Ok, getting up a little more energy now, sitting in front of the roaring fire, gazing out at the FEET of snow carpeting my backyard. It's one of those beautiful days when, if not sunny, the lack of wind at least has let the descending inches remain perched on the tree limbs, a virtual chiaroscuro created by God himself. Of course, I haven't yet stepped outside to face the evidence that my rose-colored (indoor) vision is not altogether accurate. I must confess, after having train-ed, Tube-d, airplane-d, and Honda-ed my way from Oxford to Rochester, MN, I am suffering a little bit from that common post-term ailment: laziness. I had one crazy morning on Tuesday, rushing to print out my paper, find my lost gloves (how can they just disappear when I never left the English building?), and turn said paper into the Examination schools before hopping on the 11am train to London Paddington, from where I took the Tube to Heathrow for my 3pm flight. After such an endeavor, and a full day of shopping and errand-running yesterday, I am having a hard time convincing myself to resist the lethargistic pull of our living room couches. In my defense, this pull is probably magnified by my not having quite adjusted to CST (I am still waking up before 5:30 every morning). Nevertheless, I am now fully up-to-date on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart (still funny even for conservatives, and still infinitely preferable to the Colbert Report), and I have even sampled--and deemed outstanding!--the newest adaptation of Sherlock Holmes by the BBC. The latter is the best adaptation I have seen yet, including the classic 40s series with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce.
But I must counter this rut of laziness, and thus I come back to my Oxford account. I believe I left off in Stratford-upon-Avon, the home of all things Shakespeare and, more importantly for English scholars, the Shakespeare Centre Archives. I'm afraid I entered said archives with a little too much of an American expectation for efficiency. First of all, when I initially determined that I would need to access material for several Royal Shakespeare Company productions, their website had informed me that the archives were closed for SEVERAL WEEKS! No thorough explanation was given, just that they would not be open. Of course, I emailed to plead my case, claiming an impending Oxford University deadline (love the name-drop!) and a desperate need to access unique production materials. The curators responded and said they would be happy to open for me a few days early, the Monday of the reopening week. I should say at this point that the archives are only open from 10-4:30 Wednesday through Friday, and only 9:30-12:30 on Saturdays!! I found this more than slightly ridiculous, but resigned to obey the authoritarian archive regime; after all, what choice did I have? So, as requested, I emailed them the list of items I would like to view and set about doing background reading.
Then I received another response from the curators: "this is rather more than we would normally get out for a reader in one day". Okay, so maybe the list I provided was a bit long; but really, only five items at a time?! I was making a special trip to Stratford; I couldn't afford to pussyfoot around! And most of them were production materials; it wouldn't take me long to look through production photographs, for example. But again, what could I do? What choice did I have?
So I arrived at the archives promptly at 10am and started reading through director's prompt-books, watching videos, and gawking at production photos. For most of the day I was the sole occupant of the reading-room, but even still I proved to be a bit too much for the Stage 4-Kohlberg archive curator. First, they were still trying to wrap their head around the voluminous amount of material I had requested. I knew exactly what I was looking for, so my search went rather quickly--too quickly for them, it seems, for they hadn't readied the second round of items when I finished with the first about an hour before lunch (mandatory; the staff needed a break, I was informed).
Next, I made a monumental error, evidently an archival sin of epic proportions: I didn't rewind the VHS tape. There I was, frantically pouring through the prompt-book from Ron Daniels' 1980 Timon of Athens production, literally swathed in documents and clearly desperate to get through everything before the archives closed, and the curator comes up to me and says, "Excuse me, you didn't rewind the tape. We can't take it back until it's rewound?" Not particularly empathetic. Thankfully, the very kind floater from another part of the Shakespeare Centre took pity on me, and when Stage 4 had left, she volunteered to rewind the tape.
Third mistake? According to Stage 4, not removing my coat. You see, reading rooms with rare materials usually have a few rules: pencils only (no pens), no food/drink, no bags, and, most of the time, no coats under which you could secret a rare manuscript. But let's face it: this is Stratford, the nice floater is watching me, I was the ONLY PERSON in the reading room, and it was FREEZING in there! The nice woman had laughed when I asked if I could keep my coat: "of course" it was all right; it's winter! But this was evidently not justification enough for Stage 4, as she chillingly reminded me.
And my last mistake: I didn't get through all the material. After being quietly, yet firmly pushed out of the reading-room at EXACTLY 4:30, I went to the locker and retrieved my coat and backpack. But there was Stage 4 as well. "You didn't get through everything?" she asked in amazement. Ummm...no, I was thinking. Then, continuing in a "you're-getting-awfully-presumptuous-and-demanding" sort of tone, "Well, are you coming back later?" No, I told her, I couldn't come back tomorrow. After all, I was a student: I had class; I could not make the stated weekday times, and it wasn't worth it for me to try and go back for three hours on Saturday. I wouldn't be back for at least a week. She, rather huffily, accepted my explanation (less expansive and bitter-toned than the sentences above, I assure you).
I have discovered that there is a certain personality that often accompanies the position of librarian. Perhaps it is the nature of having complete omnipotence over a set of texts upon which world-renowned scholars depend. The library is a kingdom, and the librarian is its Lord Protector. You may recognize a similar attitude in church organists and women in charge of church kitchens.
Anyhow, the Royal Shakespeare Centre kingdom, I found, is alive and well in Stratford-upon-Avon. This gem of theater history has some of the most un-user-friendly opening hours known to museums, and it may struggle to cope with the overburdening demands of American graduate students who come to probe its inner sanctum. But it is secret, and it is safe, jealously guarded by its Stage 4-protector and her arched eyebrow of doom.
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