Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Shakespeare. Sonnet 18
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
The festival was first presented in 1975 when Sidney Berger, then director of the University of Houston School of Theater met with the administrators of the Miller Theater, in its open-air auditorium in Hermann Park, to present William Shakespeare on that stage. Thus, an agenda was planned to mount two plays each summer and offer them to the public for free. It is a unique collaboration between the city and the university.
The purpose of this festival is to pay homage to the famous English playwright who has become a tradition in the city of Houston. This year it is presented from July 28 to August 6 with the plays King Lear (1605) and Cimbelino (1610). The spirit of this festival is to explore our humanity by recognizing ourselves through the work of the emblematic playwright as a pillar of the English language and the cultural root of society.
The festival is complemented by the HSF Bard Talks, it should be remembered that Shakespeare was called the Bard of Avon, these talks are offered to the public at the end of the performances in order to learn more about the origin of the works, their messages and the stories of the main personal Tickets are free, but seats must be reserved for all events through the page: https://www.milleroutdoortheatre.com/performance/houston-shakespeare-festival-presents-shakespeare-night-at-the-movies-2-2-2/
The importance of this author is recognized in the way his works reflect human behaviour, make social criticism and despite the fact that Shakespeare never left England, he talked with travellers and foreigners, he was a curious researcher, an avid reader of world literature, Thus, his works tell stories from different countries.
His dramaturgy was aimed at society in general, from the illiterate to whom the theatre offered a window to knowledge to the elites of the nobility who were his patrons. His best-known stories worldwide cover various aspects of human behaviour and reflect on tragic endings, such as Romeo and Juliet’s death due to love, the crime of passion in Othello or the relationship between the dead and the living or the handling of mourning in Hamlet.
The works that this year are presented at the Houston festival offer a perspective of female roles. The tragedy of King Lear was written in a period of confinement during a plague epidemic in London. In it, we observe the relationship between a father and his daughters who normally did not receive direct inheritances but through their husbands. The expected behaviour of two sycophantic and ambitious daughters is in contrast to the younger one who shows discernment and is disowned for it until her death.
In the comedy Cimbelino, the author notices the reputation of a woman with a sharp social criticism about the undervaluing of a queen with strong opinions, a victim of the intrigues of close friends and defenceless in the eyes of her own husband who trusts more in the words of known men than in his own companion.
For this reason, the work of the English writer is still valid and his works are the most read and the most represented of any author in history. His message transcends the English language, both the drama and his vast poetic work because they have been adapted to all languages. They have been translated many times into Spanish, and it is no coincidence that Miguel de Cervantes, an architect of the Spanish language whom Shakespeare knew very well through his work, died on April 22, 1616, one day before the Bardo of Avon passed away at the age of 52.
At Del Pueblo Funeral Home, we remember this distinguished writer of the English language who in just over ten years created all his immense literary work and on the occasion of the festival that takes place in this city of great cultural and diverse initiatives, with great attractions for community participation. We remind you that we make the most difficult moments easy.
