![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2018\/05\/180502-Freedman-Short-Term-London-05049.jpg\")
<\/a>English professor Sanford Freedman gathers his Shakespeare students on Wednesday afternoon. (Jay Burns\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n
As they gathered along the driveway between Rand and 280 College Street, the students were in the experienced hands of two Bates people with 81 combined years of experience.<\/p>\n
Freedman has been an English professor since 1978, while James Reese, on the scene to help with travel logistics from campus to Boston\u2019s Logan Airport, has been a Bates dean since 1977, now with the college\u2019s Center for Global Education.<\/p>\n
(Without Reese and the Center, the group would’ve been one fewer: He’d spent the previous week on a diplomatic mission of sorts, cajoling the British consulate to expedite the visa for a student who had applied a bit too late.)<\/p>\n
Wearing his trademark fedora, clutching a copy of the London Review of Books<\/em>, and speaking in metric units, Freedman was all dialed in. He\u2019s had the battered hat \u201cfor a long time,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I\u2019ve almost lost it about a hundred times,\u201d once in a Greek bar. \u201cBoy, did they shame me when I came back for it.\u201d<\/p>\n Before heading to London, Sanford Freedman (upper left, wearing fedora) and Associate Dean James Reese (middle right, seated), posed with Freedman’s 15 students on the steps of Rand Hall. (Jay Burns\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n Freedman circulated among the students and their luggage with a hand-held luggage scale. Taking measure for measure, he found a few bags a bit over 20 kilos. Not a problem, he said: \u201cTake out what\u2019s heaviest and put it in your carry-on bag.\u201d<\/p>\n Quickly, students moved copies of The Riverside Shakespeare <\/em>(5 pounds) from luggage to carry-on. Claire MacKay\u2019s copy was well-worn: Her mom used it to study Shakespeare at Colby in the 1980s.<\/p>\n Freedman has led this trip many times. What\u2019s different each time, he says, is \u201chow each group is getting on,\u201d that is, getting up to speed. During the first week of the term, he said, the 2018 group \u201chas done remarkably well\u201d studying and watching productions of various plays.<\/p>\n Senior Claire MacKay\u2019s copy of The Riverside Shakespeare<\/em> was her mom’s at Colby in the 1980s. (Jay Burns\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n \u201cThey know these plays quite deeply, and they know them in textual and linguistic ways \u2014 more than just in an informational sense, but in an organization and theatrical sense.\u201d<\/p>\n After an overnight flight to London \u2014 a mid-spring night\u2019s dream trip \u2014 Freedman\u2019s group will see 11 plays. There will be lots of Shakespeare at the Globe Theatre (on their 12th night they\u2019ll see Merchant of Venice<\/em>), and modern fare, too, such as The Encounte<\/em>r, a one-man show where audience members don headsets to feel immersed in a story about being lost in the Amazon<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>