The Journey to RICHARD II, Part 12

Richard II
Shakespeare & Co., Lenox, MA
July 2013

I've been writing about my journey through the works of Shakespeare--on the page, on the stage. And the last few have dealt with my initial attempts to teach the Bard, specifically Hamlet at Western Reserve Academy in 1979-80 and The Taming of the Shrew at Harmon Middle School (Aurora, Ohio), commencing in the 1985-86 school year, the year I had my own son, Steve, in 8th grade English.

Last time, I posted some excerpts from a diary/journal I kept throughout that year--though not so assiduously as I now wish. Days went by (weeks, even) without any comment from me, and now I wish to thrash my youthful self--to send him to the willow tree to cut a switch I can use on his lazy butt. Oh well. I'll just write about what I do have--and what I can remember.

As I wrote last time, I began with a slide-show introduction to Shakespeare and the Elizabethans, a show that would eventually grow to hundreds of 35mm slides, which, later, I had to convert to digital format so I could use them in PowerPoints. (That was fun to do, believe me.) I also had the kids memorize a speech from Shrew (I added a sonnet, too--as well as some famous lines from other plays, like "By the pricking of my thumbs / Something wicked this way comes"--Macbeth. And I started bringing into class items that were relevant--recordings of Elizabethan music, works of art, posters from movies and play productions. Soon I had enough of the latter to cover the walls of my classroom. (Most of my teaching posters I donated to the Western Reserve Academy English Department when I retired in June 2011.)

Some final excerpts from that diary ...

Thursday, 19 December 1985: Tomorrow I've got to collect all these kids' Shakespeare notes. Tonight I'm going to try to put together some kind of study guide for The Taming of the Shrew for them to follow along with. They'll enjoy it a lot more if they know what the hell's happening.

Friday, 3 January 1986: Last weekday of the break. Yesterday [morning], went up to school about 9:30, worked there till about 12:30, punching holes in my Shrew scripts, punching holes in the notes I'm going to hand out on Shrew, just generally straightening up the room.

Wednesday, 8 January 1986: Found myself getting irritated with kids going, "Oooooh, do we have to do this?" I spent all this time getting ready for them and they didn't appreciate what I'd done. ... [A girl] surprised me ...by having both Shakespeare sonnets memorized, and I'd asked them to memorize only one. ... Kids totally missed a dirty line in Shakespeare today: When Christopher Sly is talked out of going to bed with his "wife,"he says, "Well so it stands I can hardly tarry." They weren't quite sure what "it" was--till I, uh, pointed "it" out. Probably get me in trouble. ["It" didn't.]

Tuesday, 14 January 1986: The kids seem to be liking it better as we're getting into it. Names are starting to sort themselves out.

Thursday, 16 January 1986: "...we charged through just about all but the ending of Shrew--kids laughing, enjoying (at least insofar as they understand).

Wednesday, 22 January 1986: Showed the first part of Burton-Taylor's Shrew. God, she was beautiful in 1967! In Zeffirelli's film, nearly every shot looks like some kind of lush Renaissance painting.


Next time--some final thoughts about those initial experiences with Shrew--and then on we go: some years of Shrew--then ... Much Ado About Nothing.

The Papers of Victoria Frankenstein, Part II: 14

“Father, do you think we could move to another town?”

He looked up from his bowl of chicken soup. His glasses were so steamed from the heat of the soup I couldn’t see his eyes. “Victoria! Why would you want to move?” He wiped his mouth with a napkin. “We’ve just gotten the house back into living condition, and—”

“I just hate school.”

“I know you do,” he sighed. “You’ve never really liked it. And I guess I can’t blame you.” He looked at me closely. “It’s pretty boring for you, isn’t it?”

I felt tears in my eyes. “It’s just so stupid, Father. And now the stupid science teacher is making me work with some stupid kid on a stupid Science Fair project.”

“That’s a lot of stupid.” He waited. “So what’s the problem? Is it someone you don’t like?”

“I hate him.”

“Him? You’re paired with a boy?”

“Yes, him, I’m paired with a boy!” I barked. “But it’s not that …” I couldn’t think of how to finish what I’d started.

“You don’t object to working with a boy, then?”

“No, not really.”

“You just don’t like working with anyone, is that it?”

I looked at my father, who, I realized, could not really see at all because of the thick coating of condensed soup-steam on his glasses. Silently, I rose from my chair and left the room.  Later, I wondered how long he’d sat there before he realized I wasn’t in the room anymore.

The next day’s science class arrived too fast—much too fast. For after we turned in our homework, and after Mr. Gisborne talked about football for fifteen minutes (more or less his average), he said we would have the rest of the period to go to the library. “I want you with your partners,” he announced, “and I want you talking about your science fair projects.”

Half the class was out the door by the time he finished talking, but it didn’t seem to bother him very much. The last three out of the room, in this order, were Gil, Mr. Gisborne, and I.

“So have you got any ideas, Victoria?” Gil asked.

We had been sitting in silence in the library for a few minutes, unlike most of the rest of the kids in the class, who were talking about anything except science—until Mr. Gisborne, clipboard in hand, came by their table. Then there was some science talk, but it ended abruptly as soon as he moved on to the next table. 

I had decided I wasn’t going to say a word. But now Gil had asked me a direct question, so I couldn’t really ignore him any longer.

“Do I have any ideas?” I repeated.

“That’s right,” he said. “For a project? Something we could do together?”

“How about something with human anatomy?” I began.

Gil began writing human anatomy on a sheet of paper.

“Sounds interesting,” he said.

“Yeah,” I went on. “I could vivisect you and explain to the judges what all your inside parts are.”

“Vivisect?”

“Dissect means to cut open something dead,” I explained.

“And vivisect is—”

“For something alive.”

“Well, that’s nice,” Gil sighed. “At least you’re not going to kill me. We’re making progress here.”

I had to smile. This kid seemed to have a little bit of a sense of humor.

“There’s only two problems with that idea,” he went on.

“Yeah, what’s that?”

“One … I hate pain.”

“Well, get used to it.”

“And two … it’ll be such a good project that we will get to go to the state science fair.”

“Why is that a problem?”

“Because I’ll be dead after the first night,” he said.  “And I don’t think you could convince anyone else to, you know, take my place.”

“Well, what makes you think we’ll get to go to the state competition?”

“Whose got better-looking guts than I do?” he asked with mock seriousness. “They could win a beauty contest, no doubt about it.”

I couldn’t help it … I was smiling again.

“You’re pretty ridiculous,” I said finally.

“I know,” he replied.  “Maybe that’s why Mr. Gisborne put us together.”

I was about to snap back at him for that insult when I saw Gil’s eyes look behind me, and I smelled Mr. Gisborne’s musky aftershave that was so powerful he must have splashed it on after every class all day long.

“You two making any progress?” he inquired.

“We’re thinking about human anatomy,” Gil offered.

“No,” said Mr. Gisborne.

“No?” Gil and I responded in unison.

“I want you to do something real,” he said, “not something with just charts and drawings.  And since you can’t bring in a dead body …”

“We can’t?” replied Gil with pretended disappointment.

“What about a live one?” I asked.

Mr. Gisborne stared at me, his face slowly moving from white to pink to red. “Now look here … uh …” He was consulting his clipboard, trying to figure out my name.

“Vickie,” I said. “Vickie Stone.”

“That’s right … Vickie,” he said. “Now look here, this is no place for jokes and other attempts at being funny.” His voice got louder, and people around were starting to notice. “I’m getting sick of all this disrespect! All this make-fun-of-the-teacher stuff. If you want to be funny,” he snarled, “you can just march down to the office, and then we’ll see how funny you are.”

“Mr. Gisborne,” said Gil, “she wasn’t trying to insult you. She was just—”

“Down to the office!” Mr. Gisborne bellowed in the now-silent library. “Both of you!”  Everyone was now staring at us. They couldn’t believe, I’m sure, that two of the quietest kids in the whole school had somehow done something to make Mr. Gisborne so angry. As we moved toward the door, I passed Harriet’s table. She reached out and touched my arm. Gently.

Jack London: An American Life (2)

A couple of days ago I posted about the appearance of this new Jack London biography (Farrar, Straus, 2013) by my friend and mentor Earle Labor--a project he had been working on for decades. I also explained my background with Earle--our initial meeting in 1990, our ensuing friendship, his help with my own Jack London publications. And--as I also wrote last time--I finished reading the book over this past weekend and wanted to say just a few things about it--some obvious, some not so.

• The organization is very conventional and "reader-friendly": He begins with London's birth in 1876, ends with his death in 1916, barely forty years later. Throughout, Earle's purpose (similar to London's in his own writing) is to be transparently clear--and he is. Just about any moderately educated, curious reader will be able to charge through Jack London with very few problems.
• Earle is a literary scholar of the first order, but he reins in that sort of scholarship (though its shadows are evident everywhere) and seems to have adopted as a guiding principle: What do readers want--and need--to know about Jack London? The literary scholarship is easily available elsewhere (much of the best is in Earle's own books), and he figured--correctly, in my view--that general readers are not principally interested in literary movements and literary analysis. There is some (especially concerning London's late-life love affair with Jung) but nothing whatsoever that impedes reading--or will cause folks to skip paragraphs or even chapters. He does focus at times on the composition of the books. For example, when did he write The Sea-Wolf? What were his working conditions? What was he trying to do? How was the book received?  That sort of thing.
• The Jack London you'll discover in these pages is a human being--not a saint, not a flawless vessel. Earle points out his infidelities, his failures as a father, his varieties of intransigence, his lack of commitment to some of his works (some--many?--of which he wrote principally for the money), his inability to live within his means. And on and on. We also see his virtues, of course--his loyalty to his friends, his affection for his second wife (Charmian), his great ideas, his ambitions, his ferocious work ethic, and the like.
• The book is full of new insights and information--and corrections of the sorts of misinformation that has filled careless biographies of London, practically from the very beginning. It's like re-reading a story you read long ago--a story whose outline you can remember--maybe a few details. And then, re-reading, you see the story again in all its original clarity. Well, in some cases, the "original clarity" was not ever really there; Earle provides it here. He addresses/destroys the suicide story ignited by Irving Stone in his biographical novel Sailor on Horseback (1938), and to every major event in London's life--e.g., his struggles to become a writer, his relationships with women, his failed attempt to circumnavigate the globe in The Snark, the building and loss of his dream house (Wolf House--whose ruins still stand in Glen Ellen, CA), his attempts to create an ideal ranch--he adds fresh information--and illuminates the old--in ways that bring London to life once again, even for a recovering London-freak like me.
• I am extraordinarily flattered that Earle mentioned me in the acknowledgements--and in his notes and bibliography. (This is a reason I knew I could not review the book for a newspaper or magazine: I'm biased!)

As I wrote the other day, no one will ever again know what Earle Labor has spent a professional lifetime unearthing. But now ... we have Jack London: An American Life, the best London biography--by far--and a legacy whose significance is impossible to overstate--in London world, in American letters.

The Papers of Victoria Frankenstein, Part II (13)

I hated the Science Fair. And this was one feeling that I shared with just about every other kid in Franconia—except, of course, for a handful of kids who had parents that liked to do Science Fair projects and put their kids’ names on them.

In sixth grade the Fair had been optional—and guess what? About six kids in the entire school entered it. There were more judges than kids! Anyway, I guess that embarrassed the school, so Mr. Gisborne had told us at the beginning of the year that everyone was required to do a project for the Science Fair. When we heard that, there was lots of booing and carrying on, but Mr. Gisborne was firm … he had to be.

Well, I figured I would do some dumb little thing, just enough to fulfill the requirement, the usual thing: get some seeds, four little clay pots, vary the amounts of water and sunlight given to each seed, write up a little report, make a stupid poster, get a “B,” and forget about it.

But some kids convinced Mr. Gisborne that the Science Fair projects would be better if we could work in pairs. He said he would think about it.

I had totally forgotten about it until I saw the list on the top of my desk. And now I was really upset: Not only did I have to do a project, but I had to do it with Gil, the kid who was already butting into my life. I would talk to Mr. Gisborne about this the next day. Let him know that there was no way I would do any Science Fair project with Gil … did this kid even have a last name? If I’d ever heard it, I sure didn’t remember it.

Next day, right after science class, I waited up by Mr. Gisborne’s desk.  He was in a hurry, jamming our homework papers into one of those brown expanding files, bulging with ungraded work, putting on his coat.

“Mr. Gisborne, could I talk to you a minute about the Science Fair?”

“Uh, look,” he said, avoiding saying my name because he probably didn’t know it. “I’m in a big hurry. Football practice. Can’t be late.”

“Oh. Well, this will just take a second.” I used a Helpless Little Girl voice, hoping he might have a soft spot in his hard head. He did.

“Hurry up,” he sighed, looking at his watch.

“Okay, I was just wondering if I could change partners. I mean, I don’t have anything against Gil, but—”

“Absolutely not,” he said sharply.

“But—”

“Look-it,” he said, “once I start letting people switch, well, then the whole thing turns into a game of Musical Chairs. And I just don’t have time to re-do all my charts just because some kid doesn’t like their partner. Hey,” he added, apparently having an insight, “nobody’s asking you to marry the kid. Just be his partner on a project. No big deal.”

And with that, he hurried out of the room, leaving me wondering if Father would mind moving to another town.

Jack London: An American Life (I)

Just yesterday afternoon (Saturday) I finished reading Jack London: An American Life by Prof. Earle Labor; it's taken him a lifetime to research and write the book. Before I talk about the text, though, I want to tell you about my history with Earle--a history that changed my life in so many ways.

When I returned to teach at Harmon Middle School in Aurora, Ohio, in the fall of 1982 (I'd been gone four years--teaching at Lake Forest College, Western Reserve Academy, and Kent State University), I found that the school had adopted a new literature anthology for the 8th graders--Ginn and Co.'s Exploring Literature (1981). The final selection in the book is Jack London's The Call of the Wild (1903), a book I had never read. (I found out later that the Ginn editors had bowdlerized a bit.) Oh, I knew some of the story, all right. When I was a kid, I read the old Classics Illustrated version many, many times . And I'd read two other books by London--The Sea-Wolf (college) and Martin Eden, his autobiographical novel (in some ways), a novel I'd read in high school, in study hall, for a reason I cannot summon from memory. I liked them both. I'd also read the Classics version of White Fang--also many, many times. But that was it.

I don't like teaching things I don't know much about, so in 1982-83, I embarked on a Jack London journey that would culminate fifteen years later with the publication of an annotated edition of The Call of the Wild (Univ. of Okla. Pr., 1995) and a YA biography of London (Scholastic Press, 1997). Along the way, I read all fifty of London's books, visited his terrain (and homes) in the Bay Area, hiked over the Chilkoot Trail (which is prominent in Wild), read every biography of London, and on and on. I was fully consumed by a London-mania.

But in the middle of all that--right in the middle--was Earle Labor, who taught at Centenary College of Louisiana. In 1990 Earle, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, offered a six-week summer workshop on Jack London for teachers out at Sonoma State Univ. in Rohnert Park, Calif., a spot very near the Jack London Ranch (then a state park; now, in other nonprofit hands). It was a program I had to apply for (I think there were fifteen of us from all over the country), and I was thrilled when I got word I'd been accepted. I drove out that summer and had a wonderful time (though, back in Ohio ... an awful family illness and death eventually cut short my time out there by about a week). Each of us in the seminar had to do a project. I decided to do annotations for Wild. There were just so many things in the book that I knew nothing about--place names and locations among them. (Where was Lake Laberge? And College Park? And Dyea, Alaska? And on and on?) Earle enthusiastically supported the idea--and me. I got a pretty good start going that summer, then continued when I got home.

I remained in touch--often--with Earle over the next few years, and he was very helpful when I approached the Univ. of Okla. Press about publishing a fully annotated edition. Earle also read over my work, made suggestions and corrections, and became my greatest cheerleader. (Later, he also read a draft of my YA biography and saved me from some problems with it, as well.)

My Jack London mania mellowed by 1997; I had turned to Mary Shelley and was now pursuing her story with the same obsessive passion as I had chased London's). But Earle and I still stayed in touch. I saw him now and then at London events and conferences. He sent me some chapters of the biography of London he'd been working on for decades. I was enormously humbled and honored by his request and managed a few tiny suggestions.

And what had humbled me? Earle Labor is the world's leading authority on London. No one has ever known all he knows about London and his works; no one will ever again know a tenth of it. Although he has published many books and articles about London throughout his career (and co-edited both the definitive editions of London's letters and short stories--both 3 volumes, both with Stanford Univ. Press), it was The Biography that was consuming him. And now, at 85 years old, Earle Labor has finished that book, has released it to the world.  And it is a wonder.

NEXT TIME: THE BOOK ITSELF ...

The Journey to Richard II (Part 11)

Richard II
Shakespeare & Co., Lenox, MA
July 2013

As the 1985-1986 school year approached, I grew ever more nervous--for more than a single reason. Perhaps most worrisome: I was going to have my own son, Steve, in my class of eighth graders, and, as I've written here before, I didn't want anything to threaten the great relationship we had. But next in my Worry List: I was going to teach Shakespeare for the first time to middle schoolers--The Taming of the Shrew.

Before that year began, I thought I might one day want to write about my experiences. So I kept an audio journal. I talked many days into a cassette recorder, then, later (when? I can't remember), I transcribed and printed the pages. (Did I get them all? I still haven't found the tapes.) I also kept two other things: (1) a manila folder into which I put into all sorts of school documents from that year + issues of the local newspaper, the Aurora Advocate--issues that had something to do with school matters; (2) a folder which contained all (ha!) of the homework, quizzes, tests that Steve did in my class that year.

Today, I want to reproduce here some comments I recorded in my diary/journal that year--comments relating to the preparation and teaching of The Taming of the Shrew.

Monday, 2 December 1985: And I spent four hours tonight getting my Shakespeare lecture and presentation ready for class tomorrow, making out notes for the kids to use, and then filling them in myself, rearranging all my slides, plus the additional ones I took for the slide-show part of it. Went to the library to find some Elizabethan music so I can play it while I'm talking, give kids examples of music they [the Eliz.] listened to and liked .... Also spent about 30 bucks on things tonight--folders to hold The Taming of the Shrew scripts [I'd photocopied and printed a class set] ....

14 December 1985: Funny thing happened in class as I was telling them about Shakespeare and about how his marriage to Anne Hathaway was followed six months later by a child. The kids said, "Wait a minute" And I said, "That's right. Shakespeare was messing around--really shaking his spear." Kids went crazy. I haven't heard anything about it yet; I presume I will. [I didn't.]

17 December 1985: Today I began telling the kids about the De Vere-Shakespeare controversy--very interesting. [One boy] stayed after class and said, "Why don't they just dig the guy up? Take ten minutes to explain what people have wanted to know for centuries."

18 December 1985: ... today we looked at the sonnets, and I told them, "There's one thing you should know. No one understands Shakespeare without help." Then I told them they could get the main idea of a sonnet without understanding all of it, and I just read it aloud, and people ... were able to hear "My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing like the Sun" and tell me just exactly what's on Shakespeare's mind. ... [A boy] came in this noon when I was working on some papers, picked up my copy of Shakespeare's sonnets, read a few lines, and said, "You know, this stuff's really cool."

Now that is a good place to stop!

PS--My mistress' eyes ...

The Papers of Victoria Frankenstein, Part II (12)

Five 

I had never done that before, fall asleep in a class. I could not figure out why no one had awakened me—or why I had not heard the bell announcing the end of the day.

The note from Gil—yes, from Gil (what a surprise)—answered it. I’ll just put his words here:

Victoria,

   I am sorry you are angry with me. I don’t know what I have done wrong, but if you just tell me, I will do something about it.

   I knew you were sleeping, but here’s what Mr. Gisborne said: “Aw, look at Vickie.”  Everyone did. “It’s the first time I’ve ever seen her so upset about something.” And then he cried some more.

   Anyway, I didn’t want to ruin his idea of why your head was on the table. If he thought you were upset and crying, well, let him think so.

   I touched you on the shoulder as I walked by your desk on the way out, but you were sound asleep.

   And you were still sound asleep when I came back to write this note. I’ve been sitting beside you, watching you sleep. (You snore a little, did you know that?) But I’m not going to wait around for you to wake up. It might scare you, seeing me here with you in an empty room. And I don’t want to give you another reason to be mad at me.

Gil

   P. S.  Oh, I almost forgot, one of the sheets Mr. Gisborne passed out is going to upset you … but don’t blame me! I had nothing to do with it!

I hated to disappoint Gil (not really: I think, at that point, I would have loved to disappoint him), but his note—and its information (disturbing as they were)—did not bother me so much as the dream I’d had during my surprising—astonishing, really—nap during science class.

I step down from a train that has arrived at Niagara Falls. I don’t know how I got on that train—or why I’m at the Falls. [This part surely came from my recent reading, right?] I don’t know where I got on the train; I remember nothing about the journey—well, only this: The woman who was pushing the snack cart up and down the rows looked so familiar. Haven’t you had that experience? Seeing someone somewhere—maybe in a dream, maybe at a mall or something actual—and just being positive that you know that person? But you can’t remember who it is or where and how it was that you knew? And once, as she was walking past me, I felt she smiled at me—but when I looked more closely, I saw no smile at all.

Off the train now. And then, somehow, I am beside the Niagara River near the top of the Falls. The river’s incredible power as it arrives at its dropping point is something only a witness can understand—or appreciate. The sound is a roar. The air is thick with mist. I am staring at the top of the falls, staring at the mist. I think I see a face in the mist—it’s the woman’s face, the woman from the train, and now I’m almost certain who it is. But … what do I do about this hand I feel in the center of my back? I turn to look and at the same instant feel myself propelled out into the frigid river.

So, reading this, maybe you can see why Gil’s silly note didn’t affect me too much. I was still shivering from the freezing waters of the Niagara, still wondering who the woman was, who had pushed me—and why I was even dreaming about that situation at all.

Still … I felt my temperature rising as I read Gil’s note—and then read it again before folding it carefully, placing it in my notebook, and picking up the other two sheets he’d mentioned. One of them was just a worksheet: the usual questions from the next chapter we were supposed to read at home.

But the other one was a real annoyance!

It, too, was a handout from Mr. Gisborne, but it was a list of students who would be working together on Science Fair projects. He had assigned people partners—and guess who mine was going to be?