"A great while ago the world begun,

With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,

But that’s all one, our play is done,

And we’ll strive to please you every day."

Feste's final song from "Twelfth Night" gently ushered out the excellent literary program called "SHAKESPEARE: Sonnets and Scenes" that had its beginnings a few years ago when Caledonia Skytower and others began featuring special events in Second Life that involved staged readings. It was literature, not theatre, with no stage directions, props or costumes.

For Valentine's Day 2009, with Shandon Loring as chief storyteller, a devoted group put on a special event featuring readings from William Shakespeare and other romantic writers such as Edgar Allen Poe and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.  It was about the evolution from young love to mature love, very appropriate for the day, and very well received. It ended with the Bard's Sonnet 116 which starts, "Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments." Caledonia also read this favorite at this event, which took place on February 13 at Seanchai Library at Imagination Island, and featured only the readings of the Bard of Avon. This particular event took over a year to come to fruition, between the players' busy schedules and the scramble to meet the new requirements brought about by the decision by Linden Labs that they would no longer offer non-profit and educational rates for private sim ownership.

The Shakespearean program was thoroughly enjoyable, with the voices of Caledonia and her fellow players Klannex Northmead, Corwyn Allen and Kayden Oconnell rolling over the crowd in Voice. And an appreciative crowd it was - over two dozen people attended, and several more rezzed in during the readings. The selections started with the prologue from "Henry V" by Corwyn, with the relevant plea to the audience to imagine kings and battles taking place on stage, all the way to the sparkling repartee between Kate and Petruchio in "The Taming of the Shrew" (Act II, Scene 1) by Caledonia and Corwyn. There were a few readings from "Twelfth Night" and two from "Much Ado About Nothing", along with the lesser known poem "The Phoenix and the Turtle" (Corwyn). All the players read several sonnets, including one of my favorites, Sonnet 29, "When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes" by Kayden.

The shape of the stage was very reminiscent of the style of the Globe Theatre, with its pointed roof and slanted wings. It was easily taken down when everything was over, a benefit of building in Second Life! I chatted with a gracious Caledonia as she "cleaned up" after the production and I believe we can look forward to more Shakespearean celebrations in the future.

If you missed this event, you can still catch Klannex Northmead, who does regular readings called "The Poet's Plunder" at the Bookworm Cafe. Kayden and Corwyn are both company members of the Avatar Repertory Theater in SL (who moonlight as "friends of the library"), and both Klannex and Corwyn are poets themselves. Corwyn holds an open mic at Amatsu Shima called "Poetry on the Half Shell."