WHEN WE WERE AT CAMBRIDGE...

...for a week....

The post includes many links, but you can follow the story without clicking the links. I included them for those of you who want to know a little more about the places named.

View over Trinity College, Gonville and Caius, Trinity Hall and Clare College towards King's College Chapel, seen from St John's College chapel. On the left, just in front of King's College chapel, is the University Senate House. Wikipedia

A few days ago, as he was going through papers, Grandpère found our packets from our seminars/vacation at Cambridge University in 1992. The subject of GP's seminar was The Cambridge History of WWII; the American Air Force in England, lecturer, Roger Freeman, from Suffolk, England. My seminar was titled Shakespeare and the Globe Theatre; King Lear, Hamlet, and Macbeth, lecturer, G. Frederick Parker.

Pictured below are the students in the two seminars, as you see, none of us were in the first bloom of youth back in 1992. Grandpère is in the last row, second from left, standing next to the dreamy Jeremy. He was one of the best-looking young men I've ever seen, and he was as good as he was beautiful. He was a student at the university then, and he served as a sort of guide and solver of mini-problems for our groups. There I be in the second row, third from left. The photo was taken in the Old Court at Corpus Christi College, where our lecture rooms were located.

We stayed in rooms at St. Catharine's College, a suite really, as we had a sitting room, bedroom, bath, and small kitchen - nothing elegant, but comfortable and serviceable. We thought perhaps a tutor stayed there during term.


The title of my seminar was not entirely accurate, because the lectures included:

"A Midsummer Night's Dream"

"As You Like It"

"Twelfth Night"

"Henry IV" & "Henry V"

"Hamlet"

"'This great stage of fools' - Shakespearean Tragedy"

"'The great globe itself....shall dissolve': The Tempest"

I'd reread, studied really, the three tragedies, so I was unprepared for some of the other plays, since it had been quite a while since I'd read them or seen them performed. But there were no exams or grades, so I listened, learned, and enjoyed. The courses were offered for credit through a university in the US, but we would have had to meet with a tutor and write a paper, which neither GP nor I wanted to do.

One evening, we saw an abbreviated version of Hamlet, the First Quarto, 1603 performed by the Medieval Players. The shorter version of the play was the first published, even before the famed First Folio.

The tragicall historie of Hamlet Prince of Denmarke by William Shake-speare. As it hath been diuerse times acted by his Highnesse seruants in the cittie of London: as also in the two vniuersities of Cambridge and Oxford, and else-where
At London: printed [by Valentine Simmes] for N. L. [Nicholas Ling] and Iohn Trundell, 1603.
[66] p.; 4o.

The action-packed drama included lots of sword play and no dithering "To be or not to be...." Hamlet. Since I tend to get impatient with the character Hamlet and find myself thinking, "Just get on with it!", I confess that I very much enjoyed the shortened version. One packet included a sort of playbill, with fascinating information, so I plan to devote a future post to quotes from the playbill.

Our lecturer informed us that the actors in Shakespeare's time were most often not given the complete text of the play, but only their parts and their cues, because there were no copyright laws at the time. What was to prevent anyone from producing the dramatist's play, making money off it, and even passing the play off as one's own work?

During the week, we traveled to Southwark to visit the Shakespeare Memorial at Southwark Cathedral, and the site of the New Globe Theatre, where construction had begun only the year before. The theatre was constructed bay by bay, as the donations came in. If memory serves, two bays were finished by the time of our visit, so we had an idea what the completed theater would look like. Some years later, I saw a performance of The Comedy of Errors at the Globe.


GP was well prepared for his seminar because he is a buff - a World War II buff - and he's read the history and biographies of the period over many years. GP's group visited Bassingbourn Airbase, the base of the US Eighth Army Air Force. In the photo below, GP is at the gun of a B-17 Flying Fortress, in his glory, as you see by the smile on his face. The visit to Bassingbourn was surely one of the high spots of the week for GP. The group also visited the Imperial War Museum at Duxford and the Cambridge American Cemetery and Memorial.


We dined in hall, as they say, at least once or twice, as I remember the fellows sitting at the high table on a platform, and the plebeians, meaning us, at the lower tables. Other times, we had our own place in another dining room, because I remember dinner and definitely breakfast in a more relaxed atmosphere.

Our package for the seminar included breakfast and dinner, with lunch on our own. So far as we can recall, the food at Corpus Christi was tasty, and we had good lunches at pubs in and around Cambridge. I remember one pub particularly, which was right on the River Cam with a beautiful view from the bay window near us.

Below is a scan of the menu for our "Gala Dinner" on the last night of the seminars. Before dinner, we had champagne outside in the court.


In this post, which took me ages to put together, I haven't even mentioned the beauty of the buildings of the university, such as the exquisite Wren Library at Trinity College, the interior of which is pictured below, Evensong at King's College Chapel, or the lovely walks along the River Cam, or the beautiful Botanic Garden, or the wonderful exhibit of William Blake paintings from the Bible, especially those from the Book of Revelation, at the Fitzwilliam Museum.


What a lovely week all around, and what a wonderful time Grandpère and I had reminiscing about our time in Cambridge as I put together this post.

Photo of the New Globe Theatre from Wikipedia.