A Tale of Four Cities

I note this week, at high summer, great expectations, before you take to the road, and greater relief, once home.

Shaw wrote, "I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad." I'm more like Anne Tyler's Accidental Tourist, Macon Leary, who writes guide books describing how people can travel and feel like they've never left home.

For homebodies, the greatest joy comes, preparing; calling Triple AAA to order TripTiks, and plain old-fashioned maps, because just as much as I annoy our GPS guide-voice, the ever-recalculating Gladys, by impulsively darting off the highway onto scenic routes, I'd rather drive two-lane country roads, relegating TripTiks to find restaurant and motels, the same way I utilize MapQuest, measuring the way I'm going to go against how professionals advise I should go.

When the process is complete, navigator-wife, is left holding an annoying series of awkwardly folded maps, taped edge to edge, to decipher a sketchily pencilled oval track, incorporating an alternate return path (there was that 2-day wide-right, once, from Cape Cod to Virginia, to avoid a toll booth under construction on 95 in Delware, resulting in a night at an Allentown motel where I had to thread cable through dresser drawers, and over the bathroom sink, to watch the World Series, but, you know, life carries surprises when discovering short cuts no one's ever taken before, like Lewis and Clark, or Bear Grills, even).

It's all rather complicated but good training for special ops beyond summer vacations. When I read in the local rag that The Taming of the Shrew was to be performed on the lawn of Kenmore, an 18th century landmark in downtown Fredericksburg, I set about work, mapping Shakespare country, the same way I'd prep for any grueling wilderness journey.

First, obtain a play synopsis off the net, the purpose of which, is to isolate characters/landmarks, creating a spreadsheet, where relations can be drawn, especially in comedies where one player may possess one, or more, false identities, or have traded names, with multiple partners. In the end, the charts resemble a flow chart you might encounter at work except these resemble a plate of spaghetti.

Next, chart in hand, verify entries and notations against the plot summaries and character descriptions, including number of lines per character and act, to judge distances, using the Essential Shakespeare handbook, DK Publishers, American Edition, 2004 (many books claim to be "the essential guide" - believe me, this is the one).

Finally, sitting in the audience, after you've staked a claim by planting a beach chair in the first row, one last review before the play opens, like cramming before a final exam, perusing the "Everyman Tales from Shakespeare," written by Charles and Mary Lamb, described on the back jacket, as "First published in 1807, the tales were written to introduce Shakespeare to children by extracting an unclouded and approachable story-line from the complex texts of the plays." Children-unclouded-approachable: now you're talking this traveller's language.

Both times I've seen Shakespeare, on the lawn, Love's Labor's Lost at Wadham College in Oxford, and Shrew at Kenmore, I wouldn't have understood anything without first doing the homework. In a recent editorial, a local columnist, bemoaning today's emphasis on standard testing at the expense of the arts, wrote, it's "admirable when students are required to read plays, but it is only on stage that students can begin to see how a playwright's words come to life, and learn what it is to interact with an audience - to rouse and move them - and to improvise when a line is dropped, or the music is slow in rising, or a microphone goes dead."

Read first, then, interact: the first rule of Shakespeare.

And so it was in Padua, Italy, last Saturday night, transported to Fredericksburg, Virginia, when Petruchio offered a McNugget, which I ate, to the foot-stomping consternation of the starving Kate, and so it was in Navarre, at Oxford, when the disguised Mr. Bean-like King, and three Lords, wildly danced like Cossacks, to win the love of the Princess, and her three ladies-in-waiting, disguised as each other. I came, I saw; remarkably, I followed.

It's a rare joy when the journey exceeds expectations. Travelling to two cities, within cities, to watch plays, within plays, are such times.

Next summer, I'm already planning a trip to Cooperstown to break a curse as long and hard as the Boston Bambino hex - but that's a tale of another city for another time.