Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this? (G, gen)

[extrapenguin]

On AO3

Summary: The eldest Vorbarra children attempt to interpret Shakespeare.
In response to a prompt by a_t_rain in the Bujold_Ficathon_2015 collection.
With thanks to this and this

 

 

Polina Vorprzewalski – smart, highly educated, competent – once again put on what she'd termed her war paint. Next, the dress that counted as a weapon in her hands. The tutor to the Imperial children could not have any chinks in her armor.

 

In public, her posture and face were those of the soft yet stern, child-friendly young widow she appeared to be. The steel within was not observable, though probably guessable. She put on a friendly smile before entering her classroom. She pulled out her portable screen and tapped on the day's lesson plan. A quick reminder to herself – ah yes, discussion of two of Shakespeare's most iconic plays. Let the more obscure wait for the later teenage years.

Monique shepherded the twins and Xav in, then nodded at Polina and left. Aleksei, Kareen and Xav took seats.

“Now, I asked you to read Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet. We started with these since they're the ones the most people are aware of. Let's start with Romeo and Juliet. What are your thoughts?” Polina asked.

Aleksei, thirteen-year-old Aleksei with all his mother's height, said, “Isn't it a morality play on how falling in love is a bad thing?”

“No it's not!” Xav objected. Maybe... “It's about how if you don't obey your parents, there will be severe consequences!” Well, she'd probably hoped for too much.

“I think it's not a morality play”, Kareen said. “I think it's about, uh, infatuation? And there's this one part where Romeo scales the Capulet wall to be with Juliet and if he'd been discovered, her reputation would've suffered greatly.”

And now that they'd been given a chance to be wrong, it was up to her to set them right. “Now, to properly understand Shakespeare, we have to consider them in light of the time they were written. In his time, the average age of marriage for women was in their twenties, so lines like Paris' “younger than she are happy mothers made” are supposed to clue us in on him being a nasty person, since Juliet is only fourteen. Likewise, the play's setting is Italy, which was quite far from Shakespeare's England, so the play is an example of setting a story far away to get away with exaggeration. You've probably read or heard about Sobol's Thy Maskèd Face, which uses Vervain in a similar manner.

“The greatest clues, however, come from the first lines that come before the play proper, in a sort of introduction. It talks about ancient grudges and strife. The subject of the play is the feud between the Montagues and the Capulets, which could only be removed by the lovers' death: “And the continuance of their parents' rage, / Which, but their children's end, nought could remove, / Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage”.”

Three heads nodding. Good. A small time for them to digest, and then: “We'll return to Romeo and Juliet shortly, but what were your impressions of Hamlet?”

Twelve and tall for his age, Xav sat up straighter and declared: “It's about how ghosts don't exist and following their advice is a bad idea!”