Exhibition time

Staging the World, The British Museum, London. November 2012

Before our recent trip to the ancient Rome at the theatre Rebecca and I mixed our eras by finally getting to the Shakespeare exhibition at the British Museum.  

We cut it a bit fine for this as the exhibition closes on November 25th and has been open since mid July.  It was worth the wait (and the very early start) as from the very start the exhibition was fascinating.

The exhibition is split into 9 areas that you wander through and is crammed full of artifacts, books, history and films of actors reading famous speeches.  The first bit, Shakespeare's London, was busy and a lot of the items on view were items I'd seen before but once through there I was spellbound. 

I think that The Forest of Arden, The Medieval Past and The Classical World areas were my favourite parts, possibly because these areas reflected the plays I've seen or studied most recently. At present, and for many reasons, I feel that Henry V is my favourite play and there were lots of displays bringing this to life.

We spent well over an hour wandering around the exhibition and I certainly feel that I now understand the world of Shakespeare a lot better.

I think for me the best item was the very early theatre review - who knows perhaps in 400 years some of my theatre reviews will be used in an exhibition like this one...