Name All the Animals by Alison Smith

Author:Alison Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2004-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

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EVERY SPRING THE English department chartered a bus and drove up to Ontario’s Stratford to see a Shakespeare play. As field trips, especially those involving Canadian borders, were hugely popular at Mercy, Mrs. Brown devised a scheme to ensure that only the most dedicated students would attend; she invented the Mercy Shakespeare Read-A-Thon. To participate in the northern journey, you first had to be willing to go door-to-door in your neighborhood and ask for money in exchange for the promise that you would read Shakespeare continuously for twenty-four hours.

There were two schools of thought on reading Shakespeare at the Mercy Read-A-Thon. Some believed that the time should be used to further our understanding of the texts we covered, and with that in mind, the English teachers Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Pinkerton liked to pause at key moments and engage us in discussion about the story and the characters. However, there was an equally strong camp, made up entirely of students, who felt that quantity not quality was the real business of a Read-A-Thon. They believed that, in order for our sponsors to feel like they were really getting their money’s worth, we had to cover as many plays as possible in the twenty-four-hour period.

“Remember your sponsors pledged by the hour, not by the play,” Mrs. Brown reminded us as she passed around trays of cookies. “This is not a race.”

Despite these frequent reminders, speed became the be-all and end-all of the event. We read in shifts and slept in shifts, taking over the convent’s two front parlors, which flanked the enormous entryway. The one on the right, the more formal of the two, became the reading room, leaving the smaller, left front parlor for our occasional sleep sessions. About eight hours into the Read-A-Thon, after we had made our way through As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Richard III, All’s Well That Ends Well, Pericles, and Two Gentlemen of Verona, Mrs. Pinkerton suggested we try something a little different.

“How about The Life and Death of King John?” she asked, and she beamed at us over a plate of cookies. “That one’s good and bloody.”

King John proved to be a difficult text. We stumbled over the language. We were completely unfamiliar with the characters and the story. Mrs. Brown, who always bailed us out at these moments of confusion, had been called home to see to her sick daughter right as we commenced reading the first act. Mrs. Pinkerton, distracted by the cookies, offered us no insight. By 2:00 A.M. most everyone had fallen asleep, and those of us left awake voted against finishing the lengthy and, to our young minds, incomprehensible play. However, the vetoing of King John did not go smoothly for one reason: Susanna Spindale. Susanna questioned our dedication to the project and threatened to withdraw from the whole endeavor if we didn’t finish the play.

“What kind of Shakespeare scholars are you?” she demanded, the sleeves of her overlong Elizabethan nightdress flapping about as she paced in front of the enormous stone fireplace.

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