My past is
haunted with prophetic gasps of a future love affair with Shakespeare. The
specters are oblique and furtive, but they're certainly there. In one of those
rare instances of if-someone-came-back-in-time-to-tell-you sort of things, I
would certainly have believed the time traveler of my future obsession with the
Bard. "He'll captivate your imagination," she'd say, "and tell
you of yourself. You'll grow and become disillusioned and regain faith all by
virtue of what he'll teach you. You'll resist only a little at first, but it
won't last. It'll be inevitable, like moon to tides."
And I'd say
back, "What about Spider-Man?" because I'd still be enamored of the
web-slinger who defined my early childhood.
And she'd
say, "You'll name your first born Peter."
"Okay,"
I'd answer back.
"But
your third child will be named
William."
I'd think for
a moment, then say, "What about my second child?"
"He'll
be called...Jeremy," this sapient time walker would say.
I would then
stare at her blankly. "Why?"
"Because
you'll like the name."
"Oh."
I would squirm a little, then ask, "Can I go play now?"
The time
traveler would realize that talking to a ten-year-old was probably not the best
use of her talents and, with a nod of her head, dismiss me.
Still, as I
grew, I would reflect on the hints of her prophecy and realize their truth.
I recall
early on wondering what language Shakespeare was written in. (English, of
course, was what I could see him speaking, but I didn't know if it was his
native tongue or a translation.) This seemed important to me, and, I dimly
remember, I was enthused that he had, indeed, written in an American language.
(The difference between England and America was blurry at that point.)
More
concretely, I saw an episode of Bewitched
once when I was at my grandmother's house. It must have been after I'd taken a
year or two of school--and, since I was there in the afternoon, it was probably
the summer. My best guess is that I was seven years old.
The episode
depicts Maurice, the father of Samantha, coming to visit his grandkids and, to
their delight and enthusiasm, begins to quote Macbeth. "Double, double, toil and trouble/Fire burn and
cauldron bubble!" Now, it's widely considered axiomatic that Shakespeare didn't
write the lines of the play that Maurice enacts, some small parts of the play
being penned by a coauthor, Thomas Middleton. One of the perils, however, of
writing with Shakespeare in those Jacobean days, however, was losing whatever
effort you did beneath the monument of Shakespeare's works and your name can
only be found by diligent digging through Wikipedia.
In my mind, I
thought that, since the Stephens children were thrilled to hear some
Shakespeare, I should be, too. Add to that the fact that, as I had gone to a
year or so of school, I knew how to
read, and you've got the perfect mixture of naiveté and gumption for a second
grader to start pawing through his grandmother's Complete Works of William Shakespeare.
The velvet
cover--somewhat worn--felt soft in my hands as I flipped to the opening page.
There, leaning insouciantly on his hand, his chin-length hair around a
retreating hairline and a rebellious ring in his ear, was Shakespeare. Or,
rather, a glamorized depiction of him, complete with long cuffs jutting out of
his doublet's sleeves and a quill pen loosely held.
Next to the
picture was a table of contents, filled with strange sounding words. My young
eyes strained at the bizarre titles, words that would one day become close
friends. Cymbeline, Othello, Romeo and
Juliet, and--best friend of all--Hamlet.
It wasn't
alphabetized, which I'm sure was a bit of a scandal. How else could a book
organize itself if not by alphabet? After a lot of puzzling about, I found the
page listing for Macbeth and folded
the book to the appropriate part.
I was met
with nonsense.
Like
countless readers before me, the reputation of Shakespeare and the reality of
Shakespeare couldn't really come together. While I could read the words, their
close proximity to each other, their unintelligible punctuation, and intimidating
columns--making it look scriptural long before I would consider it as (quasi)
such--all bred little appreciation in my small mind.
But the kids
on the show! They were so excited for Shakespeare! There must be something to
it. I liked reading, so I would soldier on until I found the fount of their
euphoria.
I could only
remember a few of the words that Maurice had said to his fake grandchildren,
but as I pushed through the first page of Macbeth,
I couldn't see anything remotely like it. There were no witches, there was no
"Double, double"...there was nothing to be seen.
Disappointed,
I shelved the book and swore off Shakespeare with all the finality of an ended
summer, forgetting that--as summer's do--my chances to return to Shakespeare
would someday surface.
One other
memory of my grandmother's home and Shakespeare: Downstairs--the realm all
rambunctious boys are sentenced to when their energies overpower the adults'
patience--was a treasure trove of worn out VHS tapes, towered precariously next
to the years' old TV. More than once, in a desperate--and fruitless--attempt to
find amusement befitting a third grader, I started poking through the titles stored
there. The musk of a sextigenarian pervaded the shag carpet, beaten up map that
dangled on the wall, and floated about me as my eyes rested on a guy--holding a
sword! Anything with a sword would be worth watching, I figured.
I looked more
closely at the title. "Hamlet?
What's Hamlet?" I asked. The
grave attitude of the people on the front--mingled with the monochromatic
layout--made me leery. What's the point of a guy having a sword if he isn't
going to have fun doing it? And was this movie in black-and-white? Grandma's
stuff was so old, it probably was
black-and-white.
I put
it down without watching it.
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