The Tempest, June 17th at the Folgers Shakespeare Library

Many thanks to Rohini for organizing this. Great theatre, great acting, all in all a very enjoyable outing.

On a bright and sunny afternoon of June 17th, some of us gave up our usual Sunday chores and headed out to Washington DC. Capital South is the closest metro, a brisk five minute walk, to the Folgers Shakespeare Library. We were here to watch the production of 'The Tempest', believed to be Shakespeare's final play.

Reviews

- This was my first visit to Folgers. The theatre is set in a way that it reminded me of a picture I had drawn in my mind when I was visiting the colosseum in Rome, of how the ancient Romans must be watching the events. The theatre setting was simplistic, yet powerful and effective.

- The play was engrossing and before I knew it was already intermission.

- I was particularly moved by the ending, do people in real life really and truly forgive each other? Perhaps its not all that noble, because more than anything forgiveness only brings peace to one's own mind. Is it that people forgive others because they were not really hurt or is it because they have gone through so much of agony , hateful thoughts and loneliness that forgiveness is the only way to restore happiness and peace?

- Another thing that made me wonder was , yes we have made tremendous progress ( or atleast that's what we call it) in various fields in almost four centuries since this play was written , but in terms of humanity and relationships, nothing has perhaps changed!