Easy beach reading? Forget that. You've got a month or so to
get ready for Ye Olde Sum'er o' Shaxper.
By J.D. Reid
Ask any flat-topped, gum-smacking 11th grader whether he would
rather (a) read
William Shakespeare or (b) die, and it's likely he
will give both sides a fair shake. On the one hand, his eyes would
have to glaze - I'm sorry, gaze - over countless e'ens, o'ers,
dosts, and thous and lines like, "They doubly redoubled strokes
upon the foe." On the other, he would die. "Fine," he'll say. "Kill
me."
We can sympathize; 400 years ago, the language was different,
spelling and letters were different, and things like "Love's
Labor's Lost" looked like "Loues Labours Loft." Writers these days
are spoiled with dictionaries and erasers; when Shakespeare was
chiseling
Romeo and
Juliet into his cave wall, he didn't have the
luxury of
Office Depot. It was hard enough to compose canonical
drama while keeping dragons at bay with a torch. Nonetheless,
Shakes managed, even in those dark ages. Surely if his drama could
entertain his illiterate, pox-friendly contemporaries, our
standardized-tested, antibacterial brains can stomach what I'm
calling Ye Olde Sum'er o' Shaxper.
Start with a bang by picking up Hamlet, which should be a refresher
reading for you. (If you made it through school without having read
it, odds are you didn't make it through school.) Hamlet is so
classic and so comfortable that it's like warm apple cider on
Chriftmas Eve. Moral of the story: Poison goes in the ear, not in
wine, where it is susceptible to glass confusion.
While we are still in violent moods, we'll hit Macbeth, the Fargo
of Shakespearean plays. And bloody? You betcha: Stabbings,
beheadings, suicide - even the witches use blood as a sort of heavy
broth in their soup cauldron. Moral: When in doubt, kill
everyone.
Ooh, and Titus Andronicus. Have you been looking for more gore in
your classic literature? Then this one's for you. Hands, tongues,
and heads are lopped off all over the place, which leads the story
to one grand question: How do we taste in pie form? Moral:
Actually, I don't think there is a moral in this one.
So those should kick off Ye Olde Sum'er o' Shaxper. Where to find
them? Easy: This month
Modern Library releases the monster William
Shakespeare Complete Works ($65), certain to devour all those
too-heavy, two-point-font, onionskin anthologies that you would
never actually read. All you need now is a lamp. Oh, and, of
course, silence.