My first encounter with Shakespeare was during high school English, an experience that I suspect is not unique to me. In my first year of high school, I wasn’t really sure what to expect with Shakespeare; all I really knew was that a lot of people seemed to complain about it. “Apprehensive” would have been a good way to describe how I felt when my teacher handed out copies of Twelfth Night and promptly asked me to read Duke Orsino’s part. I will never forget the opening lines: “If music be the food of love, play on/ Give me excess of it, that surfeiting/The appetite may sicken, and so die” (Orsino, Act 1, Scene 1). I’m almost certain that I mispronounced “surfeiting,” but despite my teenage embarrassment, there was something about the flow of the words that kept me interested for the rest of the term. However, the real moment that I fell in love with Shakespeare was when my parents (knowing that I was studying Twelfth Night in school) took me to see it performed at a local theatre. Watching talented actors perform Shakespeare’s play, as opposed to simply hearing it read aloud by half-interested high-schoolers, was electrifying. The Shakespeare that had I only understood through the dusty pages of history came alive for me that day; I laughed at the escapades of Sir Toby Belch, longed for love like Orsino, and was amazed at how relevant the story felt, despite its age.
Six years later, I never turn down an opportunity to see a Shakespeare play. When the lights go down in the theatre, and the audience goes quiet, for a few brief hours I feel supremely connected with the world. I am enjoying a story that people enjoyed hundreds of years ago, and which will continue to be enjoyed thousands of years into the future. William Shakespeare gave the world a way to come together across time and space, and that’s something worth celebrating. Happy Birthday to the Bard of Avon.
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