Ambition

I was reading on the train last night and got in the mood to read Hamlet again. It is one of my favourite books and I've had the, "bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams," quote stuck in my head all week.

Luckily, because my phone is awesome, it's got an e-reader on it and I'd already downloaded the complete works of Shakespeare onto there. However, Shakespeare is meant to be spoken, not read and by the time I reached the wonderful, "Oh that this too, too solid flesh would melt," speech, I had become the weirdo on the train who mutters quietly and emotively to himself under his breath.

Now, vanity may be forcing me to give myself too much credit, but I fancy that I do give good Hamlet and I spent a couple of minutes thinking that one of these days I should really get around to finding a Bath Shakespeare group and seeing whether anyone else thought so as well. Then I had the horrifying remembrance that I'm going to be 26 in ten days time, which is actually older that Hamlet's supposed to be.

I know, I know, some of the older readers of this blog are now busy mocking me for considering 26 to be old, but it was the passage of time that worried me. I've been vaguely dreaming of performing Shakespeare for many years, probably since I was in my teens, but at this rate, I'll be ripe to play Polonius rather than Hamlet by the time I actually get around to it.

So, I've spent some of my Sunday hunting for a local Shakespeare group. Unfortunately the first result on Google for "Bath Shakespeare Society" relates to a group that only does readings during the day and, while the lady I spoke to was wonderfully helpful, she couldn't recommend any other local societies.

I don't suppose anyone here knows of any local theatre companies that specialise in Shakespeare? It's getting to the stage where I'm giving semi-serious consideration to starting one myself!

PJW