Tales of Shakespeare

First Folio (1623)

It’s Shakespeare’s birthday (maybe) as I post this.[1] Though he did die on this day in 1616.[2] Tradition has it that he died on his birthday.[3] In any case, to mark this, I’ve assembled a few anecdotes about my own interactions with the works of William Shakespeare.

The Rehearsal (1979)

My high school drama club entered a competition in our senior year. As a performance piece we did a few scenes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, specifically those involving the play-within-a-play, “Pyramus and Thisbe.” I played Nick Bottom, the weaver.[4]

Another member of the drama club had been given the role of Flute/Thisby. He was having trouble with his lines. We met in the library after school to practice, but when he arrived, he said he was sorry and that he couldn’t practice that day. Why not? He had forgotten his book.

I slid mine across the table. “Use mine.”

“What will you use?”

I smiled. “I have it memorized.”

“You have your part memorized.”

“I have everything memorized. My part. Your part. Everyone’s.” And so we rehearsed. I fed him the lines and he worked on his, looking at my book when he needed to jog his memory.

The Witch (1980)

When I was a freshman in college, I got a call from my parents. There was a field trip to see Macbeth at the Boston Shakespeare Company and they were one adult shy. I was 18, I was sufficient. It was just a question of needing one more legal adult to follow the rules, so I got to hang out with my friends who were a year younger than I was.

The program notes called the witches[5] the “weird women.” In the post-performance Q&A the director asserted that the word “witch” never appears in the text. It certainly didn’t appear on the stage that night.

As we were leaving the theater, I was chatting with a couple friends, and said “wait a minute, it just hit me.” And then I started reciting the opening of Act 1, Scene 3.[6]

A sailor’s wife had chestnuts in her lap
And munched and munched and munched. “Give me,” quoth I.
“Aroint thee, witch,” the rump-fed runnion cries.

As I got to “aroint,”[7] one of the actors, who was also crossing the lobby, turned, pointed at me, and said, “you’re right.” It’s easy to say something’s not in the text if you cut that line.

Only Faggots Watch Shakespeare (1982)

In October 1982, I was taking a Shakespeare class. We read the standards. I forgot if there was a requirement to see a Shakespeare play, but it was certainly an option. The Boston Shakespeare Company had a production of Romeo and Juliet. I could get tickets for friends (and they were cheap), so I had the idea of inviting a couple friends who were dating.[8] I was going to meet up with one of these two friends for lunch and it was an opportunity to bring it up to her. She stood me up.

I called the other friend and at my lunch at his dorm room.[9] I broached the idea to him. He was receptive. The guy in the next dorm room (with whom he was friends) heard about this. His assessment was “only faggots watch Shakespeare.” Really? Odd, considering that I was inviting an opposite-sex couples to use it as an opportunity for a date.[10] (We had a response, but I won’t tell here.)

In the Park (1987)

Not much to tell here. On June 20, 1987, I saw Richard II in Central Park. Yeah, I had to spend some time in line to get tickets. It was worth it. At one point (I think while we were waiting for tickets) an entertainer had a puppet show of Richard II, including Henry IV getting Richard’s severed head with “yuck that’s gross.” It was a great moment watching Shakespeare.[11]

Fellows’ Garden, Merton College.
The whole anecdote is an excuse to use this pic.

Liked Much (2006)

In August 2006, I saw a production of As You Like It produced in the Fellows’ Garden of Merton College, Oxford. I think that’s one of those moments when it just doesn’t matter if the production is good not. And it was good.

For the People in the Pit (2007)

We were at services at our synagogue and the rabbi in his sermon noted that Shakespeare put in dirty jokes “for the people in the pit.” This imposes later feeling of propriety on a period where it just wasn’t the case. When there was an opportunity for discussion, I brought up the scene in Henry V in which the dirty jokes require a knowledge of French (Act 3, scene 4). Were we expecting that the people in the pit were bilingual?

I didn’t give any examples then, but the scene ends with Katherine ends the scene amazed that “les dames d’honneur” use words like “foot” and “gown,” which sound like the French “foutre” (ejaculate) and “con” (female genitals, but also used as American English speakers use “asshole.”[12])

Later, I brought up to the rabbi that the Elizabethans were more fond of course humor than later eras. I brought up the story from John Aubrey’s Brief Lives, in which the Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford[13] bowed before the queen and broke wind. He left the court for seven years. When he returned, Queen Elizabeth I said, “My lord, I had forgot the fart.”

Remember this line whenever there’s an assumption that Queen Elizabeth I was some priggish figure of antique sensibilities. Far more inured to body issues than we are. Probably far more likely to see naked people.

Everyone Dies (2016)

I understand that many people do not like spoilers, so if you do not want to have the ending of Hamlet (ca. 1604) spoiled, you may want to leave off at this point. Over the years, I have seen Hamlet on the stage or screen at least six times[14]. I’ve also read the play .[15] It was assigned in high school English, and I took I Shakespeare class in college. I know this play.

The most recent time I saw Hamlet was in 2016. When we hit intermission, I turned to my husband and quietly said, “I don’t want this to be a spoiler, but I this is an an ‘everyone dies story.’”[16]

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1. We don’t have a specific date for Shakespeare’s birth.  ↩

2. We prioritize birthdays over deathdays, but in the past, in certain contexts (saints’ days, for example), deathdays were more important. The Old English corpus has two works that include “deaðdæg,” but only one has “briddæg.”  ↩

3. Awful way to spend a birthday. There probably wasn’t cake either.  ↩

4. And so I had the role of Pyramus as well. When I auditioned, I wasn’t certain if I wanted to go for Bottom or Flute, so I did both simultaneously, doing the wall scene all by myself. The teacher who ran the drama club said he would never let a student do that again, but that it had won me the role of Bottom.  ↩

5. Yeah, that’s the word.  ↩

6. Everyone has that memorized, right? Or is it just me?  ↩

7. “Aroint” is an obsolete word for “begone,” with two uses in Shakespeare. The other is in King Lear. My dictionary doesn’t even list it.  ↩

8. Yeah, I’d be a third wheel, but it was a better prospect than sitting in the theater alone. My journal notes that I had made my early trips to the gay student group and ran into one of my Shakespeare classmates there. Nope, the two of us going together was not an option.  ↩

9. My journal notes that I was apologetic about this impromptu get-together and promised to not take up too much of his time, but I needed somewhere I could eat lunch.  ↩

10. The guy whose dorm room was next to my friend’s was also not an option as a seat companion.  ↩

11. Now if only the local Shakespeare company would do Richard II. Their dramaturge would prefer Richard III, but she hasn’t got her wish either.  ↩

12. “Quel con” is “what an asshole,” unless you’re a speaker of Commonwealth English, in which case it’s “what a [proscribed word].” The literal meaning of “vagina” is, according one of my dictionaries, now obsolete. By the way “con” is a masculine noun. “Bite” (also “bitte,” but Larousse prefers the one-t spelling) is a feminine noun; it means “prick” or “cock,” but only in the literal meaning of “penis” (so not like “prick” or “schmuck”).  ↩

13. Let me take this moment to address the “Authorship Question,” the pernicious conspiracy theory that someone other than Shakespeare wrote the Shakespeare plays. Edward de Vere certainly didn’t.  ↩

14. Maybe more. At least three filmed productions. At least four filmed productions. Maybe as many times on the stage.  ↩

15. I’ve read all of Shakespeare’s plays (this should not be a surprise), though I haven’t got to some of the anonymous plays that more recently have determined to be at least partially by Shakespeare. The thirty-eight canonical plays. But not Sir Thomas More or Edward III, though I have read Edmund Ironside.  ↩

16. This is a Doctor Who reference, since there are a few stories in which the Doctor arrives and tries to avert an outcome in which everyone dies. Then everyone dies. Good examples of these from the classic series would be “The Pyramids of Mars,” “The Horror of Fang Rock,” and “Resurrection of the Daleks.” Those are all “everyone but the Doctor and the Doctor’s companions.” Conversely, the death toll in “City of Death” is minimal, with only two characters dying. In the revived series, the counter example is “The Doctor Dances,” in which the Doctor says, “Just this once, everybody lives!” (But we’ve gone off Shakespeare, haven’t we?)  ↩