Shakespeare's Audience

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Shakespeare’s audience lived in what was in many respects a more intellectually tidied-up world than ours. Practically nobody believed, or had even heard of the notion, that the earth was a planet revolving around the sun: the earth was the center of the whole cosmos, and nature was intimately related to man. Friar Laurence in Romeo and Juliet has a profound knowledge of herbs … The assumption is that every plant growing out of the ground must have some connection with the human condition, good or bad. Similarly with the stars: they’re not there just to look decorative, but to “influence” (this word was originally a technical term in astrology) the human make-up. Comets and similar phenomena are signs of human social and political turmoil: “Disasters in the sun,” as Horatio says in Hamlet, reminding us that disaster is another word we got from astrology.

-- Northrop Frye, “On Shakespeare”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

One sometimes forgets just how long ago Shakespeare was.

Weather

Shit, I knew that was going to happen ...

It didn't rain overnight like it was supposed to, so that I didn't need to keep the cats inside. This morning, though, I've been noticing that it looks like it is going to drop soon. Eventually, I realize that I should get the paper and take out the trash before it begins t pour. I should have thought of it sooner, but I think I was groggy, since I got up at five, with Pop getting up and making such a noisy racket in the kitchen, suffering a lot of irregular hours himself. Now, just as I am rushing to get my socks on to go out, it starts raining. Of course!

Police

That was weird, very weird ... and more than a little frightening.

It's late in the afternoon, or early in the evening, about five o'clock, heavily overcast and breezy, and I was mowing the yard trying to beat any storm that might be coming. I was on the front yard, having finished the back already. I was off on the long, thin side of the house running along Sweet Tooth Street, so that almost all of the front area of the house was out of view. In that mere minute of mowing, at least four police jeeps had pulled in front of our house, as the scene gradually came into my view as I brought the mower back down that path. I continued mowing as though everything were still normal, even as my insides shook in cold fear, as my worst nightmares seemed to be unfolding in front of me.

As it so happens, Jack and Ronny were here too, out front with Pop. They wanted to borrow some lawn equipment. What timing! About a half-dozen cops were talking to them. I just continued mowing, as though this could not be anything serious, as though the cops might just be asking for directions. What, me worry? About what? When I was finished with that patch of grass, I even played with the idea of asking the cops if they would move from that swath of grass next to the driveway, so that I could finish mowing. It was probably smart not to do that. Instead, I parked the mower next to the house, and went inside. Nobody was stopping me. Actually it was kind of strange. The cops just ignored me, throwing me an occasional glance, as though I were a stray cat that just happened to be strolling through the area. It felt a though I were walking through one of Kafka's dreams.

When I walked into the house, I could hear Pop arguing with the cops in his bedroom. They wanted his cellphone. It is about child-pornography. Pop told me later in the evening that a shop girl at Sprint filed a complaint, alleging that she saw kiddie porn on his phone when she was working on it. I hurried anxiously to the laptop in the big room. Even if I did not have anything illegal going on, I preferred not to have my chikan and rape-porn so open to view. I shut off the laptop and went back outside.

I was surprised to see how much Jack was talking to the cops, since he has no business with them. He seems to have grown very confident, even if he remains fairly simple-minded - a bar-room kind of ego. One big question on my mind was whether that was Ronny with him. He looked so different. He looks a lot more Mexicany, despite the white skin. I seriously doubted that it was him, but Pop later confirmed that it was indeed Ronny. He apparently lost a lot of his Anglo-like qualities in adolescence, and although he is still a good-looking laddie, he no longer possesses the over-powering handsomeness of a movie star. He really does look a lot more like Jack's natural son. It also looks to me as though he lost a lot of his potential IQ, appearing more cringing in a canine sort of way and at a loss before the strangeness of the world, resembling Jack that much more closely. Moreover, I am impressed by how close they are in their relationship as father and son. I would have thought that they might have become estranged by now, but Jack is apparently a much better father than I would have imagined. But shouldn't Ronny be going to college now, perhaps to the University of Texas at Austin? Isn't he 18? Pop hasn't said anything, and I have yet to ask, as the question feels too sensitive.

I was getting tired of standing around out front, feeling self-conscious with all these cops about, and I started to go back inside. This time, however, a latina cop addressed me and told me to wait until the situation is cleared. I didn't argue. One of the latino cops took the opportunity to get my "details", my name, birthday, and phone number. "No, I don't have a cellphone."

Pop and the cops come out, and he is protesting that they should look at the phone now, rather than taking it with them, fearing that they might switch phones or plant evidence. They tell him that they do not have the skill to look through the phone for evidence, that it is a job for "forensics". The technical staff will be able to look for deleted photographs, for instance. How long will this take? The cop says that it could take a couple of days, or a couple of months, he shrugs. One cannot really say. It's the government. One does not badger King Bureaucracy.

I feel oddly calm. No one was carted away in cuffs. Life resumes its normal course. I am happy to accept Pop's story that this is about an overzealous shop girl, that the only risque picture he has on his phone is of his grandmotherly girlfriend, Kay. It is kind of a shaky story, if you think about it, though. How silly would that shop girl have to be to get so excited about one semi-nude picture, even if there is a little ambiguity in what is shown, if one does not see that old woman's face in the picture? And Pop does not know how to use all this new technology, including his Internet-enabled cellphone. He does not know what he is doing; he might have stumbled upon something that got him gawking and unwittingly downloaded away, inadvertently storing away all that contraband in some folder that he doesn't even know to exist. Nevertheless, until the sky falls on our heads and ends the world, I am too happy to go on as if nothing is happening, with just a few baby butterflies fluttering around in my stomach.