Tonight is Halloween. The air feels spooky. Although this may just be the remnants of moldy pumpkins that were discarded earlier today (RIP, Bubba) after a week of grinning in the window. This weekend for Halloween, we (non-dg, Roomies 1 & 2, guest & a classmate & I) went to Mary Arden's Farm, where they were holding a Tudor-style wake and plague funeral reenactment. It was eerily realistic with the 'corpses' wound about with white sheets and on a cart, including 'baby' ones, and the weeping mourners all dressed up in period clothing, one made up with 'plague symptoms'. Fortunately the sight of woolly pigs soon crowded this image of mortality out with one of healthy gluttony -- the farm has real livestock including falcons, horses, chickens, goats, owls, sheep, longhorn cattle and this rare breed of porkers that look just like mini woolly mammoths. The buildings on the Farm, on which Shakespeare's mother grew up, are also set up just as it used to be, with sheds to shear wool and old implements, stocks, and even a maypole (non-dg pointed out that today is the polar opposite of the year to May Day).
There were also special Halloween activities like face painting & pumpkin carving that we skipped in favor of seeing a play in the style of "Commedia Del'Arte" (?) which just means Renaissance slapstick. It was about a man who secretly serves two masters at once and the ensuing scrapes he gets into. It was interesting to see how each person played two-three characters, with instant basic costume changes on the side, and we enjoyed it a lot except that a 'Puritan' in full dress crashed the curtain call to deliver a moralistic sermon, which was so out of place (and apparently unscheduled) that the actors started losing their gravity (or what was left of it :D). I guess it is a good illustration of how bad it really used to be during the Cromwell Era!
This weekend I also went to "New Place", Shakespeare's final house (really the foundations, and the house next door, because New Place was pulled down centuries ago), which was amazing. There is an archaeological dig going on in the foundations, which was also a 'waste ground' afterwards, so it has lots of relics, like coins and seals and dice and pipe bits, and they let the visitors help them sift through the dirt. I found a piece of pottery (there are millions). The inside of the house next door is still furnished like it used to be when it (also) belonged to Shakespeare's family. The gardens were my favorite, though, with lawns and Shakespearean sculptures, benches, arbors, winding stone walks, high hedges, birds, herb beds, apple trees, dappled sunlight, and lots and lots of roses of different colors and scents. Thy eternal summer shall not fade...
These two landmarks close for the winter today, and just in time because the clocks went back last night, the sun sets early now and it grows bitterly cold as the darker half of the year begins. Last night was our Halloween party. Everything was decorated, with pumpkins, spiders (including the spider pinata which survived his second year unbroken for lack of swinging space, sniff), creepy pictures, candles, multicolored ghost lights, eyeball lights, skull tinsel, a big black cat door hanging, etc. GA roomie rented horror movies and I came along as a consultant. Which I warned her was useless, since I was trying not to look at the covers too close or read the graphic blurbs in full, lol. There was also a scary/dance soundtrack, and lots of snacks, including Halloween candy. I am disappointed to learn that we won't get trick-or-treaters tonight since it is my first chance to be on the candy-giving end instead of the receiving. I think it's such a generous & cool custom. Oh well. I will put that in the disappointment bin along with fireworks-I-heard-tonight-but-didn't-get-to-before-they-ended...back to the party description.
So our costumes were: Little Red Riding Hood, Red Devil, Dr. Who, Evil Hello Kitty, a butterfly, a wood elf, a grecian lady, Desdemona's handkerchief, The Oxford Complete Works and Textual Companion, a gypsy, a pirate and pirate wench, a witch, several as they were, and others I'm probably forgetting. Oh yes, Minnie Mouse. I don't know which highlight of the evening was better - Minnie kissing Yorick's skull, or Dr. Who 'blowing his nose' on Desdemona's handkerchief. But I think the best was sitting around on the rug re-living the hour from 1-2 am (literally, post clock change) and telling tales by the fireside.
Goodnight, old souls, and fare thee well.
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