A Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare

On  October 25^th, I went to see A Winter’s Tale, a play by William Shakespeare, in the Kennedy Union Boll Theater. This was the first time I saw a Shakespearian play. I think one of the reasons I did not enjoy it that much was because I am not used to listening to Shakespeare outside of the classroom, without a teacher and fellow classmates to go through it with. There was no way to breakdown the plot every few pages and make sure everyone had a clear idea what was going on, so for me, it was difficult to follow. I understood some of it of course, but only every few lines would I have some insight as to what was going on, and by that time I was very confused. The male lead, Leontes, was definitely the best actor in the play, so he made the performance interesting. He was so passionate and articulated every word so clearly that the audience always seemed intrigued while he was speaking. Also a talented actress was the woman who played Paulina. She embodied Paulina’s fiercely independent character, and by the way she handled herself I understood that while most characters feared the king, she did not. I would only recommend this to a friend if they are highly interested in Shakespearian plays. It was not too bad, but overall wasn’t as interesting as I hoped. The audience gradually became more restless throughout the play. Granted, all of this is not necessarily the fault of UD’s drama department, but it is just that people may find it difficult to become engrossed in Shakespeare’s work. I think a lot of the characters’ acting could have been much better, but that may have been because those two actors were so great that they made everyone else look worse than they are. Overall it was an extremely long play and seemed very drawn out, but was not awful by any means.