the id, the ego, & the single misfiring brain cell

Today, two things happened today. First, today, three women and fellow officers, for whom I have not only fondness, but respect and who I consider friends, served their last day of active duty service. To Kate Schifani,* Chelle Reinstatler, and Erin Boone: I miss y'all already. You may or may not have thought we were close, but in my mind, we were. I think y'all will make more of a mark than I ever will on accounta I'm lazy, but if there's ever anything y'all need or want, just holler. You know how to reach me. Or if you just wanna BS for a while, that's my idea of a good time. I'm down with that, too. Or if y'all just wanna get together and shoot the breeze, I'm totally down. Say when. Y'all know how to get in touch with me. Until then: fair winds, following seas. 

* Kate has published two pieces from her upcoming book in the last month. One of her stories won the Iowa Review's Veterans Contest, y'all. That's big shit. Then another piece of the upcoming book (methinks) was accepted to the Southeastern Review or somesuch. Pay attention. You'll be hearing about this. 

Also today--the thing I wanted to wax eloquent about, really--I started my sophomore's journey into The Shakeman. The title may lead you to believe that I was met with that question when I walked into the room, but no. It is possible that I have a cadet or two who believes I'm wasting their time (not just with Shakespeare, but with all literature), but they're surrounded--at least in my class--by cadets who believe literature is the shiznit. This means that I tend to get buy-in with these two classes to some degree already (which, I realize, means I'm truly blessed in the small ways that count). 

But even with students who like me, respect my opinion, and want to do well in my course and thus normally do the readings, it's been my experience that Shakey is something else again, even with students who are motivated and interested. 

I'd had them read the first act of I Henry IV for today. They were expecting a quiz, which could include anything from basic plot points, character sketches and quote IDs to their explanation of what X meant when he said Y. (They're allowed to use any notes they've made while reading, but those notes must be written--not typed--on a pad or notebook paper, because the quizzes are closed-book affairs.) Anyhow...when I walked in, I could be sure that they'd read the first act or at least given it their best shot.*

* I realize this is irregular, but I also recommend they check CliffNotes or SparkNotes or whatever their favorite "cheat" site is to read the overview of the play and/or the act I've asked them to read, and they should do this before they begin trying to read Shakespeare. After they have the basic idea of what happens, they should read Shakespeare's version and see if it makes sense. Then read No Fear Shakespeare's version of that dialogue to see how well they understood it. They may use any tools at their disposal to understand what Shakespeare wrote, so long as they are ultimately familiar with what Shakespeare wrote himself. I'm not trying to be the cool teacher; I'm just trying to be an effective teacher. And frankly, this works. I also suggest they watch a production of the play if they can, but that isn't always possible with cadets. Oh...and? READ IT ALOUD. 

Anyway. I came into the class this afternoon intent not on discussing Shakespeare, but discussing why they think it's required. This is a new approach to me. I've long approached the text as thought we all understood why we must read Shakespeare. I've since come to understand that students have no such built-in assumptions. 

I began by asking what they thought. One geek-in-the-making said it wasn't anywhere nearly as hard as he thought it was going to be. :) Others said it was ok. A couple said that it made no sense at all. So...yeah. We all have those students. They aren't bad students; they just can't figure out where to get a toehold and they feel overwhelmed before they begin. (In my next class, my unapologetic geek announced, with no attempt to veil his excitement, that he loved it. Then there were the usual comments for all ends of the spectrum.)

But see....

There was a time I hated Shakespeare. When I was your age...no, younger. It's true! I was your age once! Younger! As a sophomore, I read Romeo and Juliet. It was, in my opinion, the dumbest plot I'd ever heard. Think about it: a thirteen-year-old boy sees a girl who is the daughter of his family's sworn feuding enemy and Falls In Love. He hasn't even met her or talked to her. She may have a hairlip, clubfoot, and crippling halitosis but HE DOESN'T CARE. He's in lurve. 'Cause she's hott. He meets her--(I think I dropped to my knees and simulated a heartbeat through my ABU blouse at this point, because I'm prone to get carried away with melodrama)--then he...marries her. Then they both commit suicide. The end. 

And you? You're probably thinking (right along with the rest of us): "Dude. You've known her for five days." 

Natural selection. That's what I thought of that play. 

The next year, we read Julius Caeser. (Do you know why this play is a standard part of the curriculum in most high schools? Because it has little or no bawdy humor.*) So...right. They're trying to use one of Shakespeare's most boring plays to convert you. And what happens? There's a guy, I don't know...in a Senate or something. It's in Rome, right? Different people, different time. They stab him to death. He dies. Big whoop. 

* Romeo and Juliet actually has buttloads of it, but your teacher either told you to skip those bits altogether or just acted like they weren't important. Seriously. Go back and read that play now and just let me know if you don't see all the bawdy humor in it. I may be able to help you, erm, broaden your horizons. 

And so, I graduated from high school thinking Shakespeare was stupid. 

Then I majored in computer science in college for a while (something I gave up not because I lacked skill, but because I realized that a lifetime of doing most jobs available to programmers would bore me directly into advanced senility). Then I got out and "majored in life," as far as these things go, and eventually decided to go back to college, but for something I wanted to learn: Bachelor of Arts in English (focus in Creative Writing). 

I'd forgotten about Shakespeare. 

I took a core course in early British literature, and it turned out to be life-changing. First, we read Paradise Lost. That's one of those epics you aren't likely to sit down and read for pleasure (more's the pity), but I had to read it. Milton enjoyed a certain liberalness with his language (even though he was writing about something pointedly conservative: the Fall of Man). When I started reading it, I could take it or leave it. Then I started tripping across phrases I recognized, sayings that are still in use, and I got that jolt of recognition and geeky thrill when I realized that Milton gave us that line. By the time I finished it, I was a convert. It was, quite frankly, brilliant. I just hadn't noticed at first. 

Then we did The Canterbury Tales, the first day or two being read in Middle English. After that coverage, I understood that Chaucer had written something of lasting quality and importance, or even just of lasting entertainment ("The Miller's Tale," for starters). So I recognized, by this point of the class, that the fine instruction I was getting (and possibly the fact that I was older and more open to appreciate classics) was changing my mind about important works of literature, mid-stream. 

Then, we had Shakespeare's I Henry IV next. I was not enthused. However...how hard can Shakespeare be after you've just struggled through a couple of days of reading Chaucer's "Prologue" in Middle English? I could do this. 

So I took it and began reading it. Frankly? I Henry IV makes no sense to the average modern reader in its opening lines:  

So shaken as we are, so wan with care,

Find we a time for frighted peace to pant,

And breathe short-winded accents of new broils

To be commenced in strands afar remote.

That's Henry IV hisself talkin' there. The point is to introduce you to the main characters (if not now, shortly) while ensuring you--Shakespeare's audience--understands the point at which the play begins in their not unrecent national history. But to kids now? How can peace be frightened and pant?!

Well, it just does. Like a dog. Roll with it. 

Anyhow. My teacher expected us to do our readings each day, then she'd go through and "lecture" on the story as it pleased her. She somehow drew out class discussion in the course of her "lecture." Each day, I left understanding a little more, and was just a little more motivated to read the next act. 

By the time I finished this play, I was truly, madly, deeply in love with Shakespeare. I don't think that was her goal, but it was her result, at least with me. I couldn't have explained how this transformation took place, but by the last class on that play, I was ready to go into mourning. The next chance I got, I signup for a class being offered by Dr. Berliner called "Shakespeare's Later Plays." For which, incidentally, I read eight plays at least twice each and watched at least one full production of the play in between. For every play. 

At this point, I turned to my cadets and said, "So I'm not saying this is the play that will turn your crank, but it's the one that did it for me. Just...keep walking, and the fog will clear."

As they were sitting there musing, in the cloud my revelations left on them, I told them to take out a sheet of notebook paper. Write your name on it. Then freewrite, attempting to answer this question: Why do we make you study Shakespeare?

Because...seriously? That was 17th-18th C. stuff. Another place, another time. Why does it matter now? (Yeah, go ahead and give me your entirely original witty response. Get it out of your system. Then be serious.) 

Then I asked students to share their thoughts (beginning with my shyest kids). Here were the thoughts I got: 

- One of my most engaged and vocal students said, "Because he shows the universality of human experience." In so many words, but that was her point. But it went beyond that: "We can read his work from 17th C. England and become aware that these themes have always defined human experience--not just in our time, but for all times." (And yes, you can tell a student that, but she won't understand it until she understands it from experience.)

- Literature shares people's experiences in love and betrayal and honor and treachery, and how people dealt with it. In essence, Shakespeare's plays have wisdom to impart, young Grasshopper. You just have to climb the mountain first. 

- Several students waxed eloquent about how well-developed his characters were. I cannot but agree; he revolutionized three-dimensional, nuanced characters, and most literature written even now cannot match his mastery. 

- Several also spoke to his "trickery of language," although that line was one student's contribution. My friend Kalli, here for her 10-year reunion, didn't care for his turn of phrase but I...the more I think of it, the more I like it. Because yeah!

- One delightful student said, "Because he was, like, a master of the language. Because, like,...art." :)

To these wonderful thoughts, I added my own, which in a couple of cases were building on their ideas:

 - Yes! Many of his characters were three-dimensional, which was a breakthrough in its own right. They were people we could identify with. We know people like that. And the aristrocracy and royals? Do we like them? Or do we prefer the hard-nosed, joke-loving drunkards and thieves of Hal's acquaintance in Eastcheape? If anything, the royals are all backstabbing bastards, while Hal's buddies, while not the most honorable men about, wouldn't kill you for your silver. 

- You study Shakespeare in literature courses for the same reason you cannot imagine studying physics without Einstien and Newton. They were geniuses, masters of their arts. 

- One of the main reasons I think you should study Shakespeare is this: he had something for everyone.* In one play, he could make the day laborers, largely uneducated, laugh and whoop and identify, and he could make the king of England weep. He knew how to reach everyone at all ends of the spectrum. Do you see any relevance of this ability to the career you've chosen? 

* This was the random contribution of Dr. Tom Vargish, possibly the most brilliant man in our department. A Rhodes scholar and literature lover since he was a child. Fluent in a couple of languages and author of several books, NONE OF WHICH HE WOULD EVER MENTION. One of my unabashed idols in the department. (Dr. Fred Kiley is the other.) 

And I got buy-in. 

But the coup de grâce? Mine. Not cribbed from some scholar who's been interviewed about why Shakespeare should be taught, and not what the students said (Although one said something close: "Shakespeare offers us something we cannot get in any other course: Meaning, then translating the language, then meaning again."*)

* In this student's freewriting exercise, he wrote: "Why study Shakespeare?" To teach me to English. He is the greatest playwright in the land. The process of critical analysis involved in dissecting a work of Shakespeare not only improves a student's analytical ability, but creates an appreciation for classic works in general, even if there is a time period disconnect. The skills involved in interpreting different language will be indespensible as an officer. It could be argued that studying Shakespeare is unlike any other process of learning that students will be asked to complete throughout their academic careers."

I just had to add that because Travis (my cadet) is brilliant, and I want his thoughts preserved. 

Anyway. My biggest reason?

Because he challenges you. Reading Shakespeare is like...skydiving. 

I got into a jump program here during my last tour. I'd always wanted to try it, and here was my chance. I got into the program, then destroyed my knee a couple of days before my first jump, which meant I wouldn't be able to jump (and I'm still bitter). But I understand certain things: 

It's something you want to do. You want to know what it's like, personally. You want the experience. It looks easy enough. Sure...you can do it. Yeah. 

Then you go through the training. You learn to land properly, strip off the parachute so it doesn't drag you down with a random wind gust. You're ready. The way everything is presented, it's easy. 

Then you find yourself standing in the door. You're 20,000 feet above the earth and all you have to do is step out and do those simple steps you've been taught and drilled to do. Suddenly, your sphincter crawls back up around your kidneys and you say, "Oh f**k."

But then, a friend reminds you that you know what to do. Relaxes you. And you step out of the plane....

Ten minutes later, you're on the ground, whole. In ten minutes, you've become a different person, a better one. You have confidence in your ability to handle yourself in the air when your life is entirely in your hands. You have the wherewithall to spot the windsock and guide your way in, against the wind, and land safely (maybe even casually). You're now more of a man than you were 10 minutes ago. You've done what most people never attempt. You can do what you plan to do. You are an adult in a way you never were before.  

Reading Shakespeare gives you the same thing. It's so much more linguistically advanced--as was his audience of the time--than you that it's intimidating. To read Shakespeare is to step out the door of that plane at 20,000 feet, knowing that somehow, your parachute will open and you'll be ok. But more importantly, when you reach that point where you're reading Shakespeare and you no longer have to see if "No Fear Shakespeare" can help you, you've touched down. You haven't hit the ground like a novice, even; you've stepped out of the air onto the grass, like you just came down from a flight of stairs, and you're large and in charge.

And from that moment on, you're a different person. You're more of a man than you were when you began. You know you can understand Shakespeare, which means you can understand...almost anything. And it means you will never again be the man who was trapped in that little prison of ignorance. 

And you can. Understand Shakespeare. You can.

My assignment to my students for next class is this: select a quote that you love. I don't care if it's 2 or 20 lines. Tell me what it is, then why you love it. 

We're going to read the quotes selected.

Yes. Life is good. 

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