Shakespeare Divided

So I've come to a conclusion: people don't understand Shakespeare.

Oh, I know a lot of people say that they don't understand Shakespeare, but I think the problem is a lot wider spread than anyone has realized. How did I come to this conclusion? Well, as a Shakespeare major I have to take all kinds of interesting Shakespearean classes from both the English and Theatre departments here at SUU. In the course of this, though, I've realized that many of the people I work with believe that the Bard belongs either to just the English department or just the Theatre department. How screwed up is that?

My favorite part of my major is how integrated the two aspects of Shakespeare have become. In one class I read certain plays, talk about them, and write papers on them. In the other I perform and watch Shakespeare. To me, the line between the two sides has become blurred almost past recognition, and it frustrates me that no one else seems to see how silly it is to have them parted.

Since I got yelled at today by one of my professors about my ideas of integration, I'm simply not going to bother with trying to help SUU make the Bard whole again. They can turn out English majors who know nothing about how to speak Shakespeare for all I care. When I'm a professor, though, I intend to teach a class about Shakespeare. Not Shakespeare from an English perspective, not Shakespeare from a Theatre perspective.

Just Shakespeare.

Poem #2

A poem about what I don't like:

To My Friends

Every little look you gave me
with your plastic little smiles and glazed eyes:
I get it now.

You lied.

I told you not to do it, to not hide
what you thought and felt.
But you didn't bother to listen.

You still did it.

Manicured little dreams,
pretty realities that are so empty--
They're crumbling all around you.

I tried.

Now you wonder why every look
is suspect, scrutinized in expectation;
But you can't say I didn't warn you.

I told you so.

A poem about clothing:

My Battlefield

I can see it, from where I'm sitting on my bed:
A single lifeless mass of knitted cloth and soil that seems
determined to crawl onto my side of the room.

I snarl at it, thinking to banish it with a thought,
But it remains, gloating in its filth as it toes the boundary.

Stupid sock.

It May Be the Death of a Salesman

Well, I managed to cut Death of a Salesman down to six minutes and thirty seconds. Peter Sham was impressed when he overheard the mention of that, and I bet he is wondering what all I left in. My group was really excited when they got the script, but I forgot something... We have a group of six instead of the five I originally thought.

Luckily, Professor Sham was perfectly willing to let me be director since I had done the cutting of the script myself. So the parts were given out to the other members of the group. Everything seemed to be fine right up until this morning's practice. I was ready to smack Scott. I really was.

You see, in Salesman there is one character the play can't function without: Willy. Scott's playing the Willy that is known as "sane Willy" (even though he is the one driven crazy by the other and commits suicide... yes, it's irony on my part). The problem? He is not memorized and has not yet displayed a willingness to act. No matter what we did, no matter what was asked of him, he did the same things over and over again. If he is not ready by Saturday night I get the fun job of telling him he is no longer in the production.

But wait! That would leave us without a Willy, right? Wrong. The group decided I should memorize Willy just in case. So much for no stress this weekend. I may just rip my hair out.