Shakespeare 101

[umop-ap!sdn†]

Memorize and portray a scene or monologue of one of Shakespeare's plays.

It was easy enough to do. It had even been fun. But now, presentations. Cassidy blushed and slumped back in her seat. She'd kept her obsession with classical literature under wraps for the most part, and for good reason. It wasn't cool to like Shakespeare. It was cooler to watch girly television and do illegal things, nobody had the patience to appreciate old art anymore. Now she was here, with her scene memorized, and her reputation as a just another Shakespeare indifferent teenager was on the line.

Maybe she should go first. Nobody ever remembered the person who went first. Unless they were really bad. Or really funny. Maybe she could just do it with a medium amount of effort and not be patronized.

She pushed bottom back in her seat while leaning forward, elbow on the desk in the worst front slouch. She looked down at her desk, and then up at Mr. Collins. He loved literature, she could play it off as sucking up for extra credit she could pretend to need. He looked around for volunteers, his beautiful face eager to see performance.

A big, nervous smile stretched itself across her face. Her hand rose in front of her towards him to get his attention.

"I'll go first."

He beamed, "Extra credit to the first volunteer!", she fought back her regret and her blush.

Is it lame to say everything the way it's originally written? Should I modernize some?

"Whenever you are ready." GODAMMIT!

She took a deep breath. She wanted to bow her head and summon the character's energy, but that was dorky. Artsy, but weird. Her eyes stayed locked on the class, looking slightly over their heads to avoid direct eye contact. She wasn't some kind of theater freak, she just liked reading. And analyzing. And imagining. And-

"Come, you spirits..."

Why did she pick such a dramatic scene?

"...that dwell on mortal thoughts..."

So. Lame. Why was she doing it in such a dramatic voice?

"...unsex me here..."

Don't smile. If you laugh, everybody laughs, and then they are laughing at you.

"...and fill me from the crown to the toe tip-full of direst cruelty..."

She touched her hairline and gestured downward to portray her filling. Her forearms then came together with her palms as she raised her hands upwards.

"...Make thick my blood..."

Her hands moved apart to touch the sides of her head.

"...Stop the access and passage to remorse, that no compunctious visitings of nature shake my fell purpose..."

Did anybody remember this scene? They read the play last year...

"...nor keep peace between the effect and it!"

And now the awkward part. Cassidy's hands came together in prayer hands she held in front of her torso to draw attention from her chest.

"...And take my milk for gall!"

Alright, that's over.

"...you murdering ministers, wherever in your sightless substances you wait on nature's mischief..."

Wrapping it up, her hands moved to her sides. Palms forward.

"...come thick night, and pall me in ~uh~ darkest smoke of Hell..."

Hell was okay to say in this context, right? She'd said enough words wrong already, should that have been heck?

"...that my keen knife see not the wound it makes, nor Heaven peep through the blanket of the dark to cry..."

Her hand rose to the edge of her mouth to make a calling gesture.

"'Hold, hold!'"

She smiled to indicate she was done and returned to her seat.

Collins sat back in his chair. A wheeling chair he'd brought himself. He'd mentioned in an earlier class how the seating the school provided was uncomfortable because it was inexpensive. He tapped his black pen to his proud, smiling face to show his curiosity, "What made you pick that particular scene?"

Because it's interesting how Shakespeare started to have a strong, conniving female character. It's more interesting that she later succumbs to her own guilt. Perhaps he meant that women weren't meant to be aggressive. Maybe he meant that women nag men to do things and then do little to help. Shakespeare might have been a sexist, but he might have been right. The ideas of women being inferior and "pushy" have been around so long. People usually fail to realize the similarities between Shakespeare's and our current societies.

Cassidy's lips pressed together to keep her words in. She shrugged.

"Alright then. Extra credit to Cassidy for volunteering..." He wrote something in his grade book, "do we have more volunteers, or am I going to have to start picking victims?"

(Of course, credit to Shakespeare for having written Macbeth, which I more or less quote directly here.)