Bad news for the young.  Some things are best and most fully enjoyed when one is older.  In fact, let’s go one step further.  Age and experience are essential to appreciate some things.  Malt whisky, for example, and certain Shakespeare plays like King Lear and (one of my favorites) Antony and Cleopatra.  I first read the great Roman play nearly forty years ago but had never seen a production until recently when I headed to The National Theatre in London to watch Ralph Fiennes and Sophie Okenedo take the lead roles.  What a gorgeous piece of work it is, filled with the most beautiful language and poetry, some of which I was surprised to find lodged in my memory since those days at university.

I was a little disappointed by some aspects of the production.  The modern dress staging had a cold, corporate feel to it that blunted the sumptuousness of language and imagery for which the play is famous, and Ms. Okenedo’s Cleopatra could have used a little more grandeur and majesty for my taste.  No matter; this isn’t a theatre review.

Antony and Cleopatra was probably first performed in 1607, part of that extraordinary burst in creativity later in Shakespeare’s life that gave us King Lear, Macbeth, and The Tempest.  The plays of that period are all to some extent meditations on ageing and the conflicts that come with it, the days of waning powers and the realizations that accompany those days.  It’s worth remembering that Shakespeare was in his early forties in 1607, a time when average life expectancy in England was about 35 years, so it’s not surprising his thoughts would have been focused on old age and mortality.  And what a clear eye he had when it came to understanding the transience of power, the fickleness of achievements, careers, and reputations:

Kingdoms are clay; our dungy earth alike
Feeds beast as man. The nobleness of life
Is to do thus; when such a mutual pair
And such a twain can do ‘t, in which I bind,
On pain of punishment, the world to weet
We stand up peerless.

And, yes, it’s difficult to understand that when you’re young.