So, I wanted to talk about two things in this post, and I thought I’d start with the boring part first, save the interesting part for last.

First off, the classes themselves. While I’ve mostly talked about and posted pictures of the interesting places I’ve seen, the main thing you do when you Study Abroad is study, so I’d be remiss to mention it at least a bit.

Our classes were a bit different from the normal Study Abroad classes, the ones where you’re there at another university, studying under professors from that university and receiving grades from that university. On our short trip, we just had a professor and a grad student from our own Penn State teach us their own respective courses in facilities that are leased to other U.S. colleges. It was basically like high school classes, too, since all of us students and professors saw each other every day, with the exception of weekends. Also, there were the field trips, which made it feel even more like high school.

 Some of them tied into our course theme; “Literary London” would not have been complete without experiencing something “literary” within London.

Which is why, for our courses, we were given the assignment to go and see a few Shakespeare plays. Specifically, one at the reconstructed Globe Theater.

The one going on at the time was Titus Andronicus, which, as you may not know, was probably Shakespeare’s bloodiest plays. Featuring things such as death, depression, rape, murder, onstage dismemberment, and copious amounts of blood.

It’s such a shame Shakespeare never wrote for TV, because audiences today eat that sort of thing up on HBO and AMC all the time.

I didn’t get any pictures of the actual performance (for obvious reasons), but what I can tell you is that, if you do happen to see Titus, and you’re a fan of blood, you’ll want to stand as close to the front as possible. It’s the best view by far. Actually, any play they perform at the Globe you’ll want to stand as close as possible, but especially this one, IF you’re a fan of blood.

Oh, I forgot to mention that if you get tickets, the cheaper ones have you stand in a crowd in front of the stage. For hours. And god is every minute worth it. Actors flit in and out of the stage and wheel things in and the crowd standing in front of them all the time, and so much is going on. Just don’t get standing tickets if you don’t think you’ll make it that long (there is an intermission, though. You can sit as much as you like.)

Location: London, United Kingdom