The Englishman (13 page)

This is either slightly over their heads, or not interesting enough after Leonardo di Caprio.

“Well, what cultural practices did people engage in that would, over time, develop into theatre?”

“Reality TV.” Logan, his long hair flopping over one eye, evidently aspires to the position of class clown.

“Well, obviously, reality TV,” I agree, poker-faced. “What else?”

They confer amongst themselves, and finally someone tentatively offers me “ritual.”

“Precisely, and the point of all these aboriginal rituals is the survival of the community, isn’t it? We dance, so that the gods may send rain or the return of sunlight. But if you’re making a deal with someone, you have to give something in return—sacrifice.”

“The Legend of the Five Suns,” says a slim boy who had not so far spoken up. I ask him to explain to the others, and he does, very articulately, but also a little diffidently. Note to self: remember to encourage the shy ones.

“What about religion?” asks one of the eager beavers.

“We’ve just been talking about religion,” Jocelyn with the bandana rebukes her.

“No! Proper religion! Christianity.”

“Sure, same thing.” Jocelyn is obviously willing to take control of the discussion, and I step back and watch my first class session crash and burn.

“Christianity isn’t one of those primitive, bloodthirsty rites!”

“It is so! You have a god, or the son of a god, and he is sacrificed to save mankind. It’s the same as in the Aztec legend, and there’re dozens of myths like this, all over the world! In fact—” Jocelyn leans forward, and I feel a shiver of fear “—Christians
eat
their god every Sunday, in little pieces!”

There is a beat, and then a storm of outrage breaks. About half of the students are engaged in heated debate, but the other half are sitting quietly, and two or three actually look distressed. They are freshmen, after all.

“All right, break it up, people! Break it up, come on!”

Some appear to be relieved that I am taking control again; others are reluctant.

“You see how charged with controversy our topic is, and it is brilliant that we have discovered it all by ourselves, without any help from theorists or critics.”

They have settled down again and are listening, and hardly any face shows the glassy lethargy that usually envelops a class two-thirds through.

“Okay.” The muscles in my stomach relax.
Easy, now.
“So, this semester we are going to look at
comic
versions of this tale of sacrifice and survival. The plays we will read together accentuate the aspect of revival, but I think we understand now that even the brightest, fluffiest comedy suppresses its tragic twin, a tale of loss and sacrifice. Over every comedy looms the danger that the sunlight will
not
break through the clouds, or that the rain might
not
come. Can you think of dangers to the survival of a community that have nothing to do with murder or other forms of violence?” This stumps them. “How do tribes and peoples die out?”

“Not enough babies.” This comes from Logan again, who is clearly hoping to throw me.

“And to produce babies, men and women have to have sex.
That
—and the ways in which these—um—negotiations can go wrong—is what early modern comedy is mainly about. Let’s have a look, if you will—” I get up from the desk on which I had been sitting to distribute the first batch of hand-outs “—at how Shakespeare addresses this issue in his first sonnet.”

“I don’t think it’s appropriate to discuss this sort of thing in class.” A girl in a yellow silk blouse is holding the sheet of paper in her hand as if it were a soiled diaper. “In fact, I think it’s very inappropriate.”

“What sort of thing?”

“Sex and all that.”

“We’re not discussing sex,” I say calmly. “But thank you for raising that issue—Marleen, right? I’d like to make this unmistakably clear: we’re discussing a Shakespearean sonnet that happens to be about procreation. Okay, about sex. Our subject is the literary representation of the world, not the world itself. If you want that, stick to Political Science or Biology.”

“I’d like to,” she murmurs. “And my name is Madeline.”

I smile at her, and I think she knows perfectly well what I mean but am not saying: you have three weeks to drop out, baby, and welcome to!

We read the sonnet quatrain by quatrain, but the language is too involved for them to catch its drift right away. Slowly I take them through the nature metaphors.

“You promised us sex!” Logan, for one, is unable to distinguish the tale from the teller or, in this case, the topic from the teacher. My impulse is to step on him, but I am supposed to be gentle with them, so I ignore him and the guffaws he provokes.

“This is a lookist poem,” Jocelyn mutters. “Gorgeous people should have children so their gorgeousness lives on.”

“Aren’t the first sonnets addressed to a young man?” the shy boy, Lucas, cautiously offers. “And isn’t the young man gay?”

Madeline flings herself against the back of her chair in an outbreak of exasperation; there are some audible groans in the room, and not of the good variety.

“No, no, hang on—it’s not as bad as all that!” A sarcastic undertone creeps into my attempts to keep them calm. “You are right—Shakespeare played around with the traditional sonnet by replacing the poet-lover’s unattainable lady with an unattainable boy. But this boy, the implied reader of the poem, isn’t gay; that’s not the point. What
is
the point?”

“He’s a hoarder. He hoards food, the harvest produce, and other people starve.” This comes from one of Logan’s neighbors, a guy with shoulders like an action hero, who is evidently better at poetry than he looks.

“Excellent, now apply this metaphor to human beings.”

“He’s hoarding…no.” He blushes and shakes his head.

“Yes.” I grin at him. “Well, I’ve been suggesting to you that all this boy-meets-girl stuff in literature is, in essence, an enactment of ancient fertility rites. Renaissance England, being an agricultural society, was still closer to these realities than we are today, so we must expect Renaissance literature to be quite outspoken. The poet—in the persona of a fatherly friend or tutor—is encouraging the young man to settle down with a wife and procreate, to make sure that his beauty—Shakespeare might have said ‘genes,’ had he known about them—is passed on to new generations. But this isn’t just a procreation sonnet. Let’s be explicit about it: what is this ‘self-substantial fuel’ the young man is wasting?”

Jocelyn’s eyes grow wide with comprehension, and of course she is not slow to name the taboo.

“Are you saying it’s—he’s talking about—
cum?”

“Let’s call it ‘semen,’ shall we? An Elizabethan word for it is ‘spirit.’ Yes, it’s an anti-masturbation sonnet. Hey!” The noise level has spiked. “Don’t blame me, blame Shakespeare!”

The noise is stifled by a movement that darkens the open door, first noticed by those in the last rows, then also by those who were watching my face.

“Oh—hey there, Professor Cleveland.”

I’m so high on adrenaline and so pleased to see him that I lock my eyes with his and smile at him in complete innocence. First I think the shock that runs through me is one of embarrassment, but it isn’t; it is an immediate, carnal thrill at the sight of that tall figure in dark jeans and shirt sleeves. “You’ll be delighted to hear, sir, that we are discussing questions of genre!”

The students cannot know that this is a jab meant to remind him of our first encounter, but the obvious disingenuousness of my assertion sets them off into a roar of laughter.

His eyebrows shoot halfway up his forehead, and I can see that he is struggling to keep a straight face.

“As you were.” A curt nod, and he is off.

One down, one to go. The challenges of a class full of English Lit graduates are very different from those of a general education class.

Surprise ’em. Stun ’em.

I hadn’t planned to do that, but when I walk into the room—by now it’s four o’clock in the afternoon, which seems to be a low point in almost everyone’s circadian rhythm—I am suddenly incredibly tired. High on adrenaline all day, and now I crash. I slump into the chair behind the desk, blow air like an exhausted whale, and serenely scan the faces that are already registering confusion about my behavior. Sixteen names are on my list, and I count fifteen, audibly but under my breath, then sigh again.

“The first week of the semester is murder, don’t you find?
Man
…I’m pooped.”

They are very, very quiet.

“What say we watch something, hmm? I mean, you must have had a long day, too, and I think we all deserve some R&R…” I rummage in my bag and produce a DVD that I insert into the player, switch on the projector and, while I’m waiting till it’s ready, I stretch out my legs under the desk, cross my ankles, and stifle a yawn. Good thing that at orientation they showed us how to work the classroom equipment.

“Right, here’s the deal,” I inform them. “I get to choose the video, and you get to watch it.” I’m riding the wave of my impromptu performance, not sure how long it will carry me. “Are you okay with basketball? I hear Ardrossan ain’t bad at basketball.”

Tessa Shephard in the second row is watching me with an expression of fascinated horror, Selena O’Neal next to her has a pained half-smile on her face, others have started to whisper and giggle. I ignore their consternation and languidly adjust the volume level as moving images of a gym are projected onto the wall.

“Hey! That’s Marv Albert!” one of the boys hisses.

“Who?”

“My dad says he was, like, the best basketball commentator ever!”

I settle in my chair and watch Marv announce, “Connie Hawkins, one-time Harlem Globetrotter, one of the most exciting players in the NBA, as a member of the Atlanta Hawks. And The Hawk will be opposed by Paul Simon.”

As the camera cuts from six foot eight inch Hawkins to five foot two inch Simon, some of the students are beginning to laugh.

“It’s
Saturday Night Live
!” someone whispers triumphantly.

“It’s what? Who’s the short guy?”

“Shhhh!”

Albert is asking Paul Simon about his uniform number, “decimal point zero two,” and Simon explains, perfectly deadpan, that this had been his number since junior high school, and since it wasn’t a number used by Hawkins, it would avoid confusion between the two of them. This has the students laugh out loud, and they relax into enjoying the sketch, reassured that their professor—although a little peculiar—isn’t certifiably mad.

“So.” I smile when I switch off the video machine. “What does all this have to do with parody and satire?”

The session goes like a dream. My unconventional opening gambit has jolted them into attention; they are lively and intelligent, and we have fun together.

Seems I owe Cleveland one.

On Thursday afternoon, as the two student journalists who interviewed me for the next issue of
The Folly Chronicle
have taken the inevitable photo of me and are just winding up, Tim sticks his head through my half-open office door.