Purposeful Ramblings Through My Mind

In high school, Shakespeare is generally perceived to be dead boring, the purview of the super-smart geeks of the class. It is read in halting voices, without much real attempt to figure out the imagery or the meter. It's a chore. Even most of the smart kids don't really get it. They get glimmerings of it, and they realize that there's more present than they're actually learning from it, but things still have to be pointed out to them and they still read things several times to figure out what's going on.

Since I didn't do any drama or English lit in university, the last two evenings with friends, reading plays, have been one of my first experiences with Shakespeare off the stage, and as an adult. I've seen several plays during that time - Stratford is not a long drive and the tickets are reasonably priced - but seeing it is different from reading it. You're not going to catch all the language by seeing the play performed. There's just too much of it.

Reading it with friends has been a revelation to me. I still want to go back and read the two plays again, paying more attention to them so that I'm not reading line-by-line most of the time. I often find myself reading the words without fully taking in the meaning until I'm finished - an interesting experience in and of itself, since that's what my students are doing half the time. But when I'm getting it, and the people around me are getting it, I can revel in the power of the storytelling, and how very like high school some of it is.

Take A Midsummer Night's Dream. Girl #1 is supposed to be with guy #1, but is actually in love with guy #2; guy #2 was supposed to be with girl #2, but has fallen hard for Girl #1 instead. So Guy #2 and Girl #1 set up an "I think we're alone now" moment in the deep woods at night. She tells Girl #2, who is of course her absolute best friend complete with two-part necklace and massive phone bill. Girl #2 wants Guy #1, and in a moment of high school spite which she tries hard to justify as "the right thing to do," she tells him where his wandering girl #1 has gotten to. Then she follows.

Then Puck comes in and goofs, making both guys fall for Girl #2. Honestly, that's a nice literary device, but two weeks of regular pressure by peers and hormones at high school would have achieved the same effect. Anyhow, they all wake up, both guys are after Girl #2, and she thinks they're mocking her. Girl #1 wakes up, doesn't get it either, and Girl #2 assumes she's in on the joke at her expense. There follows one of the best chick fights in literature, complete with threats of scratching out eyes and, "You may be stronger, but I'm faster!"

Of course Puck, at Oberon's instruction, sorts it out so that everyone's with the right person. That happens by the end of act four. Act five is devoted to watching the worst play they have access to on their wedding night, and mocking it the whole time. Mind you, it's worthy to be mocked. Where else but in very childish productions do you have people announcing, "I'm the Wall! Mommy, mommy, did you see me? I was the Wall!" I sometimes wonder if the parents who come to see Readers' Theatre performances aren't doing the same thing, if only in their heads.

I love Readers' Theatre, whether with the kids or with my friends. It is amusing, however, to take a very adult-seeming script and discover that it would fit perfectly in junior high school.

Note: sassy_fae played Helena and I played Hermia. I got to scratch her eyes out, and she got to taunt me as she ran away. We had a ball with it.