The poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow famously wrote about an event that happened in Massachusetts 250 years ago:
Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year."Paul Revere’s Ride" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Though the witnesses to that historic horseback ride have long since passed on, the story lives. And this weekend, Paul Revere will arrive in Lexington once again.
In what’s become a local tradition, the Lexington Minute Men will reenact the famous battle on the town’s green again this year. But in honor of its 250th anniversary, the reenactment will take place on the actual date of the battle, which falls on Saturday, instead of on Patriots’ Day.
It was the night before, though, that Revere showed up with his ominous warning. And on Friday night, the Lexington Minute Men will reenact that arrival and how it was met by local patriots.
“The poem ... takes some considerable liberties in telling its story. But this is an opportunity to really tell the story as we understand it to be true,” said Deborah Weiner Soule, a local reenactor.
Weiner Soule is portraying Dorothy Quincy in this year’s reenactment of Revere’s ride. She described Quincy as a woman with “a backbone” who later married John Hancock. Weiner herself grew up in Connecticut, but dreamed of living in history-rich Lexington.
“I had the good fortune to marry a man who has loved history all of his life — and who plays John Hancock in this reenactment — and so opportunity knocked,” said Weiner Soule.
“I have lived with this history, and it is very much a part of me,” said her husband, Ben Soule, who grew up in the town.
Still, he said, it requires practice to get right.
“When we go outside, there are lights which are in our eyes. We have no idea who is out there, how many people are out there,” he said.
Christopher Hurley, who this year is playing the Rev. Jonas Clarke, said in addition to telling the story accurately, reenactments can engage audiences in ways the written word simply cannot.
“We all really think it’s important to get the history out there,” he said. “It exists on the printed page in people’s remembrances and depositions, and by historians. It adds a completely new dimension when you actually kind of see it brought to light.”
Craig Sandler, who is portraying Samuel Adams, said the actors also feel as if they are plunged back into history.
“You tend to forget that you’re acting because you’re right here where it really happened,” he said.
