Have you ever wondered what English teachers do when they're stuck on hall monitor duty? Sure, you have. Admit it.We play with magnetic Bards; that's what we do.
My co-worker went to the Currier Museum last week, as did I, and she also saw Shakespeare's First Folio, but, unlike cheapo me, she actually spent money at the museum shop. She bought a play set of magnetic Shakespeare figures, something along the lines of Colorforms from our younger days.
As we are sitting in the atrium area at a round table, we spread the play-set across the tabletop and start dressing up our various Will figurines. The high ceiling and wide-open space carry our laughter, and a couple of people wander over to see what we are doing. One even joins in.
We dress up Will in street clothes, jester clothes, Elizabethan ruff. We add hats, glasses, masks, hoods, and shoes. There is an extra Shakespeare head (black and white sketched), Yorick (skull), and Bottom (head of an ass). I add a cap and a feather to Bottom and create my own Shakespearean version of Senor Ed the Ass-Hat. We put bloody knives into Will's legs and chalices of mead in his hands. We add the ass head, the arrow through the cranium, a wine glass, and we dub him Steve Dean Martin-Bottom.Oh, sure. We are supposed to be monitoring the halls, which we are, but we're having some creative fun while we do it. Worse case, we end up statistics in some horrible news story. If that happens, remember us fondly as the Shakespeare Colorform Jokers. Feel free to steal these lines:
"That skull had a tongue in it and could sing once ... This same skull, sir, was Yorick's skull, the king's jester ... Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy."
