London photos: Middle Temple Hall

This past Saturday, after a day at #TheCompleteWalk event celebrating the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare, my friend Shirley and I attended a concert at this remarkable place.

Middle Temple is one of the legal profession’s Inns of Court.

Middle Temple Hall dates from the Tudor era, and escaped the Great Fire and both World Wars.

(Click here for a larger version.)

The stained-glass windows aren’t quite as old. But the most interesting thing about the place is that it is the last structure still standing in London in which Shakespeare himself is known to have actually performed: in the very first production of Twelfth Night in 1602.

(Click here for a larger version.)

We were hear to listen to The Fourth Choir — who turned out to be amazing — perform some of Shakespeare’s sonnets that have been set to music. In between the singing, actor Tobias Menzies (who’s currently appearing in Outlander as both Black Jack Randall and his descendent, Frank Randall) recited other sonnets sans music. (More about the concert here.)

It was an incredible experience: beautiful music and poetry in a place with superb acoustics and a lot of history.