The Book of Will

Tonight I saw a Shakespeare-adjacent play at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, The Book of Will. It’s hard for me to say how much I loved this play. I had seen it once before, a few years ago in Ashland, and tonight’s production reminded me how much I like it. It is the tale of how the authoritative First Folio of Shakespeare’s works came to be. A few years after his death, his friends from the theater world undertook to collect the bits and pieces of the original words, which didn’t exist in one place or in complete form, in order to preserve them for history. This production was well acted and it was very moving. Paraphrasing what I said before, this play is a love letter to acting, to theater, to the words of Shakespeare, and to people who enjoy them. Shakespeare’s works and words have come to mean so much to me after attending live productions for more than 35 years that I became quite emotional at various places in the play where well known lines from various plays were called out in the context of this story. This was a great evening at the theater. It also emphasized the disappointment I feel due to the fact that two of the three Shakespeare plays I had planned to see this week were canceled do to Covid outbreaks. However, this play was so wonderful it maybe makes up for it a bit.