Tombstone.
This morning I went to school and talked with Jeff about the bird and how her name was Pretty Bird, though Jeff called her Polly. Sabi and Soria came in too and we wondered who the teacher was gonna be.
“I could always teach bout Sherlock again. I finished another story this week of his. It was real interestin’.”
“Hmm… Well I sure hope she comes,” Jeff said.
“Its been a while since I comed to school. My aunt don’t wants me learning silly stuffs like clothes,” Sabi said.
“Why not?” Jeff asked.
“I like learnin’ bout history,” I said.
“Oooh yeah history is fun,” Jeff agreed.
“It why we wear our clothes today.”
“Like the war and stuff!”
“Uh huh!”
“And General Lee,” Jeff smiled.
“And Wyatt Earp and um… That other guy. Jesse James.”
“Yeah but thats why town folks wears em. She tolds me I gotta learn about the ways our our people, not tha ways of the towns folks,” Sabi said.
“Mommy said that he was a guy who robbed trains and the Pinkerton’s caught him.”
“Ok Miss Traci saids go to the Birdcage. Let’s go, she is there,” Jeff announced.
We ran over to the Birdcage and chased each other and I sat beside Jeff in the front of the theater. There was a picture on stage and Miss Traci said that we could come to the front. I leaned over at Jeff and asked, “Ain’t that Shakespeare?”
“Well it certainly is mister Shakespeare,” Miss Traci nodded.
“I was right!!!”
“Why did he shake his spear?” Sabi asked and we all giggled.
“Alright then. I think I might be ready to begin. Did everyone have a good Halloween?”
“I got lots of candy!” I exclaimed.
“Yes ma’am,” Jeff nodded.
“We didn’t have halloweens in our village,” Little Dove said. “We is preparing for tha winter.”
“Halloween must have been one of mister Shakespeare’s favorite holidays,” Miss Traci said. “But we’ll get to that.”
“Why was it his, ma’am?” Jeff asked. “Did he dress up and stuff?”
“Now….” Miss Traci smiled. “We have been studying forms of art for several weeks… and I am shifting a little bit but what I’m gonna talk about is an art medium and that is the dramatic arts, which is all about the stage, and plays. And also opera where they sing everything. But it is just another kind of play with music but very beautiful. Anyways… Plays are of course where actors dress up and learn their lines we hope and their stage directions and they act out their parts and they tell a story.”
“Like Sherlock!” I called out and put a hand over my mouth.
“Indeed,” she nodded. “In the dramatic arts the audience watches. And the actors tell the story by acting it out. And what happens is called ‘suspension of disbelief’, which means after just a little while. If the actors are good and the stage is set good, the audience pretty much just thinks they are seein’ the real thing in front of them. Now the story can be a mystery like the mystery of the dead cowboy y’all wrote about in the Bee.”
I grinned and nudged Jeff then and whispered, “I wanna write a story for you sometime, Jeff. For the paper.”
“Yeah so many folks wrote about that and some was skerry,” Jeff smiled and whispered back to me, “Okay Natalie.”
“I wrote a poem about it but there was some good stories. Anyways… The play can also be a comedy which makes the audience laugh and sometimes the actors too.”
Sabi made kissy noises at me and Jeff and I frowned hearing her giggling.
“Or a tragedy, which is where somethin bad happens,” Miss Traci went on. “Or a musical where people sing…”
“Like Macbeth?” I asked. “Or um… Romeo and Juliette? When they fall in love and their families don’t like ’em bein’ together and…”
“Hang on you are goin ahead of me. Do ya wanna teach?” Miss Traci looked at me and smiled.
“Oh, sorry Ma’am,” I looked down.
“Just kidding yer doin good and I’m glad you like it. Anyways… We are gonna talk a bit about what makes a play and a little about the stage directions. Some of the things we shoulda done better. Which means I shoulda done better, when we did the Christmas Pageant last year. So… someone who writes plays is an artist. And is called….”
I raised my hand and Miss Traci asked, “Yes?”
“But… that’s hard to write a play I bet,” Jeff said.
“Are we gonna do a Christmas play again this year?” I asked. “I wasn’t here last year.”
“Well it is,” Miss Traci nodded to Jeff. “You know I’m not sure. No one asked me yet.”
“We should!” I exclaimed.
“We’ll see. Anyways… The person who writes plays is called a playwright. Play… wright…”
“Scuse me teacher,” Sabi said and walked out then.
“Ok back on track…” Miss Traci said, “So… one of the worlds greatest playwrights. Probably the best EVER is a man called William Shakespeare. And here is a drawing of mister Shakespeare.”
“Wow that’s pretty close to the picture on the stage! Did you draw that Miss Traci?” I asked.
“He has funny hair,” Jeff commented.
“No I just copied it.”
“You should grow your hair out to be curly like that Jeff,” I giggled.
“No way.”
“Most people agree that William Shakespeare was the finest English writer ever. He was born in 1564 in a town called Stratford-Upon-Avon, which was a town pretty much in the middle of England along the River Avon. His parents were well off so he grew up in comfort in this house here. They was rich and he went to a school nearby that taught in Latin, and he learned the classics. Aren’t y’all glad we don’t teach in Latin?” she asked and we nodded enthusiastic. “Well I am too to be honest.”
“Spanish is hard enough,” I muttered.
“So when he was eighteen he up and married an older lady named Anne Hathaway. And they had their first child pretty quick right after that.”
“How much older?? An older lady?”
“She was in her twenties. Not ancient.”
“Wow. Mommy’s in her thirties,” I said. “That what she said.”
“She was like his momma!” Jeff commented.
“He and Anne had twins a couple years later, a girl and a boy but the boy died,” Miss Traci said.
“Wow that sad. That um... tradegy,” I said. I thought about my own parents and shook my head, glad for the ones I had now.
“Well you have it a lot better off than kids in those days. Yes. Not much is known about what he did until he kind of popped up in the London Theater scene in the 1580’s. So he would been what….?”
“Um…. When was he born again?” I counted on my fingers. “Twenty-six?”
“About twenty or so. 1564,” Miss Traci said. “So about 20 when he kind of appeared in the London Theater.”
“That’s real old,” Jeff said. “He musta had a beard and stuff.”
“He became part of a theater company called the Lord Chamberlain’s Men and he ended up owning it. And this company produced most of his plays on the stage and he both acted, directed, and produced his plays in a theater, which the company built in 1599. Called the Globe Theater. Here is a drawing of what it looked like from inside,” she said and flipped the sheet over on her board. “Now there was some jealousy from the rich theater people because he was not university educated, like other famous playwrights of the day such as Christopher Marlowe. But the quality of his plays and the popularity of them made all the difference. He was a very very popular guy.”
“Well he was a good writer!” I exclaimed.
“Like them famous folks in the big moving pictures,” Jeff said.
“He made a LOT of money and he ended up building the biggest house back in Stratford and ended up dying at the age of 52 in 1616. He wrote many plays which are divided up into kind of four main groups.”
“But why come he died?” Jeff asked.
He died of consumption, which is like a bad cough. Of influenza.”
“Didn’t know you could die from a cough,” I frowned.
“S here are the plays he wrote… Well back then you sure could,” she said to me and then went on. “And here are his histories. He liked writing about Kings of England and the wars they fought and all the squabbling that went on in the Court. And some of his best characters come from them. My favorite is a guy named Falstaff. Anyways… He also wrote the tragedies which might be his best stuff. Some very scary plays very exciting and complicated with ghosts and murders, poison, mean women… things like that. And he wrote Sonnets.”
“What’s that?” Jeff and I both asked.
“In our classes we have studied about different kinds of poetry. And a Sonnet is one form of poetry.”
“Oooh,” Jeff and I said.
“Do you remember when we studied the Haiku poem from Japan?” Miss Traci asked. “And the Raven from Edgar Allen Poe?”
“I not know. I not ‘member that,” Jeff said. “Yes, I remember the Poe guy.”
“Well… each kind of poetry has its own rules. Like Haikus have seven, then five, then seven syllables.”
I shuddered my hand and remembered the Raven poem. “I remember when I first came here. There was a raven And it reminded me of when mommy.... or almost mommy…” I said and looked down.
“Yes? Go ahead,” Miss Traci smiled.
“Well…” I said. “My parents, my original ones... They died when I was little but.. Then I was gonna get adopted by Miss Ashley And then she got killed and ravens came on top of her. And well.. When I saw the raven when I came here.. I got scareed. Cause I remembered in the poem. Whenever the raven came someone died. But Miss Pet told me about how in Elijah, the ravens came and brought him food in the Bible. So not all ravens bad.”
“Well… That was the point of Poe’s poem actually,” Miss Traci nodded. “But they have that reputation. Now in sonnets… they are written in something called iambic pentameter which is a huge word which means ten syllables. With accents on each other, every other. In four four line parts called a quatrain. Then a two line ending so the rhyming goes: abab, cdcd, efef, gg. Let me show you…” She turned the page and said, “This is sonnet 130. It is where a man is talking about his love in a very strange and kind of funny way. So here are the lines in the first couplet…”
“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.”
“So first the rhyming sun with dun, red with head, abab,” she smiled. “And the rhythm is… my MISTRESS’s eyes ARE nothing LIKE the SUN. Kind of like that. Anyway… The second quatrain has the next rhyming.”
“Huh.. This confusing,” I muttered.
“I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.”
“White with delight. Cheeks with reeks,” Miss Traci said.
“Mouse and house,” Jeff said.
“Bat and cat,” I added.
“‘Ere eyes are nothing like the sun, which means they are dark or blank, maybe she is mean, if hairs are wires then wires grow on her head, but no roses are in her cheeks, and her breath stinks,’” Miss Traci giggled as she read.
“So she not happy,” I blinked.
“”Well he doesn’t seem all that happy with her.”
“Rosy cheeks mean happy.”
“He is telling how things are wrong with her.”
“That not very nice.”
“Okay the next quatrain then. ‘I love to hear her speak, yet well I know, That music hath a far more pleasing sound; I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground’. Her voice is awful but notice the rhyming. Know with go and sound with ground. And then the couplet…”
“She must be big big cause she treads the ground,” Jeff said.
“With big shoes,” I nodded.
“‘Where he turns the whole sonnet on its head; And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare; I think my love as rare as any,’” Miss Traci read the poem.
“He still believes her. But it’s weird,” I said. “Cause she not pretty or nice right?”
“He loves her, even if she isn’t… Yes! So uhm… it is actually humorous. But it shows skill, and shows how a Sonnet is put together.”
“He loves her even if she is ugly,” Jeff said and I nodded to him.
“It is actually humorous but it shows his skill,” Miss Traci said. “Now back to plays, which was the meat of Shaksepeare. Plays are stories acted out on the stage normally and they are divided into Acts. Normally three. Each Act has a common theme or setting and it is divided into scenes. Each scene brings the story out a bit at a time.”
“We should write a play for Christmas!” I poked Jeff.
“Well I wrote one last year,” Miss Traci said. “It was pretty hard too so in the play are the characters. Also called the dramatis personae in Latin and it generally describes the character and depends on the playwright. How much he tells you. In the pageant I said that Mary was the young wife of Joseph, obviously pregnant, dressed in robes typical of the period. Beyond that it is up to the director. But I wanted her to have a big belly… but they had baby Jesus. Now the people that put a play together are first the Producer, the one with the money. He pays everyone and hires the actors and director and so forth. So Shakespeare made a lot of his money as Producer of the plays he both wrote and acted in. Then the important guy is the director.”
“What's he do?” Jeff asked.
“He interprets the play by providig instructions to the actors on how to say their lines and interpret the story.”
“Wow…” I grinned.
“Where to stand, what to wear, how to say the lines, expressions, everything. Then the Stage Director. He designs and builds the sets.”
“But can only folk be both,” Jeff said. “Producer and director.”
“Which can be very elaborate or very simple, leaving the audience to kind of fill in the missing parts,” Miss Traci said. “Yes, you can. Shakespeare was often the producer and director.”
“Then they will be even more rich!”
“And the writer?” I blinked. “Wow.”
“The Stage Manager supervises the stage during the play. Handling the curtain, and the props, and the sets, and the stage hands and so forth behind the curtain. So when the curtain goes up the audience goes ‘ahhhhhh’, and the actor gets in the costume… follow the director’s instructions and reads their lines interpreting the emotions of the part. The set is where the action happens. It is props and items on stage and maybe something that looks like a room, or a field, or whatever. Lighting can be part of it. It is up to the stage manager to build the set so the audience can figure out where and what is going on. It is an amazing art. So here is an example of stage directions that might be in the play itself. And then the stage manager and set director figures it all out. Now part of directing is telling the actors where to be on the stage. And I could have done better with this last year, but it is from the curtain back. So stage right is the right side as you look at the audience. Stage left the other side. Downstage is toward the audience, and upstage is back to the rear, and so forth.”
“So upstage mean in the back,” Jeff clarified.
“Yes yer right. Now let me show you something,” she said and slid the board out of the way to reveal a cemetery she’d set up.
“Wooo look. Dead folk!” Jeff blinked. I blinked and reached over to take Jeff’s hand.
“Come up on stage,” Miss Traci invited.
“Bad things happen in graveyards,” I said, staying put.
“So what kind of play do you think this is from? Comedy, history, or tragedy?”
“Um it is from uhm halloween time?” Jeff asked, getting up on the stage.
I watched from my seat and pulled my knees up under my chin as I listened to Miss Traci. “It is from a play called Hamlet. Now in a famous scene… Hamlet is in a graveyard. So this is obviously a set of a graveyard. And the audience will complete what they don’t see.”
“Well what don’t they see?” Jeff asked.
“Hamlet is a play about a prince of Denmark whose mother kills off his dad the King and there is a lot of murder and treachery and they are trying to steal the throne from Hamlet. So in this scene… There is a fresh grave with bones in it.”
“Told you,” I muttered as Jeff jumped off the stage.
“Does someone get stabbed or blasted?” Jeff asked.
“And Hamlet kneels in front of a skull. And he says, ‘That skull had a tongue in it once. And could sing as if it were Cain’s jaw-bone! That did the first murder! Might it not be a politician?” Miss Traci asked and put the skull down.
“Naw, they not sing,” Jeff said.
Miss Traci picked up another skull and asked, “Or could it be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his tricks? Where be his money? But know he is knocked about with a dirty shovel. Perhaps a great buyer of land. But no in this box. The inheritor himself has no more…”
“But it not matter now he is dead so he not got anything,” Jeff said.
“Alas, poor Yorick!” Miss Traci picked up another skull. “I knew him well….”
I stood shakily then and walked out of the theatre, the brightness hitting me. I rode over to the fort, still shaken by seeing the graveyard and the skulls on stage. Mr. Wedge greeted me and I felt better seeing the horses and the soldiers.
Black Diamond.
We rode to Bisbee and then to Diamond and I watched the soldiers, trying to forget about school. I saw a couple Natives riding through Bisbee and told Mr. Wedge about it. I told him it was the chief and someone but I didn’t know their names. I rode to the other side of the street and waited. I sat down and pulled out a notebook and wrote an article for the Bree about today and then when they were ready to go, I got on my horse and rode along with them. When I got to Tombstone, I slipped my article under the door of the orphanage, hoping Jeff would find it.
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