Shakespeare in Paris

A brief reflection on seeing a Shakespeare play in French:

High points: From the dialog and having seen the Wishbone episode, I was able to follow the plot in general. I knew the majority of the characters' names, and even thought a bit about what the play had to say about power relationships (king and vassal, master and servant, etc.). Further, after two solid hours of people speaking at me in French I wasn't burned out trying to understand - I was still leaning forward trying to pluck meaning from the air.

Not-so high point: Jokes. Shakespeare puts a lot of humor into his plays, and this play has three drunken fools staggering along together through at least three scenes. This is always nice, because it can be a welcome distraction from the continuous dialog and serious dramatic plot that form the heart of the play, but while watching the play in French, I often heard the crowd laugh and had to wait a few seconds to figure out why. Apparently, though I can parse French in real-time, the part of my brain that deals with humor isn't quick enough with these sorts of phrases to catch the wit quickly enough for me to laugh. It was nice that I chuckled when Miranda told the male protagonist that she would hold his log, but simple gags like that aren't what I'm really hoping my French will catch. And humor isn't the sort of thing you learn at University classes, but I hope that this trip has added some flavor and naturality to my mode of speech.

Final notes about the trip: Ivry definitely has a different feel than Paris proper - newer buildings, for one, as well as a different feel from the population. I'm trying to decide whether, if I didn't know I was in Paris, I would recognize Ivry as a French city but it's hard to decide. Certainly, it showed me a different flavor of the city for one afternoon.