Todo Tiene Su Como-Se-Llama

Today is the first day of the rest of your major.

So there I was, sitting in English Lit II, listening to Dr. Watson. *pregnant pause* I was feeling rather . . . well, rather blah, really. I didn't get as much sleep as I wanted last night because I was busy reviewing the text of Love's Labour's Lost (and oh my goodness that cover is messed up!!!). That's a really funny play, by the way . . . It'll be good. But I digress.

So anyway, I didn't want to get up this morning, but that's nothing new. Breakfast was gross. I had to go get my backpack from the library because I kinda never actually picked it up last night (not that I needed it for anything, but it would have been handy to not walk around carrying today's books without it).

I spent twenty minutes before Chapel filling in the Batts worksheet. Went to Chapel. Filled it in some more. Remembered once again why Student Government Debates Chapel is bad. (Today they were worse than usual. The most argumentative they got was almost saying things like, "Well, actually, I agree with you even more than you agree with yourself!")

Martinez, Wilson and I had fun filling out the "What Do You Want?" papers they were handing out. Martinez and I asked for, among other things: $$$$$$$, our own Berry Auditorium, an on-campus Golden Corral, a private jet, and Salt Lake City. But we ran out of blanks fairly quickly, so I chose Shakespeare worksheets over paying attention.

So hopefully now you have all caught a taste of the mood I was in when I sat down in Watson's class. I needed a bright spot. What I got was a dark spot. Except it was one of those really bright dark spots. Yeah. Hold on a second. *pokes through large pile of papers and whatnot . . . finds coherence* There. Sorry. I'm back.

We talked about Dante Gabriel Rosetti (which is, like, the coolest name ever) and those of you who know anything about him are now nodding in total comprehension. The rest of you want to know why on earth I think that's a cool name. Anyway, the poem we were discussing was "The Blessed Damozel." (I didn't care for it much, myself.)

Dr. Watson probably shouldn't be allowed to teach English Lit. At least not very often . . . although you shan't hear a word of complaint from me. I don't think it's healthy for him . . . all this death and moribund melancholy, I mean. We talked about mortality again today, and he gets so depressed when he starts harping on his own mortality . . . Yes, I am being facetious. That really doesn't work in a blogpost. Nevermind.

To explain the above poem, consider "The Raven." Dr. Watson called this the flip-side of that work. In Poe's poem, the lover left behind on earth is grieving after his dead Lenore. In Rosetti's, the focus is on the grief of the lover who is now in heaven. Yeah. Grief. Life sucks for her, because the first day in heaven lasts for, like, ten years, and throughout all that time she's dealing with her grief like she just lost the guy the day before. Which, in a sense, she has. Or something. It's really messed up, in general.

So Dr. Watson, true to form, went off on the subject of growing old. And the main way that one grows old, after all, is through one's birthdays, right? So I guess Watson spends every birthday thinking about death. To hear him tell it, one would almost think so. Today we talked about his 40th and 45th birthdays.

He was preaching a Sermon of Judgment on his 40th birthday, to a congregation that was "about 93 years old, on average." Apparently he was using some rather interesting metaphors involving birds of prey (Demon Birds!) and he ended the sermon with the words, "Methinks I hear the flapping of wings!" (His eyes were, of course, very wide at this point, lips drawn back in a feral grin, hands motioning creepily . . . the works). As he stood at the door, talking to people on their way out, this guy who was, like, 95 had the following advice: "You need to lighten up, son! Life begins at 80!"

On his 45th birthday, he received a rather . . . interesting birthday card from his mother (which he showed us all). I wish I could quote the whole thing, but it was kinda long. It looked like a fairly ordinary card with a lot of writing on it. It boiled down, basically, to a long, everyday sort of of story wherein his mother was driving somewhere with her nephew (who was about ten at the time). They spotted a dead armadillo lying on the road, and the nephew wanted it. So she stopped. The corpse was very hot and he was having trouble picking it up, so she got him a plastic bag. It smelled kinda bad, so they stuck it in the trunk and drove on. Naturally when they got home, he didn't really want it anymore, so he chucked it in the backlot. "He kept an eye on it every day until it blew up and started to ooze. Happy Birthday. Love, your mother."

That card needs no commentary, so I shall forge ahead to Shakespeare class. Oh, wait! I got my midterm back!!! And I got a 96!!! w00t!!!

Comment on test: "The best I've read so far"

Gallagher: "Yeah, it was the first one he'd graded, obviously."

Thanks, Gallagher.

Anyway, back to Shakespeare. Or forward. Or something. We got the scene rewrites back and I got a 95. *shrugs* I was highly amused for the first few minutes of class while I read through his comments (those which I could actually decipher, of course). Every time I dropped in a modern colloquialism, he had it underlined and a question mark beside it. So he totally missed the point there.

The funniest thing was, I got a compliment on one particular passage that I had in my scene, a soliloquy by Romeo. And I sat, and I examined that passage very closely. And I said to myself, "Self, I didn't write that. Shakespeare wrote that."

I hadn't bothered to note it in any way because I used quite a bit of actual material from the play and I had the following at the beginning of the scene: "I have tried as much as possible to stick to the basic outline of the scene and use, where possible, the same lines (usually with only slight variation) that the characters themselves originally used." And I kind of expected my Shakespeare prof to recognize . . . well, Shakespeare. I suppose I'm flattered.

Then we watched the first part of this movie. It's King Lear . . . on a farm . . . in Iowa. As Dr. Batts would say, "There's creative and then there's creative." I'd stick this one in the latter category, myself, but I digress.

Now we get to the fun part. Namely, why Batts was jingling when he walked into class. Because he was jingling. Like, there-are-3-dozen-sleigh-bells-dangling-from-my-arms jingling. And I was quite mystified. Well, Batts wasn't actually jingling. His Shakespeare-in-a-box was. He had a "King Lear" Shakespeare-in-a-box kit, and inside this kit was a long, soft, blue, velvety dunce cap, with a bell on the end of it.

It belonged to Lear's Fool, and we were all very frightened. Next, Batts pulled out a rather wicked-looking knife, which he proceeded to drive forcefully into his stomach, and there was much rejoicing. Except it was a fake, collapsible stage knife. *grumbles* And he pulled out a few extremely fake eyeballs . . . Gloucester's, as a matter of fact. And then there were 14 scripts, and a few dozen cards. Each script was a 45-minute abridgement of King Lear, and two of them were specifically prepared for the director and the technical director. The cards contained instructions for each person, whether they be acting or directing.

The "director" and "technical director" positions got snapped up immediately, because they don't involve acting. Then, the brief description of each character was read off, and Batts asked that we volunteer to act out characters who closely matched our personalities. I wasn't hearing anything come up that sounded even remotely like me, so I decided to hold out for Kent. I enjoyed the part last week, and it was generally manageable and so on. But another part came up first, and before anyone else could volunteer, Batts handed it to me in a manner that seemed to indicate that he thought it was made for me or something. I don't know if he saw the expectant look on my face (it's actually my favorite character in the play) or has made a particular judgment about my personality. Either way, I'm still not sure whether to be flattered or insulted. Whichever it is, come Wednesday I'll be doing my best to enjoy playing Lear's Fool.

Oh, and I'll be danged if I'm gonna act it the way that stupid little card suggests. It says I should play the Fool like a bad country-western singer. I think not . . . I have vast experience in playing the fool, and I'll be playing it my way, thanks very much. *cues Frank Sinatra*

This leaves me with two problems. First and foremost is that hat. How on earth can I be expected to wear that in front of people. It's so freaking loud that even I won't be able to hear what I'm saying, let alone what anyone else is saying. And it looks intensely stupid. Not cool, like the normal jester's hat, but stupid and anachronistic . . . it's all wrong. Second, there's the script. It sucks. I suscribe to the school of thought that places the genius of the writings of Shakespeare in their original form at something only just below divinely inspired. So naturally I take personal offence at the predictably paskudne results of tampering with them. They have stripped every last bit of meaning and soul out of the play, and left a skeleton plot behind. Kent and the Fool are almost completely cut, relatively speaking, and Edgar's role is much diminished. The majority of the best scenes from Act III are totally gone. In fact, the majority of the best scenes are just plain gone, because the majority of nearly every scene is either gone or severely crippled. Me hate.

I am now going to do something much more fun than thinking about this. Farewell.

Posted by Jared at March 1, 2004 10:24 PM | TrackBack