Hamlet
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
It was that time of year again.
Shakespeare!
On this year’s poetic plate: Hamlet.
Meanwhile, Joe was in Colorado climbing Pike’s Peak.
Over at the house that morning, a great storm threatened the dark green landscape.
As rain and gray came and went, but mostly the gray stayed, Francis tossed an ice cream sandwich onto the table for Collette.
“So how’d I do on that test?” he asked.
Collette just smirked. “Are you really going to leave the carnage of your ice cream sandwich wrapper on the table?” she asked.
“It’s a warning to other ice cream sandwiches,” he said.
In the afternoon, Carrie was working on wrapping up her project concerning the magnetic fields of the planets.
Francis and Creole were busy at the neighbor’s and brought back two fresh redbuds to plant in the backyard.
Linnea returned from the neighbor’s with shoots of fresh asparagus, which were more like trees.
And Collette and Puck rode with Francis to Home Depot to purchase more apparatus for whatever his latest project was, exactly…
Come evening, Puck was snuggled down for the night in Carrie’s room, just as Carrie finished packing up the picnic tote of her chocolate peanut butter bars, bags of big red cherries and fat strawberries, and goat cheese mixed with honey, and crackers, and sparkling pear juice and wine.
Everything was ready on the Shakespeare green. OLeif and Rose, arrived at six o’clock from work, had already saved a decent-sized patch of lawn just at the edge of the ‘Blankets Only’ section. They set up the collapsable chairs and were shortly later joined by Kitts, Relevance, Wally, Lolli, and Gloria. Not long later, the production was started after an introduction by Channel 4’s anchorman and anchorwoman, Larry Conners and Vickie Newton, respectively.
It really was a good show. ‘Hamlet’ was native from St. Louis and his voice was honest Shakespearean and pleasant to hear. The production was solid. And during intermission, Collette was pumped for the second half.
During the second half, the sky, rolled over in bronzen clouds, flickered. Here and there. Just bits. And the rain flecked during Ophelia’s mad ravings. But then… just as the last best parts of the play were to begin, an announcement erupted over the PA, drowning out Hamlet’s speech. The rain had arrived, and the play had to be held.
Hamlet left the stage waving to an enthusiastic crowd of shouts and applause and whistles. They lingered only momentarily. The orange-white-blue of the stage and the green lights flooded the green as the crowd regretfully packed up chairs and picnic hampers. Because, as OLeif pulled up the radar on his iPhone, it was clear that big things were on the way.
“Oh, that’s bad,” said Wally quickly. “That looks really bad.”
Those Boy Scouts. Always jittery about the weather.
So with quick hugs all around from Relevance, who was leaving back to Texas the following day, they split ways. And just in time, really. OLeif dropped off Mom and the girls at the Fit just before the heavens heaved open with the most tremendous displays of lightening and torrentials of rain that Collette had seen in a very long time. It was stunningly beautiful.
And some time towards midnight, the rain had dissipated to a quiet nothing.
There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoary leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them:
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.
~ Hamlet, Act IV, Scene VII