How Shakespeare Taught Me Murder

My whole body shook as I stood in front of my fourth grade class, hands clasped around a copy of my own writing. Despite my teacher’s winning smile and my friends’ gentle encouragements, nothing could have saved me from the fear I was radiating that day. The writing in my hands was a fellowship of clever grammar mistakes I dubbed a novel, a piece I had been working on for two weeks and wanted desperately to share with the world. That want, that need, had originally seemed valant to me. The moment I was in front of everyone, though, it was suddenly alarmingly stupid. 

I was so obsessed with authors like J.R.R. Tolkein and George R.R. Martin that I was considering adding a couple extra Rs to my own name, trying to find my place in the world of fantasy novels.

Despite the sideways glances directed at me by my peers, I have read obsessively since I was child, desperate to get my hands on as many stories as I could stomach as quickly as possible. This hunger for literature is what led me to writing my own. Knowing what an author can do with language is what drew me to creating that first error-ridden story and, knowing that an author can make people genuinely feel something, sharing it with my class that day. My newfound capability to create feelings in someone with just a few words made me itch for more because, “Writing is a transaction between the writer and the reader.” (Zissner) 

My class fulfilled the transaction, paying me the exact reactions I was hoping for. Audible gasps filled the room at the climax, and protests sounded at the cliffhanger I left them with. Either a fourth grade class was not all that difficult to impress or I had a really good thing going, and I chose to believe the latter. 

At that point in my life, I was only just scratching the surface of what literature could truly do. A fantasy novel that, if my memory serves me, features a talking frog, isn’t exactly the height of composition, but I had the drive to get better every time I wrote; this is what led me to real literature.

Growing up, I was constantly fed the idea that William Shakespeare’s writing was a snooze-fest; the never-ending jokes played on loop, insisting that Shakespeare was not worth my time, that I would hate studying him. When I was handed a copy of The Tempest, though, and I read the first page, something changed inside of me. You can do this? With words? You can make words sound like this? To this day I cite The Tempest as my favorite work by Shakespeare, even if it’s just because it was the first time I was exposed to him.

Every time I read one of his plays, it was as though I was meeting some divine being.

The next year, I joined my school’s Shakespeare Club. This decision led me to the stage in a way that was similar to that moment in my fourth grade class.

I was standing on stage, covered head to toe in fake blood, breathing heavily. My body was shaking. 

“How all occasions do inform against me / And spur my dull revenge!”

I had somehow tricked the director into giving me the lead role in Hamlet. My ability to memorize soliloquies twice as fast as other students gave me a leg up, and my successful interpretations of the texts allowed me to do the one thing I think all people should do with writing of any kind: perform.

I was radiating fear, despite my director's winning smile and my castmates’ encouraging words. I fought through Hamlet’s final soliloquy, spitting and roaring, completely forgetting my breath control. To become a character is the essence of literature to me. Knowing you can bring something an author created to life is thrilling.

“My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!”

When Laertes (spoiler alert for the uninitiated) stabbed me with the poisoned sword, and I croaked the words, “The rest is silence,” I swear I saw that divine being again. And I would when I performed as Romeo, when I read Macbeth, and when I competed as Helena. 

Shakespeare gave me something no other author ever could: an understanding.

I suddenly knew what it meant to be a good writer and I evolved greatly after that point. I grew into a mature reader, changing my content intake in order to produce something more meaningful everytime I wrote. Authors like Donna Tartt were my teachers, constantly demonstrating new ways to create purpose in my writing. I was determined to create a book that is worth reading a second time. “You must put every word on trial for its life,” (Prose) is what I whisper to myself every time I finish a sentence. Every word matters.

This story does not come full circle. I have never gone back to writing fantasy, and I stopped reading it altogether save for an occasional re-read of The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkein is still an idol of mine). In the end, I found the medium of poetry. Moreso, I found that reading my poetry aloud, in coffee shops, in front of an audience in a park, or even just to my mother, continues my performances everywhere I go. Shakespeare brought me to the stage, stuck a quill in my hand, and demanded I make it up myself. I did. And then Shakespeare shook his head and scratched out half the words I had managed to write and told me I was doing too much.

Stop using semicolons… end the sentence there. You don’t need to add more to this, make the audience think about it. You cannot seriously be considering another Oxford comma here, can you?

Do you know what an Oxford comma is, Shakespeare?

Just delete it, Maddie.

Poetry steered me away from wordiness. It confined me while simultaneously opening me up to a form of expression not many people see value in. “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.” (King)

The only darling I’ve ever known have been words. I have had one true love in all my life, and it has been words. As for killing them off? I blame Shakespeare. 

Works Cited:

Prose, Francine. “Close Reading.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 1 Aug. 2006, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/08/close-reading/305038/. 

Orvis, Dalton. “Writing Is a Tense Transaction with Readers.” Medium, The Writing Cooperative, 31 May 2020, https://writingcooperative.com/writing-is-a-tense-transaction-with-readers-d4b71f390623. 

Bayne, Margery. “What 'Kill Your Darlings' Does and Doesn't Mean.” Medium, The Writing Cooperative, 12 July 2020, https://writingcooperative.com/what-kill-your-darlings-does-and-doesn-t-mean-cd8d533dd627.