Shakespeare on the Porch
Lori Borgman | Monday, Aug 10, 2009
They call it Shakespeare on the Porch. I’ve been
attending on Friday mornings whenever I can this summer. Talk about
falling in with the wrong crowd.
There are about a dozen mostly home-schooled kids
and a smattering of moms. Our ring leader is a 90-year-old
former Marine and retired dentist with a built-in memory card that
makes my PC look like it’s not fit to write a grocery list.
We meet on a patio sheltered by the graceful limbs
of towering beech and oaks. Kids take turns reading scenes from
“As You Like It” and our white-haired sage intersperses commentary
-- with nary a note or a glance at the anthology resting in his
lap. In the course of discussion, he intersperses entire poems
related to the topic. He must have thousands stored in his head.
So this is what the human brain is capable of,
I think to myself. And what is it I do with my free time?
A 6-year-old curls up on a woman’s lap and listens
as the older students read against the distant sound of a chainsaw
trimming trees.
The play references Greek mythology followed by
a partial quotation from the gospel of Matthew. The kids all get
it. What they don’t get is “petticoats”; we pause for a brief explanation.
Through a vocabulary and syntax centuries old,
and young voices that sometime falter over unfamiliar words, humor
comes to life – as well as the reminder that our troubles are not
new, just masquerading in different names and wearing a fresher
set of threads.
Graceful wording and lyrical phrases are the perfect
antidote for a not-so-healthy diet of utilitarian reading and cable
news.
Act I is over and students are invited to recite
something they have been memorizing.
A young lady stands and begins, “When, in the
course of human events,” and recites a good share of the Declaration
of Independence.
A young girl recites “O Captain, My Captain!”
a mournful poem written by Walt Whitman upon the death of Abraham
Lincoln.
The young man trimming trees wanders onto the
patio and even he is asked if he has something to recite. Clearly,
I have happened upon a poetry memorization cult.
“The Night Wind, by Eugene Fields” he says, wiping
his hands on his pants. “Have you ever heard the wind go ‘Yooooo’?
'T is a pitiful sound to hear! It seems to chill you through and
through, With a strange and speechless fear.”
One by one, the adults offer a poem from memory.
Panic-stricken, all I can bring to mind is “Hey diddle, diddle,
the cat and the fiddle.” No wait, I have something more substantial:
“There was a little girl who had a little curl, right in the middle
of her forehead. When she was good she was very good indeed, but
when she was bad, she was horrid.”
I politely pass when invited to recite and am
silently grateful my host is gracious, although I do receive an
arched eyebrow from a 10-year-old.
I wonder if these type gatherings happen much
throughout our country. They certainly could. And they really should.
This Friday morning refreshment isn’t simply the
out of doors and the gentle breeze, it is the marvelous mix of generations,
words with cadence and meaning, worthy thoughts, fresh faces and
curious minds.
It is summer school at its best.
