Let’s talk about the time in eighth grade I had to rewrite Midsummer Night’s Dream.
I spent eighth grade in a Catholic school in the Midwest (thanks, Mom and Dad!). Of the six schools I attended between first grade and high school, this was by far the worst. The entire graduating class was twenty-two kids, total, and I was the one of the few who didn’t come from Serious Money. I was also the one who protested the absence of evolution in our science class and spent 4th period in the principal’s office all year reading The Origin of Species as a protest. Good times, is what I’m saying.
Every year the eighth-grade class put on a play. The year I was there, the play was A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
There are twenty-two named characters in the play, and there were eighteen kids in my class. Some of the fairies could get smushed together, so it would be no problem to give everyone a part without the need to recruit – God forbid – from the seventh grade.
However, this was the sort of school where the parents paid a lot of money for the privilege of an education that didn’t involve evolution, and nobody wanted to piss off the patrons by relegating their darlings to secondary parts.
I was recruited to “add in a little” so that people’s parts were more equitable. They had chopped out anything vaguely sexual – I mean, Catholic middle school? – which took care of quite a bit of the length of the thing. (They did, of course, keep in Helena’s little “I am your spaniel” speech – love, honor, and obey, Catholic ladies!) It was just up to me to make sure everyone had at least ten lines. Everyone.
Even at the time it struck me as more than a little sacrilegious to rewrite Shakespeare to please a handful of old-money parents, but I wasn’t entirely stupid and realized I had been handed a golden opportunity.
“I’ll only work on it if I can get out of gym,” I said.
“Fine.”
Underage Writers Guild Midwest represent!
So, how well did a 13-year-old manage additions to the work of one of the greatest playwrights who ever lived?
Dude, I was 13, how well do you think I did?
Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustardseed had an entire subplot about their roles in the forest and how they used the flower petals to make dresses for themselves and assorted other Pretty Pretty Princess nightmares. They also sighed over the mortal lovers and moped that they were lonely without Oberon’s fairies for company. Somehow, no one recognized that this was about pre-fairital sex, and it stayed in.
I added some more to the Mechanicals, but I hated them then and I hate them now, and the only thing I remember is that I used every possible rhyme for “fool”, including “Get thee to a school.” (Look, this hurts me more than it hurts you, okay? No one is more ashamed than I am. Except possibly Jesus.)
I was Hippolyta; shockingly, Hippolyta did not get any extra lines. No one noticed.
Philostrate was the best. In trying to give him more air time, I accidentally wrote some homoerotic moments with Theseus, because you can rhyme “my goodly/tender lord” with “sword”, “toward”, “award”, and “chord”. That’s at LEAST four couplets. JACKPOT. He was also a total control freak; he had about four lines emphasizing the importance of sending swift and loyal messengers, because what the hell else is a Philostrate supposed to do? It was Ye Olde Fedexxe up in there. (“I shall your letter send, my lord, most fleet – A messenger of golden-wingéd feet!”)
(WHAT. I WAS THIRTEEN.)
I wish I could say there was some hilarious disaster, but the play went off like it was supposed to, and watching backstage as the parents laughed and clapped and did not even notice that some nasty thirteen-year-old had put in couplets about getting thee to school, I realized something very important: People are morons. The end!
No, seriously, that was what I told the principal when he asked what I had learned from the experience.
I went to public school the next year.
In another state.
(Thanks, Mom and Dad!)
