats, then a more insistent cold breeze, and we began adding shirts, sweaters, jackets, socks, and scarves.Soon we were wearing so many layers, we couldn't bend our arms or legs. Our noses were running, and we were hunched over in an effort to stay warm. We soon learned that "authentic" Shakespeare meant that the play, Antony and Cleopatra, ran nearly four hours-with no intermission. Add the outside temperature, the Elizabethan language that required concentration, the late hour, and we were spent. The play ends when Cleopatra, bereft over Antony's death, calls for a poisonous snake, an Egyptian Asp, to be brought to her. She places it on her breast, is bitten, and in that way commits suicide. We three friends could do nothing but sit together, miserable in the cold, and silently plead, "Bring on the Asp."