Anthony sometimes jokes that we were born in the wrong century. Tonight we proved it. We invited two couples from church over for dinner and then read Much Ado About Nothing aloud in parts. It felt like something people might have done in the time of Dickens or Louisa May Alcott.
Anthony and I picked up several cheap copies of the play at a second-hand bookshop on Charing Cross Road and divided parts among our guests. After dinner, everyone moved into the lounge, took scripts, and began to read. We paused after Act II for brownies and ice cream, and then pushed on straight to the end.
It was fantastically good fun. None of our guests had ever done anything like it, but they were happy to try something new, and entered right into the spirit of the thing. Ruth's reading of the night watch particularly stood out -- she gave them stiff mechanical voices, with just a touch of a Cockney accent. John read Leonato with an excellent gravitas, and lowered his voice to a growl for Verges. Anthony roundly condemned the malefactors into everlasting redemption.
When everybody had gone and we were cleaning up the kitchen, Anthony and I continued quoting to each other:
"I'll stop your mouth..." (with a kiss)
"I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest."
"When I said that I would die a bachelor, I did not think that I should live till I were married."
"Do not forget to specify, when time and place shall assert, that I am an ass!"
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