Immortal Prose

Layers of Time

There are layers of time within London. The street names, the tube stops, the accents; even the laws reflect the city's age.

But, not being time travellers, the past is gone. Except in our imagination, and in our literature, which peels back the years and makes the past alive.

Yesterday I went to see A Midsummer Night's Dream, a play that's over 500 years old. It was raining but the audience didn't seem to mind. The actors wore Elizabethan costume and spoke in archiac English, but the jokes were still funny; the message of the play still current.

All this in a theatre that was famous once, 500 years ago, before it burnt down. It's been rebuilt and is now so popular that there's standing room only.

Or maybe Shakespeare's right, and this whole world is but a dream...including this post.