Bardolatry

.....The other day in the Theatre Workshop class held in our clubhouse, I acted the graveyard scene from "Hamlet" and took all four parts from memory: Hamlet, Horatio, Gravedigger and Yorick.  Hamlet is walking with Horatio, his best--and probably only--friend through a graveyard on his way to Elsinore after returning from England where he had been sent by his uncle, Claudius. A gravedigger is singing while digging a grave for Ophelia, Hamlet's sweetheart, who has committed suicide in his absence--without his knowledge. Hamlet hears him and says, "Horatio, has this fellow no feeling for his business that he sings at gravemaking?" Horatio replies, "Perhaps custom has made it a property of easiness to him." The scene continues with repartee between Hamlet and the gravedigger until he is shown the scull of Yorick, the King's jester--a sort of Jay Leno in calico.  It is then that Hamlet begins his famous monologue "Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him, Horatio".  It is hard to believe that there is someone who has never heard those opening lines somewhere in time.

.....I first heard of Shakespeare when I was in the sixth grade and I was made to learn a speech from "Macbeth."  It occurs while Macbeth was on his way to assassinate King Duncan who is staying as a guest, and who is currently asleep in the dark of the night.  Macbeth is not too happy about doing this job, but has been urged by Lady Macbeth to be a man and do it.  His manhood being tested, he is on his way below the staircase leading to Duncan's quarters when a visionary dagger appears before his eyes and he cries out, "Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle towards my hand?  Come! Let me clutch thee!  (He reaches for it, but cannot "clutch" it).  I have thee not, and yet I see thee still." He goes on, "Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible to feeling as to sight? Or art thou but a dagger of the mind--a false creation proceeding from the heat oppressed brain?"  Well, when I began reading this speech, it didn't touch me to the quick until I read it aloud and it jumped out at me; it came to life like Venus before Adonis.  I suddenly understood that Shakespeare's great poetry was not meant to be read silently--but aloud, and that reading it aloud leads to understanding.  I kept reading that soliloquy aloud even under the covers in my bed--such great joy it gave to me.

.....This speech piqued my interest and I went to the school library and took out the book on Macbeth.  When one gets to the scene where the three witches are boiling their broth awaiting the man whom they are enticing by incantation to do the evil deed of murder, one must certainly read it aloud in order to hear Shakespeare's music--try it and see: 

"Double, double, toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble. Fillet of a fenny snake, In the cauldron boil and bake; Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog; Adders fork and blind-worms sting; Lizard's leg and howlet's wing; For a charm of powerful trouble; Like a hell-broth boil and bubble."  (I'll say this--if this witch takes a job as a chef here in a South Florida restaurant, I would be hesitant to go there.) Now, when I read this aloud--in the sixth grade-- I was hooked on Shakespeare.  And I can't understand why everyone else is not.  (I'm not finished with y'all).