Shakespeare story

In high school I was a real geek. No seriously. I know you are saying that is impossible but I was. I even wrote this short story for Mrs. Lehman's class to tell her how much I liked Shakespeare. She wound up printing it, the whole thing, in our newsletter The Bobcat Beat. Looking back on it, it is amazing how bad it really is. It at least is something for me to compare to the writing of high school students today.

Break the Barrier
A short story by Matt Butcher

It's simply "wonderful" having first hour English. I just can't concentrate on all the boring reading. Reading silly Chaucer makes my mind wander to other things, daydreaming about being anyplace but high school.
I bounce into my back row seat just as the bell rings. We finished that Chaucer guy yesterday, and the whole class is buzzing with what we're going to do next.
Mrs. Adkins closes the door behind her as she strides confidently into the room. Suddenly she bends over, clutching her stomach as she turns away from the class.
The class shuts up almost immediately, staring at he teacher and the agony she appears to be in.
Without warning, she cracks her neck to look at us. Her eyes are ablaze. I stare wide-eyed in disbelief.
"'When shall we three meet again\In thunder, lightning, or in rain?'" cackles Mrs. Adkins. I notice Jenny Pyle's eyes bulge. Mrs. Adkins is scaring the class. "'When the hurlyburly's done,\When the battle's lost and won.\Fair is foul, and foul is fair:\Hover through the fog and filthy air!'" Mrs. Adkins snaps back to normal instantly. "These were lines spoken by the three Witches in William Shakespeare's Macbeth. I'll hand out books and this weekend you are to read Act I. As you just experienced, Shakespeare is anything but boring; it's what you make of it."
She begins to pass out copies of Macbeth. I can see that most of the kids are still puzzled about what just took place. Mrs. Adkins' teaching style has apparently changed and we don't know what to make of it. I decide to let it slide. It is obviously a ploy to reel us into schoolwork, a ploy that is doomed to failure. Everyone hates Shakespeare, except for teachers and old English lymies. To care or not to care, and I choose not to.
Mrs. Adkins runs out of books when she gets to me. At first I believe that maybe I won't have to read this weekend, but then I remember that this is Mrs. Adkins. As Steve Berger, sitting in front of me, graciously tries to donate his copy to me, Mrs. Adkins goes over to her bookcase on the side of the room, and fishes out a hardback copy of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Oh, joy!
She hands the tome to me and then winks. Very strange. I slump back into my seat and vaguely listen to Mrs. Adkins' Shakespeare background lecture.
I get home at about 7:00 after play practice. Mom worked late and dinner isn't ready yet. I bound into my room and instead of putting Bachman-Turner Overdrive into my CD player, I open up silly Shakespeare. Knowing Mrs. Adkins, there will probably be a pop quiz Monday to see whether or not we read Act I. I might as well get it over with. BTO would call it "takin' care of business."
"'When shall we three meet again\In thunder, lightning, or in rain?'" I read aloud. "'The weird sisters, hand in hand,\Posters of the sea and land,\Thus do go about, about:\Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine,\And thrice again to make up nine.\Peace! The charm's wound up.'"
The strangest things begin to happen. Suddenly I see the Witches. They are as clear as the Batman clock upon my wall. "Something wicked this way comes." I watch lightning dance across the heath and hear the thunder crack. I taste evil in the foul and filthy air.
I keep reading, letting every scene unfold. My seated heart begins to knock at my ribs. I go on. I become Macbeth. I speak his lines as if they were my own. Not once do I glance at the footnotes for the obscure words. I know their meaning. I delve deeper and deeper.
"'Is this a dagger which I see before me,\The handle toward my hand? Come let me clutch thee.\I have thee not and yet I see thee still.'" I suddenly realize I'm standing as I read, seeing the hallucinogenic dagger of the mind hover in front of my face.
I am become Macbeth, lost in all his bloody tomorrows.
The words themselves hold imagery so powerful that a blind man must shield his eyes. Shakespeare was no idiot. His words are full of sound and fury, signifying everything.
"I have begun to plant the seed, and will labor to make thee full of growing." I must have been dreaming. For a minute it sounded as though Mrs. Adkins was in the room speaking to me.
I delve deeper. "I will not yield."
My alarm clock rings at 7:30 a.m. My mom has a thing about getting up early on Saturdays, something about spending the best day of the week actually awake. I don't know anymore; I've stopped questioning. I'm still holding the book in my hands. I've been up all night but don't feel a bit tired.
Mom yells out, "Breakfast!" My fingers, leafing through the pages, flip to Julius Caesar. I ignore my mom and delve deeper. I flinch at the blood on Brutus' hands. I'm stung with "Et tu, Brute?" I'm hypnotized by Antony's speech to the public: "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears." I shed a tear at Antony's mourning over Brutus' self-slain body: "This was the noblest Roman of them all . . . This was a man!" Julius Caesar answers questions so long denied. "Men at some time are masters of their fates.\The fault . . . is not in our stars but in ourselves."
Mom comes to my room as I finish the epic. She says I've spent all of my Saturday alone in here. It's already Saturday evening.
"What's the matter? Don't you feel well?" she asks, wiping my brow.
Yeah, that's it. "No, not really," I lie. "My head hurts and I'm really tired."
"Well, here, get off the floor and into bed." She helps me into my unmade bed and puts the book on my dresser. "Homework?"
"Yeah, we just have to read Act I of Macbeth."
"Well, get some rest. I'll come in with some chicken noodle later." She walks out and flips off the light.
I can't imagine what she thought of me sitting in the middle of my room, reading a book with more pages than I've read throughout my four years in high school. But at least she's gone. I grab my flashlight and the book.
I hit Hamlet, or, rather, it hits me. "The play's the thing." It is superb. Every word reflects the beauty of the English language. "Suit the action to the word, the word to the action." The plot is so awesome that I get easily involved. It's hard to pull back to reality when my mom comes in to check on me. Little do I realize it's Sunday morning.
"You should be sleeping, not reading," she says. "There's a lean and hungry look about you."
"Just a few more pages, Mom."
I delve deeper.
Act III.
I know it's coming. If I loved that other stuff so much, I'm afraid of what will happen this time around.
The soliloquy.
"What a piece of work."
I read it over once and close the book. I rub my hands together and begin to pace. It comes to me as if I wrote it.
'To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them . . . '
"Now could I drink hot blood." The void is filled; the barrier broken. I finish the rest of Hamlet with a gleam "In my mind's eye." It is "A hit, a very palpable hit."
Mom takes the book out of my tired hands. "'Even lust and envy sleep!'" I stare at her in wonderment. She kisses my forehead gently. "'Good night, Sweet Prince,\And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.'"
Somehow, I can't sleep, yet I am dead tired. "Rest, rest, perturbed spirit!" Then I remember "Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor\shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more." After an hour or two of tossing and turning, I'm finally able to force my eyes shut. Come, we'll sleep." Oh, to sleep. "To sleep- perchance to dream."
A very rainy Monday morning is what I wake to. "So foul and fair a day I have not seen." First hour English rolls along once more as it has for the past four years. I bounce into my chair with my back straight and my head held high, ready to begin. I clutch the book tightly in my hand. "The readiness is all."
Steve Berger turns around to talk to me. "What'd you think of this stuff?" he asks as he he slaps his copy of Shakespeare.
Then I tell what is probably the biggest lie I have ever told or will ever tell. "It was just okay." I look around the room. I glance at Mrs. Adkins and see her smile . . . and understand.
"The rest is silence."



This story is dedicated to my senior English teacher, Mrs. Lehman.