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Thursday, April 21, 2005
Culture Vultures
Yesterday Lydia called and asked if I might be interested in watching Sadie plus Lydia's friend's little boy. Lydia and the friend were given tickets to a Shakespearean play, enough tickets for two adults and two kids. Of course I agreed to babysit. Ordinarily Dan would babysit Sadie but tonight is one of his scuba diving class nights. I don't understand why the other little boy's father doesn't babysit him, but there may be a good reason I simply haven't heard. Anyway, tonight is my babysitting night while Lydia, Benny, Veronica and Zoe go see some Shakespeare. Now I am entirely glad to babysit. That's not the issue. The problem is that I do not think five year olds will like Shakespeare. I think Benny in particular will carry on so that he has to be dragged out howling and struggling. For one thing, Olde Englishe verse recited at speed is nearly incomprehensible to American adults and totally so for young children. As a young adult I attended a Shakespeare play done at Mystic, Connecticut. Then I attended another one in Ontario. Both of those plays were familiar to me but I hardly understood a word of the spoken dialogue. As a matter of fact, my strongest impression from both experiences was this; I had a front seat both times, a bit to the right of center stage. The stage front curved out into the audience and lights burned up from recesses at stage front. While those actors declaimed their lines, I watched with interest the storm of spit flying out of their mouths, and across the footlights into faces of the 'lucky' ticket holders directly in the center front row. That got me through long stretches of barely understood verbosity. Five year old Benny may turn out to be more of a culture vulture than I ever was...but I doubt it. I'm betting that persons attending the play will not go home talking about the play...they'll be exclaiming over the energetic performance of a little red-headed boy whose mother had to wrestle him out the door because he 'acted up' so vehemently.
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