Category: Geeklet Stories

The Tragedy of Shylock, Merchant of Venice (a Geeklet story)

~ duane ~ 2 Comments

My 9yr old recently finished The Wednesday Wars, a book about a student who bonds with his teacher over the works of Shakespeare set during the Vietnam War.

Geeklet: “Tell me again what Merchant of Venice is about.”

Me: “Well, Shylock is Jewish. The rest of the characters are Christian, like we are. And because Shylock is Jewish, he’s the bad guy in this one. He doesn’t have the same beliefs and rules as the Christians do, and because of that he can do things that Christians can’t, like lend money. It wasn’t allowed for Christians to make a business out of lending money, so the Jewish people would do it. But that’s what made them the bad guy, if that makes sense. Because they were willing to do something that that Christians would not, they were seen as evil and sinful. Even though Christians could be the ones borrowing the money.”

Geeklet: “That doesn’t make any sense.”

Me: “Well, exactly. Anyway, the whole point of the Merchant of Venice is that Shylock is the bad guy, right? And the Christians, they’re the good guys, right? Well at the very end of the play, the Christians take all of Shylock’s money, they make him say he’ll no longer be Jewish, and then they all laugh at him.”

Geeklet:  “Oh, so, a tragedy.”

Me: “No!  A comedy! Back in Shakespeare’s time they would have found it hysterical that the evil Shylock got what was coming to him.  We don’t think that way anymore. That’s one of the reasons we study that play, to remember how much our acceptance of people has changed over the centuries.”

Geeklet Overload

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

My oldest daughter has gone a bit Shakespeare insane lately, and I’m ok with it.

1) She’s currently writing a time-travelling young adult novel that features the characters from Midsummer Night’s Dream coming to life (out of the imagination of Mr. William Shakespeare) and growing up as regular everyday high school kids with no knowledge of their “true” selves until they’re called upon to save Shakespeare’s daughter Susannah.

2) She brought home a *shudder* Modern English translation of Midsummer from school.  I held it up with two fingers like a bit of rotten banana peel and demanded to know who’d brought such a thing into my house.  She told me that she had so many questions she didn’t want to keep pestering me.  I said, “Yeah but I have like 5 versions of this play over on the bookshelf you could have used one of those.”

3) She has taken to quizzing both her fellow students and teachers alike on Shakespeare. What is she asking them?  “What’s the name of the witch in The Tempest?” and “What’s Lady Macbeth’s real name?” I suggested that maybe she should let them crawl before she asks them to sprint. We toned it down to “What’s the name of the girl Romeo likes before he meets Juliet?” and “Is Mercutio a Montague or a Capulet?”  and yes that second one is a trick question.

4) She found out that in 8th grade they read Romeo and Juliet.  She’s in 6th grade now.  She’s already anticipating just how well she’s going to do in that class!

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Morning With Geeklets and Fairies

~ duane ~ 2 Comments

Me:  “Oh, I emailed your teacher last night.”

Middle school geeklet: “What? WHY?”

Me: “In her update she’d said that you guys were starting poetry, and I wrote her to say that if she’s planning on doing the sonnets at all I have some classroom materials she could use.”

Geeklet: “Ok, so, yesterday? We split up into these groups and there’s this book of poems where we’re supposed to pick one to recite to the class…”

Me: “Yes, she mentioned that…”

Geeklet: “…and there was one by Shakespeare called, ‘Fairies’.”

Me: “SHAKESPEARE NEVER WROTE A POEM CALLED FAIRIES!”

Geeklet: “Well, that’s what it said.”

Me: “I don’t care what it said, Shakespeare never wrote a poem called Fairies.  Let me guess, did it contain the line Come not near our fairy queen?”

Geeklet: “That sounds familiar. I think so. It was so hard to read!!”

Me: <google>  “Ahem.

You spotted snakes with double tongue,
Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen;
Newts and blind-worms, do no wrong,
Come not near our fairy queen.
Philomel, with melody
Sing in our sweet lullaby;
Lulla, lulla, lullaby, lulla, lulla, lullaby:
Never harm,
Nor spell nor charm,
Come our lovely lady nigh;
So, good night, with lullaby.
Weaving spiders, come not here;
Hence, you long-legg’d spinners, hence!
Beetles black, approach not near;
Worm nor snail, do no offence.”

Geeklet: “That’s the one! Right there, that lullalullalullalulla stuff, what does that even mean?!”

It’s a good bit of poetry, but personally I believe that if you don’t have context, then it’s just random words to these kids.

Me: “What other poets were there?”

Geeklet: “There was one called hist wist.”

That’s e.e. cummings! I pity the poor child that had to read that one cold.

Why I Love My Shakespeare Life

~ duane ~ 3 Comments

This post brought to you by three or four glasses of cabernet sauvignon, so put it in its appropriate context.

We had company this evening, one of the dads came over to watch the baseball game while his daughter (and mine) were off at their first middle school dance, and the moms were off at some other mom’s house.  So eventually the guests depart, the game is over, and we’re left to clean up.

I realize that the television has stopped showing baseball and is now showing some old dude with a bushy beard talking to some other guys in poofy clothes. I run to the kitchen and grab my wife by the face while she is mopping.  “Henry IV Part 2!” I squeal at her.  “Do you have any idea how happy Shakespeare makes me?!”

“Who is that?” asks my 7yr old son.

“That is Prince Hal who at the end of the movie is King Henry,” I tell him.  “It is a very sad scene, one of the saddest scenes in all of Shakespeare, and it is awesome. It is one of my favorites.”

“Why is it sad?” he asks.

“Well,” I tell him, “Pretend that I am the king. That would make you the prince, right?  That means that one day you’re going to be the king.  Well, until then, you are just out hanging around with your friends, partying, doing crazy stuff, you know, like friends do.  And then one day you find out that the king, that’s me, has died, and that means that you’re the king now. And your best friend is all, ‘Oh, cool, you’re the king, we are going to do awesome stuff together!’ and you turn to him and you say, “We’re not friends anymore.”

“Why can’t I be friends with my friend anymore?” he asks.

“Because you’re the king now, and the king has very important responsibilities, and he’s not allowed to hang out with regular people and do crazy wild things like he’s been doing.  It’s very sad, and his friend knows it’s sad, and the king knows it’s sad, but they both know that it has to be that way.”

With that I race to the remote control and start bringing up my copy of Chimes at Midnight.

At this point my son begins to cry.  “I don’t want to see it if it’s sad!” he wails.  Despite my overwhelming desire to jump right to that scene, I resist and go help my wife clean the kitchen.  “I’ve shown you that scene, right?” I ask her.  I then begin reciting the scene.  “My jove, my king!  Speak to me, my heart!   I know thee not, old man…..so, so sad.  And so amazing.  Have I shown you that scene yet? You know I’m going to.”

My son is apparently now on a Shakespeare kick.  “I want to see where somebody says To be or not to be,” he tells me.  Being a Shakespeare Geek I happen to have Richard Burton’s Hamlet ripped and ready to go, and move to start it.  But then I realize that he’s already vetoed the sad stuff, and it’s not like Hamlet is a laugh riot.  So I ask him whether he wants to see To be or not to be, or if he wants to see one of the funny ones. He tells me he wants to see one of the funny ones.

Can do!  I fire up Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in Taming of the Shrew. Here’s how I explain it to my boy.  “There’s this girl, Katherine, and she hates boys. She’s sworn that she’s never going to marry a boy because all boys stink. Well along comes this boy Petruchio, and he says I’m going to marry Katherine! And then they get into a whole big fight and she chucks things at his head, and it’s really funny.”

So there we sit, my son and I, watching Taming of the Shrew.  I fast forward to the famous “wooing” scene, and I do play by play as it approaches.  “Ok, see in there? That’s Katherine, and she hates to be called Kate. She’s pitching a tantrum and breaking all of her stuff.  Petruchio is outside, and he knows he has to go in there and woo her, and he’s building up his courage, telling himself that no matter how much she yells, he’s just going to tell her that her voice sounds like an angel singing…”

And we go through the entire scene, my son asking questions and me doing my best to keep him interested.  “What is that pile of stuff she fell in?” That’s feathers, in the old days you had to make your own pillows.  She thinks she got away from him, but he’s not done chasing her yet. See? Here he comes again…

“She’s holding an apple, is she going to throw an apple at him?” Probably, yes.  Sure enough Richard Burton pops his head up through the trap door and she hurls a macintosh at him.

At one point I realize that my wife has gone up to get into her pajamas and is now just hanging around waiting for our eldest to get home from the dance.  “I’m watching Taming of the Shrew with my son!” I tell her. “And he is paying attention! I am so very, very happy! And hey this isn’t even like it’s just Shakespare, this is Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, this is a classic love story we’re talking about here!”

Meanwhile I get random questions, like “So if I was king, would I still be able to be best friends with David?”  “Absolutely,” I tell him, “The rules were different back then.  Hal’s friend Falstaff was kind of a bad guy.”

“Kind of?”

“Well…how can I explain it? Not like a bad bad guy, he was…..hmmm…”

“Medium.”

“Yeah, medium.  He was hanging out with guys that were medium.  And when you’re a  king you can’t hang out with those kind of people anymore.”

Eventually Petruchio catches Katherine, and I end that particular movie.  I ask if my son still wants to see to be or not to be, he tells me yes.  “Ok,” I tell him, “This is going to be cool. Because the man that was just playing Katherine’s boyfriend, who was chasing her all over the place?  Well, now he’s Hamlet.”

Just picture this, for a moment.  My 7yr old son is curled up under a blanket on the couch waiting for the To be or not to be scene.  I am standing in front of the television with a remote control in one hand and my phone in the other, where I have brought up the text of Hamlet and am now working back and forth to determine whether I’ve fast forwarded too far.  At last I hit the right moment, and pause it.  “Ok here we go!” I tell him.  “See that guy? That’s Claudius, the bad guy king.”

“Why is he a bad guy king?”

“Because he stole the throne from Hamlet.  And that guy there?  That’s Polonius. He works for the king, so he’s a bad guy too.  That girl? That’s Hamlet’s girlfriend.  Polonius has told her that she has to go to Hamlet and say that she doesn’t love him.”

“Why can’t she just say no?”

“Because that guy is her father. And when you were a girl back in Shakespeare’s time, when your father told you to do something, you had to do it, even if he was a bad guy and you didn’t want to.”

And with that, I was watching Richard Burton perform Hamlet while sitting on the couch with my son.  It was….bliss.

I explain to my son, “Now see you have to wait for the end, because this is a very important scene.  Ophelia, Hamlet’s girlfriend, is going to come up to Hamlet and give him back his presents and tell him that she doesn’t love him.”

“Why?”

“Well because her father told her she has to. Also, because she thinks he’s a little crazy, like everyone else does. Hamlet doesn’t know that, though. Hamlet thinks that she’s the only person left who understands that he’s only pretending.”

“Why is he pretending to be crazy?”

“So he can spy on the bad king. He thinks that the bad guy king cheated to win the throne, and Hamlet wants to win it back, so to do that he has to get close to the bad king to learn more about whether he is guilty, and he thinks that the way to do that is to pretend to be crazy so nobody will pay attention to him. Now,shhhh, here comes Ophelia…”

Funny thing? I don’t like the way they do this scene.  I race to my iPad and begin googling.

At this point, by the way, my daughter has arrived home and she is now off to bed, along with my wife. They are both calling down that my son needs to go to bed. I call back that he’ll be up in a minute.

I then bring up Kenneth Branagh’s rendition of this scene.  “Watch this,” I tell my son, “It is the same scene, only different people doing it.  When Ophelia gives the presents back I want you to watch Hamlet’s face.”  *play*  “Wait…..wait……..see? SEE? Right here, SEE?  He’s so happy to see her, he knows that she’s the only one that believes him…and then he realizes that she thinks he’s crazy too, and at first he is so sad, you can see how he’s almost going to cry…and now look how mad he gets….”

I then go on to show him the Derek Jacobi and Kevin Kline versions of the same scene, before deciding that he only wanted to hear To be or not to be, and having now heard it, all he wants to do is go to bed.

I finally shut it all down, and tell him how very happy it makes me to be able to watch Shakespeare with him. He tells me that he only wanted to hear somebody say to be or not to be and, having heard that, he’s fine with going to bed.

And that’s precisely what he did. Me? I ran to my laptop to blog this whole evening, because it’s been one to remember.

 

Geeklet Explains Why The "Glossary Method" Fails

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

When my 6yr old spots a word he does not understand, he asks me what it means.  No context, just the word.  He then inserts my definition into the original sentence and tries to work it out.  Two actual examples:

<watching “Despicable Me”>  “Daddy, what does despicable mean?”
   “It means the bad guy.”
“So….The Bad Guy Me?”
   “Kind of.”

…

<wandering through Home Depot>  “Daddy, what does depot mean?”
   “Actually it’s the place where the train stops.”
“Oh, so Home Place Where The Train Stops?”

This is what I fear happens when students – particularly those that have already come into Shakespeare with that “I have no idea what this means and I never will” confusion – are given the text and a glossary and told to get started.   You point one at “Not a whit. We defy augury. There’s special providence in the fall of a sparrow…” and he pages and flips and goes back and forth and comes up with “Not a small amount. We defy interpretation of omens. There’s special protection of God in the fall of a sparrow.”

Is this helpful? Sure, he’s a little closer to understanding what’s going on.  And, remember, I’m not talking about the students who already get this stuff who are deliberately using the glossary to aid in their understanding.  I’m talking about the first timer who’s been handed a text with a glossary.

I don’t think that this method ever generates the “Aha!” moment you need, where you finally realize that Shakespeare’s not speaking in a different language and doesn’t need to be deciphered.  You need to step back from individually understanding it a word at a time and look at the big picture.  And then you end up with Hamlet saying to his friend, “Don’t worry about it!  I don’t pay attention to that superstitious nonsense.  God’s got a controlling hand in even the most trivial thing, like a dying bird.”

The “line by line translation into modern English” is hardly any better.  You’re just doing the work for them and saving the page flipping.  You destroy the poetry, and end up with text that makes little sense because it has none of the natural flow you started with.

Shakespeare is not something to be “decoded” like a foreign language.  You don’t swap out one phrase for another, repeatedly, and expect the new version to make sense, anymore than you can do that with English into French back into English.

(For fun, I took that last paragraph and “babelfished” it, piping it through Google’s English->French->Spanish->English translator, and got this:

Shakespeare is not something that is “decoded” as a foreign language. You do not have to re-word the other, on several occasions, and wait for the new version to make sense, nor can with English to French to English again.

I imagine that this is a little like what Shakespeare ends up sounding like to first timers relying too heavily on the glossary.  Sure, it kind of makes sense?  But it’s more awkward than necessary.)

This year’s Shakespeare Day Celebration is sponsored in part by Shakespeare Is Universal: Shakespeare truly is for everyone, and nothing demonstrates that sentiment better than his most famous quote of all, translated here into languages from around the world.   In celebration of Shakespeare’s birthday, show that you believe his works are just as relevant, powerful and important as they’ve ever been!