Free Bardisms by Barry Edelstein Page B

marvel at how effective school is when it appears at the very end of these lines, as opposed to its earlier placement in Romeo’s and Hastings’ iterations of the image. As the word thuds out, the stabbing sk sound that starts it scotches any lingering hope we might have had that the shine on the boy’s face was one of happiness. We understand that his arrival at homeroom, long in coming, will be but the beginning of a drudgingly long day of ruler-on-the-knuckles misery and repetitive times-table tedium.
    But even though to Jaques, the only way to get an education is to endure the awfulness of Miss Baxter’s corporal punishment and droning lectures on verb conjugation, Shakespeare acknowledges elsewhere in the canon that there are other pedagogical methods. He knows that snail-slow walks to school are one kind of childhood fresh-air activity, but he’s happy to explore and dramatize many others. One speech in As You Like It may record the Second Age of Man as a time of misery, but plenty of passages in the remaining three dozen Shakespeare plays show childhood’s manifold brighter aspects.
    Below, then, Bardisms on all the Occasions of the Schoolboy’s Life: fun and dull, for kids willing and not, to creep and also to race toward.
    SHAKESPEARE ON CHILDREN

    ’Tis not good that children should know any wickedness.

—M ISTRESS Q UICKLY , The Merry Wives of Windsor , 2.2.115

    Children appear onstage in many Shakespeare plays. In the comedies, their dramatic function is usually to serve as earnest foils for some pompous windbag who needs to be taken down a notch. Falstaff’s page is the prime example. In the tragedies and histories, they are used as symbols of virtuous innocence whose ruination by some tyrannical megalomaniac is the turning point in that character’s fortunes. The many murders committed by Macbeth and Richard III, for instance, don’t seem truly inexcusable until children are their victims; the former’s massacre of the Macduff brood and the latter’s execution of the two little princes at the tower are the events that carry each man across the Rubicon from criminal into evil despot. In the late plays, children are seen as icons of redemption, salvation, and the possibility that the future might just find a way to avoid the mistakes of the past. Perdita in The Winter’s Tale and the baby Elizabeth born at the end of Henry VIII are examples of this dramatic function.
    Whatever its dramaturgical purpose, Shakespeare composed material for and about children that displays all the insight, sensitivity, and eloquence we are accustomed to seeing from him on every subject under the sun.
    THAT’S A WELL-BEHAVED KID

    Falstaff’s relationship with his wiseacre boy companion is one of endless sniping—W. C. Fields’ “Get away from me kid, ya bother me!” routine is widely thought to be patterned after the fat knight, a role Fields longed to essay but, alas, never did. Yet despite his rancor, we know that deep down Sir John loves the kid. He’s not Shakespeare’s only old man to have in his heart a soft spot for a tyke. In the opening scene of The Winter’s Tale , a sage courtier speaks sweetly of Prince Mamillius, King Leontes’ little boy.
It is a gallant child; one that, indeed, physics the subject, makes old hearts fresh. They that went on crutches ere he was born desire yet their life to see him a man.

—C AMILLO , The Winter’s Tale , 1.1.32–35
    In other words:
    He’s an outstanding boy. He’s like good medicine for all the citizens of the country. He makes old people feel young. Folks who were at death’s door before he was born hope to live a bit longer just so that they can see what he’ll be like when he grows up.
     

    How to use it:
This is a perfect bit of Shakespeare for a speech from Uncle Joe on confirmation day or Grandpa Moe on Bar Mitzvah morning. It could also serve as general compliment from anyone for any fine young man of whom they’re proud.

    Simply substituting