How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare (18 page)

That brings us to the other startling feature of
Twelfth Night
. It’s a comedy and it’s romantic; but it’s not about a romantic couple. The central love story is about a brother and sister.

The required “love interest” plot involves Viola and Orsino—but there
is virtually no dramatic tension in their story. Viola reveals that she loves Orsino almost as an afterthought, at the end of their first, short, businesslike scene together (Act I, Scene 4). Likewise, while Olivia is head over heels in love with “Cesario,” we know that Cesario is really a woman and that Olivia has a different kind of romance in mind. However, there is a genuine love story in the middle of
Twelfth Night
, and it’s the story of Viola and her brother Sebastian.

Were you a woman, as the rest goes even
,

I should my tears let fall upon your cheek

And say “Thrice welcome, drownèd Viola.”

As the rest goes even
means “since everything else fits together.” So Sebastian is saying

Since everything else fits together, if you were a woman I’d understand everything that’s going on. I’d embrace you and let my tears fall on your cheek and I’d cry “My sister! You’re not really drowned!”

Once again, Shakespeare says it a little better than I just did.

Were you a woman, as the rest goes even
,

I should my tears let fall upon your cheek

And say “Thrice welcome, drownèd Viola.”

And now we come to the best part of the passage: the big revelation.

VIOLA

If nothing lets to make us happy both

But this my masculine usurped attire
,

Do not embrace me till each circumstance

Of place, time, fortune, do cohere and jump

That I am Viola
.

If nothing lets
means “If nothing prevents us.”
Masculine usurped attire
means “manly, borrowed clothing.”
Cohere and jump
means “agree.” So the sentence means

If nothing is preventing us both from being happy but my borrowed manly clothes, don’t embrace me until everything that’s going on—this place, this time, and my fortune—adds up and proves that I’m Viola!

Have your children take it a phrase at a time:

If nothing lets

to make us happy both

But this

my masculine usurped attire
,

Do not embrace me

till each circumstance

Of place, time, fortune
,

do cohere and jump

That I am Viola
.

What I find so unusually touching about this passage is twofold. First, I find Viola so vulnerable, so intelligent, so loving, and so hopeful that I’m rooting for her in a very deep, personal way. I desperately want her to find both her brother and that happiness that she has longed for since the moment we met her. Second, I find it very moving that this rich, complex, intricate play has pulled all its many plotlines and characters and emotions together into one final moment with such perfection.

Dr. Johnson said that
Twelfth Night
“is in the graver part elegant and easy, and in … the lighter scenes exquisitely humorous.” If there is any such thing as a “perfect play,” I think it is this one.

Passage 12
Juliet in Love

(Juliet enters on the balcony, above)

ROMEO

But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?

It is the East, and Juliet is the sun
.

Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon
,

Who is already sick and pale with grief

That thou, her maid, art far more fair than she.…

It is my lady. O, it is my love!…

See how she leans her cheek upon her hand
.

O, that I were a glove upon that hand
,

That I might touch that cheek!

JULIET

O, Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?

Deny thy father and refuse thy name
,

Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love
,

And I’ll no longer be a Capulet
.

ROMEO

(aside)

Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?

JULIET

’Tis but thy name that is my enemy
.

Thou art thyself, though not a Montague
.

What’s Montague?…O, be some other name!

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose

By any other word would smell as sweet
.

(
Romeo and Juliet
,
Act II, Scene 2, lines 1ff.)

R
omeo and Juliet
is the most popular play in the entire world, and the passage above is as well known as anything ever written. It epitomizes what we love best about Shakespeare: his language, his characters, and in this case, probably the most enduring plot in our culture. If there was ever a literary passage that was part of the cultural DNA of the Western experience, this is it.

One of the most remarkable things about the play is its tone, which is unlike that of Shakespeare’s other tragedies. The other tragedies are about troubled, towering spirits, enshrouded by self-doubts, ambition, or the uncertainties of old age. Think of
Hamlet
and
Othello, Macbeth
and
King Lear
, all of them anchored by tragic heroes in troubled worlds. Their tragedies seem inevitable from the start.
Romeo and Juliet
is different: The first two acts play like an exuberant romantic comedy, melodramatic to be sure, but youthful and glittering, filled with dazzling flights of language about the breathlessness of being in love.

As your children may know already, the story is about two teenagers who fall desperately in love with each other despite the fact that their families are at odds. Juliet is a Capulet, Romeo a Montague, and your children should remember these names as they memorize the passage above. It is never explained why the Capulets and the Montagues are feuding, but the play opens with out-and-out street warfare between the two clans, and this violent animosity becomes part of the play’s continuing action.

Indeed, the theme of the play might be described as the interaction between love and violence. These two mighty opposites meet head-on in
Romeo and Juliet
, and neither one is the clear winner: Both teenagers are claimed by violent death, and yet we sense that love has triumphed in the end.

The play is a compelling yet lyrical interplay between Venus, the goddess of love, and Mars, the god of war, which has been a recurring theme of Western culture since Homer told the story of a Trojan War touched off by the love affair of Paris and Helen. One of my own favorite examples of this theme is the exquisite painting
Venus and Mars
, by Sandro Botticelli, that hangs in the National Gallery of Art in London. The painting, created in 1483, shows Venus in triumph. But one senses, looking carefully at the picture, that the god of war is not to be trifled with.

Venus and Mars
by Botticelli
(photo credit 20.1)

In
Romeo and Juliet
, Juliet’s parents want her to marry a nobleman named Paris, and they virtually force her into agreement against her will. Romeo, in turn, would be ostracized by his family if it were known that he’s in love with a Capulet. Romeo and Juliet feel alone in a world that doesn’t understand them. Is it any wonder that this play appeals so strongly to our children? What teenager doesn’t believe that he is misunderstood—that his parental figures are standing in the way of what he or she wants most? For my own children,
Romeo and Juliet
was the quintessential example of a story that helped them put their own anxieties and secret longings into perspective.

Romeo

Romeo and Juliet meet at a masked ball held by the Capulets. Romeo has not been invited, of course—he’s a Montague. But he sneaks into the party with some of his friends, and the lightning-bolt moment occurs when he first sees Juliet across the dance floor. The instant he sees her, he exclaims,

O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!

It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night

As rich as a jewel in an Ethiop’s ear—

Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear
.

Here Shakespeare gives us a hint of what’s to come: If Juliet’s beauty is too dear for the Earth, then her beauty—and the love it engenders—can exist only in some other world, a world past ordinary existence, a world like heaven. She, and her love for Romeo, are too pure for the everyday world.

This speech also gives us one of the recurring images of the play: light versus dark, brightness versus night. Romeo and Juliet’s love will flash across the heavens like lightning in the night sky—quickly, with intense brightness, soon to be consumed by darkness. Thus, later in the scene, Juliet warns that their love frightens her because

It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden
,

Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be

Ere one can say “It lightens.”

Remind your children of the lines they heard in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Brief as the lightning in the collied night…/ So quick bright things come to confusion
. (The two plays were written within a year of each other.) After the dance, Romeo lingers. He is so in love with Juliet that he can’t bear to leave the Capulets’ estate, so he eludes his friends and climbs into the garden under Juliet’s balcony. A moment later Juliet appears. Romeo sees her and cries out to himself:

But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?

But soft
means “But hold,” and
yonder
means distant.

But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?

It is the East, and Juliet is the sun
.

Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon
,