Shakespeare Goes To The Olympics

Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep
Will make me sleep again; and then in dreaming
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked
I cried to dream again.

     At the Opening Ceremony of the 2012 Olympics last night in London, Kenneth Branagh recited these lines taken from Caliban's speech in one of Shakespeare's final plays, The Tempest. Branagh was dressed as Isambard Kingdom Brunel, a famous British engineer known for building bridges, dockyards, and Britain's first major railroad, the Great Western Railway.