A Valentine from William

SUE CLARK

Teaching riotous groups of junior high students the timelessness of

Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” was easy. You could always mesmerize

a group of hormonally charged ninth-graders with sex, violence and

mean parents.

Plus, I knew every dirty joke, even the ones the literature

editors had inadvertently left in, not being as adept at Elizabethan

English as I was.

“We teachers,” I’d say over the moans and gnashing of teeth,

“didn’t sit down and scheme on how to torture you kids by keeping

Shakespeare around. Shakespeare keeps himself around and he totally

rules.

“He stays around because he understands things like young love,

hatred, prejudice, the powerless of teenagers and, let’s face it,

sex.”

That drew hoots and hollers.

“The guy had to sell his plays, and the audiences were mostly

common people, who didn’t have TVs.

“They had to stay interested by standing in a big, noisy pit for

two hours. It had better be bloody, saucy and sad, with a lot of rude

jokes thrown in.”

Shakespeare had to sell to the crowds, who were throwing things,

shouting at the actors and guzzling mead, or whatever the waitresses

were selling.

The human race loves feuds.

When I taught, back in the ‘70s, well before Crips and Bloods were

part of our vocabulary, the Montagues and the Capulets were sworn

enemies.

They were “two households, both alike in dignity.” And they hated

each other’s guts, and they had their cousins’ backs. These families

were “from ancient grudge breaking to new mutiny.”

Each of my students could recite the above, because I forced them

to memorize the prologue.

The room filled with mournful lament upon hearing this. They’d

heard from older siblings that I was adamant. I was mad-dogged by 30

kids who had to learn and intone a sonnet. Alone. In front of his

peers on the football team.

The class street lawyer would invariably demand, “Why do we have

to memorize this stuff?”

The benevolent dictator would reply, “You will impress people at

parties later.”

Then I would tell them how I had stood up in my first college

English class and demanded the same thing. “What good is memorizing?”

My professor had replied, “You will never forget the lines, and

you will impress people at parties. And I have. “Oh, wild west wind,”

I’d say over a Perrier, “thou breath of Autumn’s being, thou from

whose unseen presence the leaves dead are driven like ghosts from an

enchanter fleeing.”

An awed -- or odd -- silence ensued, in which I basked.

So the jocks and the brains, the skateboarders and the plastic

pocket engineers, the cheerleaders and the sleepy-eyed surfer boys

would stand awkwardly at the front of the class mumbling Shakespeare.

“Parting is such sweet sorrow,” I’d holler to the departing class

at the bell, “that I might say goodnight ‘til it be morrow.”

“Yeah, bye,” they’d mumble.

Did my kids believe in love at first sight? You bet they did --

all but the most reflective.

Did they believe in the stars propelling the series of bad

decisions made by the young lovers and their inept counselor, Friar

Laurence? Of course. We’d march over to a local theater and rent the

‘60s version with Olivia Huston.

They were experts and would critique the movie and bemoan the

parts that were missing.

And read aloud, we did. Kids would vie to read. Interestingly,

some of the least academic had good ears, and would start catching on

to the essentially foreign language that was Elizabethan.

The more structured honors students would not just listen until

they could hear it.

When I think of Valentine’s Day, I think of young love. I think of

my ninth-grade English classes, when I was just a few years older

than my kids.

I remember puppy love, and how respectful we adults should be when

kids “fall in love.” Do you believe in love at first sight? Then

you’re in august company. Shakespeare and I do, too.

Happy Valentine’s Day, and make sure you get along with her

family.

* SUE CLARK is a Costa Mesa resident and a high school guidance

counselor at Creekside High School in Irvine. She can be reached at

tallteacher@comcast.net.