My first tattoo came from Harold Bloom, really. If I could have been branded with the same
design which I had tattooed, I would have been.
W.S. with a quill
behind the letters and a crescent moon hovering above the initials.
William Shakespeare.
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| Sorry about the quality, this is on my right shoulder blade and really hard to photograph |
I had to decide what I could live with for the rest of my
life. I had already accepted that I
would be getting a tattoo – that I wanted to begin the ancient tradition of
recording my life story on my skin. I
had to decide what that all important first mark would be.
As soon as I had decided, there could only be one answer to
that question, then.
W.S.
I saw myself as a High Priestess of Bardolatry (the worship
of Shakespeare…a word coined by Harold Bloom in his book Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human) – hence the crescent moon
above the initials. I worshipped his
work as if they were sacred texts and held the answers to all of the secrets of
the universe…because they did…still do.
For me, Shakespeare was my portal into real poetry. I had been exposed to nursery rhymes and
trite pieces from my mother’s poetry books – beyond the classics in her high
school English Lit text to which I had little access as a child, and little
understanding until I, too was in high school.
Those pages entombed Keats and Milton and Blake. They made no sense to me, yet. I had no way into them.
But Shakespeare was magic.
Mrs. Toal’s grade 10 English class…Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet. That was my first exposure to the spoken
word:
..what light through yonder window breaks? It
is the east, and Juliet is the sun!
What the fuck did I just hear and what happened to my
head? What was this musical language and how do I get more of it? And why did my heathen classmates hate it so
much? How could they not understand it?
Love it?
Very early, I discovered that Bardolatry was a selective
religion and not many people chose to be members but those who did choose to
worship at the altar of the Bard were passionate and had differing opinions and
interpretations of his work. I was
thrilled to count myself among them.
Fast forward several years, decades…I am a young mother
with two small children and I find myself sinking in the drudge of diapers,
dinners, and play dates. I needed
something for me. I needed an artistic
outlet. My therapist prescribed Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way as a way for me to find my outlet.
I started to write a play which I produced and had
directed for the local Fringe Festival.
That led me to audition for acting classes at the local University
College where the policy was to perform a Shakespeare play every year in the
Spring. This particular year the play
was Macbeth…my favorite.
I auditioned, with a monologue from King John, which, I am certain I could perform much better now. I was accepted
into the class, auditioned for the fall show, performed in Dylan Thomas’s Under Milkwood and, just before
Christmas of 1996, auditioned for Macbeth. I won a role as one of the witches…and the
spell was cast. Down I slipped into the vortex of Shakespeare.
This is not a bad thing, quite the contrary. I found myself in those words and roles and
the deeper I read, the more characters I stepped into (or, more truthfully, the
deeper they slipped into me) the deeper I slipped into myself. I learned so much about myself from those
roles, was so electrified by the women/men I became, that I wonder if I would
have reached those places without the catalyst provided for me by Will.
In Shakespeare: The
Invention of the Human, Bloom talks about how Shakespeare “…invented us.”
(xvii of preface). He says that “We need
to exert ourselves and read Shakespeare as strenuously as we can, while knowing
that his plays will read us more energetically still. They read us definitively.” (xx of preface)
His plays read me like marble braille…fingertips on
goose flesh…I was the instrument and he was the master orchestrater. And he did
play me.
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| I am in the centre - the owl witch |
It was exhilarating to howl
every night at the approach of Macbeth to the witches cave in IV,i. I plugged into the ancient magic I carried as
a pagan Priestess and surrendered to the work.
It was ecstasy.
The only thing to do after the first taste of performing
Shakespeare was to (1) join a local Shakespeare company and (2) become a director. The choice was obvious, and made for me,
actually…
Hamlet. How the fuck was I going to step into that
piece? Like dolphins to water,
apparently because all I had to do was to channel my grief for my recently
deceased mentor; a beloved teacher who had encouraged me to write and to honour
my talents.
So, I took the job.
I directed Hamlet…the magnum
opus in the opinion of some. I read
several different versions, did an in depth dramaturgical study of the play and
put together a piece I think would have made Will proud.
We performed in a park, at night, and it was crazy hard
but beautiful. Today I still go there
and sit on the bench, located in what used to be the main entrance to the
castle, and meditate on the beauty of the place, my life, and the magic of the
Universe. I actually scattered some of
my mentor’s ashes there (shhhh) so that when I need to work out a writing snag
or just need someone to listen, I sit on the bench and tell him what I need to
tell him and read what I am working on.
It is one of my sacred places.
After Hamlet, came
Othello and a dramatic reading of Venus and Adonis in the winter following
the summer in the park.
Othello showed
me that the magic of the Bard was not limited to life in the play.
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| *sigh* Yes. That is me. |
I was cast
as Desdemona and, from the start, should have seen that this piece was going to
be weird. The man cast as Othello did
not seem to understand the concept of imagination and acting; my dear friend,
who was cast as Iago was tormented by the character for a number of weeks
beyond the “post partum” acting stage (many are who take on that character and
I have heard the same of those who have played Macbeth). For me, though, the strangest thing
happened: my husband at the time began
to act like Othello – jealous and grasping.
I was suffocating. I was
terrified. I was fuelled by this in my
performance and, in the end, just wanted the run to be over. I loved the play but hated the weakness of
this woman who would not fight back.
I would not make that same mistake.
I guess that is why the natural progression from there
was Venus – a goddess. And, yes, Will
made me feel like her, then. It was
exquisite!
After that came Twelfth
Night. I played Feste and directed – definitely a
challenge.
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| A female Feste worked really well in Twelfth Night |
This was the time I decided to dedicate the rest of my
life to Bardolatry and when I read Bloom.
I was all in. And when the needle
hit my virgin skin, I sank into the bee sting-like pain. It was my initiation and I was earning the right
to carry Will’s moniker on my flesh forever.
I closed my eyes and ran my lines from past shows; words from other lips
– Shakespeare’s humans.
I loved the pain and pretended that he did, too.
And, when the time came for the run of Twelfth Night, we played in the same
park as where Hamlet played. This time, instead of sun and heat, we played
in torrential rain storm after torrential rain storm. It became a joke, a long lasting joke, that
when Olivia said to Viola-Cesario: “…tis
beauty truly blent; twill endure wind and weather…” the sky opened up and the
wind blew and the actors were completely soaked, makeup running down Olivia’s
face. We still laugh about that today.
A couple of years after that
performance, Feste married Orsino… “…unclasp’d To thee the book even of [our]
secret soul…” (I, iv, 12-13).
And then I became
Cleopatra.
And utterly, fucking butchered
the role. I was too young for her and
too small and I hope to be allowed the privilege of playing her again from
where I am now. I know I am older now
than she was when she died but, hey, I look 39.
I just feel like I am big enough for her now.
I was an ant walking in the
sandals of a colossus.
Today, after my morning pages,
I read a line in Julia Cameron’s Walking
in This World, a companion to The
Artist’s Way and read these words:
Art
is a form of the verb to be.
My heart skipped a beat. It is.
It really is.
And, for me, nowhere have I
learned this more intimately than from Will.
I am because Shakespeare invented me…and will continue to be because he
wills it to be so.
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| My Bard altar |
Want to hear about some crazy shit? Go to the CBC site and find the 1966 interviews for the 50th anniversary of the battle. Listen to the surviving Newfoundlanders talk about that first day...how they felt like they were walking into a hailstorm of hot lead. 
