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Something about this little family made me feel wistful, and I suddenly wanted to help the young man discover the joy and intricacies of Shakespeare. I hated hearing someone think of it as a chore when it could be so much fun.
I waited until his dad went back into the kitchen before waving my arm to get his attention. The kid came over right away with the coffeepot. “Ready for a refill?”
When I lifted my head, I saw the moment he recognized me. He did a quick blink of surprise before getting his expression under control. “Or can I get you anything else?”
I smiled in thanks for his not treating me any differently. “Actually, I was wondering if I could help you,” I said, keeping my voice low. “I overheard you earlier, which I’d apologize for if you hadn’t been sitting six inches away from me. I happen to love Shakespeare and have studied the man and his works for years.”
The kid’s eyes widened. “Shit,” he muttered. “Sorry about that. I… probably sounded like an idiot.”
I shook my head. “Not at all. It’s not easy to learn something if you don’t gel with the teacher. And, hell, maybe you won’t gel with me either. But I’d like to try. To teach you. If… if that’s something you’d be interested in.”
He looked too surprised to respond, so I held out my hand. “My name is Finn.”
“I know.” He shook it without thinking and then quickly added, “I’m Solo. Well, Solomon, but everyone calls me Solo. Pim and Bill are my dads. They own the diner. You probably already know that, and now I’m making a fool out of myself.”
I grinned at him. “Not at all. But don’t feel obligated to say yes. I know it’s weird that I even offered, but… Shakespeare’s kind of my thing.”
“But you were in that SEAL movie. That was badass,” Solo said.
I loved that he immediately went to that rather than my time on Cast in Clover. It was a testament to his age.
“One of my lines in that film quoted Shakespeare,” I said. “When I’m rallying my team for our final push to defeat the enemy, I say, ‘Once more into the breach, my friends.’ The actual line is a little different, but that’s from Shakespeare’s Henry V. His body of work was so influential and comprehensive, it’s still being used and referenced today. That’s why we study it in school. It’s one of our culture’s secular bibles. Biblical stories like David and Goliath represent concepts in our daily lives regardless of whether or not we’re religious. It’s the same with Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet represent star-crossed lovers, irony, and the toxic effects of long-running feuds. It’s…”
I tried to think of some way of encapsulating why this stuff was important. It was important to know it, not just to pass a class.
“It’s like a shorthand. But it’s also a kind of recorded history. You know why we study the Holocaust?”
He rolled his eyes like a typical teenager. “Yes. So history doesn’t repeat itself. So we know what happened.”
I nodded. “Shakespeare wrote The Merchant of Venice in 1596 about Europe’s Christians and their problematic relationship with Europe’s Jewish population.”
Solo looked surprised. “That prejudice stuff was happening back then?”
“Yes. And look at his play Twelfth Night and its exploration and commentary on gender identity. He wrote that around the year 1600, Solo. Viola says, ‘I am all the daughters of my father’s house, / And all the brothers too.’ She’s dressed as her brother. But here’s the thing. Her role had to be played on the Elizabethan stage by a man.”
Solo nodded. “I know that much.”
“So we have a man playing a woman playing a man. It’s a statement on gender and whether or not it can be defined by simply putting on a costume or playing a role. Underneath, the person is who they are regardless of the costume.”
“So he… he was into LGBT stuff?”
I wondered if this was what it felt like when a fisherman finally felt a tug on his line. His interest was sparked, and I felt like I’d won a prize at a fair. “Heterosexual and homosexual as terms didn’t exist back then. So we have to look at it differently rather than with our modern-day binary language. Did you know he wrote 126 of his sonnets to a young man? But as early as 1640, editors were already changing the pronouns to make them more palatable.”
“You really know a lot about this stuff,” he said.
Understatement of the century. “When I was thirteen, I realized I was gay. For some reason, the stress of it manifested itself as severe stage fright. I was two years into my role on Cast in Clover, and suddenly I was in jeopardy of losing it all. My mom found a performance therapist, and before you ask, yes, there is such a thing in LA. Her name is Roshawna, and she changed my life. But she’s a Shakespeare geek. All of her exercises used his works, and by the end of it I had monologues and soliloquies memorized, and I’d caught the bug.”
