Rosemary’s Farm: “Life’s But A Walking Shadow …”

“A poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
William Shakespeare, Macbeth

Across this bridge, some of the greatest performers of their generation walked – Sarah Bernhardt, John and Ethel Barrymore, Tyrone Powers, Helen Hayes and the entire 300 piece John Phillips Sousa Orchestra. The moat was once filled with water, and hidden in the moat were jets which would send water cascading up sixteen feet in the air, hiding the island that served as the stage from the rest of the 4,000 seat amphitheater between scenes. The moat was fed by a waterfall to the side of the stage, and the view was beautiful, not only of the stage, but of Long Island Sound further down the hill.

This wasn’t a theater built by a city, a corporation or as a business, it was a labor of love, built by a man for his wife, at the bottom of the hill from their house. It was built by patrons of the arts for their community and for the artists.

Today the stage is silent, shadows fall and like the rest of the amphitheater, overgrown with vegetation, grown taller than a person. The statues are gone, much of the stone which was used to build it is fallen from it’s original form, now just rubble. But the feeling is still there, when the brightest stars to be seen were on the ground and not in the sky.