All the Parking Lot's a Stage

The library parking lot (apparently once the site of a haunted telephone booth, according to Weird NJ) will host a performance of Shakespeare's Richard II on July 18 at 7 p.m. If you'd like to read it beforehand, the play's only a little over a 100 pages. And there's treason, intrigue and murder in it, plus what another BHPL staff member calls "the most beautiful speech in the English language":

This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Fear'd by their breed and famous by their birth

We still have copies left on the shelf in nonfiction at 822.33 SHA RICHARD II. Bring your own lawn chair for the performance. The theater company returns on Friday, August 1 to perform Moliere's comedy The Learned Ladies (Les Femmes Savantes).