subtitled... why i love shakespeare and drink hot tea
spent my junior year abroad (and the rest of my college years, i was just a regular girl... ba ding ching, insert drum sound here....) anyway while i was in stratford, UK being all shakepearean and theatrical (which is pretty much how i still spend my days), i learned two important lessons....
here is what i learned from the ending of “taming of the shrew” ...
while we were discussing the play “the taming of the shrew”, the professor from stratford, uk was explaining how the final speech by katherine (the shrew that is “tamed”) can end the play on a depressing note (she is beaten down and bested by her husband) or a triumphant note (it is all a joke and she has triumphed and made a great marriage). the theme of the whole play can be changed by how the lines are read.
i remember writing in my notebook in nice swirly letters “her attitude can determine if it is tragedy or triumph”. and then i looked at what i had written and thought that i certainly was a genius and would be touring the country soon with speaking engagements galore based on my incredible insight at 20 years of age. ok, so i was a bit overdramatic even at that age...
but nevertheless, it is something that has influenced my life. no matter the hand i am dealt (the lines of the play that are given to me), i CHOOSE the way that i say them (linked to my dr. blazer story on that one, didn’t i? you are reconsidering the genius part, aren’t you?). everyone can leave the theater of LEA depressed or in a great mood. i like the latter of the endings. i also wished everyone paid $$$$ to enter the theater of LEA to hear my lecture on “shakespeare changed my life”, but that is not happening. but some people are reading my blog, so that has to count for something...
and then there was the little old spinster lady who ran the boarding house where i was living. you see, SHOCK TO YOU ALL COMING AHEAD... even though technically i was still kind of sort of dating adam, i was kind of sort of seeing an actor guy in stratford. he was very exciting, wrote sonnets to me, and was a member of the royal shakespeare company, so let’s just say that i was getting some GREAT ideas for all of my papers.
i remember sitting down with the old spinster lady who ran the boarding house and having a cuppa tea one afternoon (she didn’t sit and talk to us a lot so it was a bit awkward) and she politely asked about my current suitor (the boisterous actor). i explained that he was fun and exciting but that i kind of sort of had a boyfriend back home. i began to describe hard working adam who was working in atlanta in a start up company and trying to make ends meet, some of the sweet things he had mailed me (like secret deodorant since they didn’t sell it in the uk.) and other small things about him... she then began to talk about the difference between hot tea and spirits (alcoholic beverages). i thought she might have had a bit too much of each beverage since this talk was making no sense. i just nodded a lot.
i really thought she was a bit off her rocker until later that night as i was just about to fall asleep when in hit me like a ton of bricks. i think that she had been comparing my two suitors to those beverages. she talked about how one made you feel so unlike yourself and then left you with a hangover and regrets and how the other just let you put your feet up for a few minutes left you feeling warm and satisfied and steeled your nerves for the rest of your day.
i am not sure why she was a spinster lady, but i do know there were rumors of her having a “friendship” years ago with an actor who was already married. from the tone of that talk, i think she may have had a taste of the spirits at one time and all she really wanted was a cup of hot tea to sustain her every day.
so even when my sonnet writer asked me to write him and to call and to come back... i didn’t. i came back to the states and i married a man who is a steady and warm as a cup of tea at breakfast and at 4 p.m. (which are the times in which i have a cuppa tea daily). i have never been a big imbiber of the alcoholic beverages and she was absolutely correct in her analogies for that choice at that time of my life. even without her little lecture, i don’t think that i would ever have stayed with the actor. but remembering her voice when she held up that cup of tea and wistfully talked to me has reassured me many times that tea is a choice that we can make for a lifetime....
