Harry Potter was the Boy Who Lived, even if he didn't know it before he turned 11, but despite the fact he couldn't remember his battle with You-Know-Who, bar the dreams that had always haunted him, his encounter changed him for life. Perhaps his brush with death early on is what made him so attracted to dramatic representations of it. Or, perhaps he was just an average run-of-the-mill Shakespeare freak by complete accident. Either way, Harry enjoyed William Shakespeare more than most of the rest of the people he knew combined. When he was a child, the Dursleys locked him up in his little cupboard under the stairs, and to stave away the fear he secretly held for the dark, he would sit on the floor and recite to spiders soliloquies from Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and The Tempest (the only three plays his school had on file) that he had had a chance to memorize that day at the school he attended from the books he borrowed from the library. "But that I am forbid/ To tell the secrets of my prison-house,/ I could a tale unfold whose lightest word,/ Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,/ Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres," he would say to the spiders, remembering word for word the lines he had read. Yes, it was not all will and determination that allowed him to survive those first eleven years he spent at the Dursleys' house. Shakespeare was quite an aid himself. Needless to say, he kept this love secret, for fear Uncle Vernon would deny him access to that as well.
When Harry began his first term at Hogwarts, he was very curious to know if the wizarding world had heard of Shakespeare as well. Halfway through his first semester, he found an entire bookcase dedicated to the man. If Harry thought he was happy when he found out he was a wizard and didn't have to live with the Dursleys much more, he was fucking ecstatic when he found this section in the library.
Throughout the rest of his years at Hogwarts, Harry became more familiar with the other Shakespeare plays his school library did not have in stock when he had attended the muggle school, and with the other Shakespeare lovers in the school. There was quite a following, especially in Ravenclaw, as was no surprise, seeing as Ravenclaw was the house for "those of wit and learning." Cho Chang, Harry's secret crush for years, was another reason Harry enjoyed hanging around with the other members of the new and unofficial "Bard's Cult" at Hogwarts that had formed in his sixth year, or the "Spear Shakers" as the Slytherins called them. Harry was nominated president, with Terry Boot, a Ravenclaw 6th year, as his vice president. The only Slytherin in the entire group was Blaise Zabini, who really was there just to antagonize the other members, but seeing as it wasn't a real club, they couldn't really throw Blaise out, so the entire club dealt with the situation, and ignored Blaise at all costs.
Harry thoroughly enjoyed his two years in the "Bard's Cult" before his graduation, despite the nasty, and hopefully final, confrontation he had with You-Know-Who during his 7th year. The support he had gotten from everyone there is actually what decided his career path when he left the school. Although he had received countless invitations to apply for jobs in the Ministry of Magic and other related industries and scholarships to wizarding Universities, Harry decided to take a few years off from hard labor and go into the magical version of the arts as a Shakespearean actor. Truth be told, he was very good. Even Crabbe and Goyle eventually admitted that he was a stunning actor, and managed to keep even them from falling asleep during his performances.
The first play for which he auditioned, Harry was cast as Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Nearly the entire magical world showed up for the play, making it a huge box-office success, despite the fact that Harry thought it was the worst performance he had ever done. Several plays later, he succeeded in finally landing his first lead role: Hamlet in The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Harry through all of his energy into this play, and wound up winning several awards for it, as well as making quite a bit of money off of the production, and considered it his best work ever, but this is not the subject of this story. The time period that is recorded here takes place two years after Harry's Hamlet role, a total of three years after his graduation from Hogwarts, at which time, Harry was preparing for another audition, this time for Romeo and Juliet, but with a twist. This time, the play was to be performed entirely by men, as it had been when it was written. The tale begins on a cheery afternoon in a London café, with our hero stage center…
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