The 'd' Monologues by Kaite O'Reilly

Author:Kaite O'Reilly [O'Reilly, Kaite]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, People With Disabilities, Performing Arts, Acting & Auditioning, Education, Special Education, Physical Disabilities, Drama, European, English; Irish; Scottish; Welsh, General
ISBN: 9781786826343
Google: naH8DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2018-09-05T03:33:52+00:00

(4) STORIES AT NAN’S: SHAKESPEARE

FICTIONALISED AUTOBIOGRAPHY:

Staying at Nan’s was being stuck at the turn of the century – and I’m talking 1901 here, not the millennium – trapped in a time machine while the rest of the UK went all groovy and shag-tastic in that handcart headed straight to hell, or so the minister assured us. Any dilly-dallying with the contemporary was not acceptable, and Nan didn’t miss a thing. Like an eagle with a rabbit, she could spot a copy of Jackie a mile and a half away. And there was no slackening in her strictness, not even when I was out of hospital but still off school, recovering from spinal surgery and bored even more rigid than the hard plastic jacket with the leather buckles I had to wear. I’d escape into the front parlour with its parma violets and solemn tick tock from H Gibson of Pontypridd’s Fusee Dial Clock on the mantelpiece – tick tock, tick tock, tick tock – like a metronome of death. There wasn’t much to read, just the St James bible, a Reader’s Digest It Shouldn’t happen to a Vet, the 1956 Hafod Hardware catalogue and the fat holy tome of the collected works of Shakespeare. And so into that I would disappear, like the rabbit finding safety in its hole…

Except there wasn’t anything safe about Shakespeare. It was loud and untrammelled, full of passion, violence, and sex – and that was just the comedies. Rape. Murder. Suicide. Incest: nothing tidy there. And curses. Oh, those curses…

‘Thou elvish-marked, abortive, rooting hog…’

Bloody brilliant.

‘…thou lump of foul deformity…

Never hung poison on a fouler toad.

Out of my sight! Thou dost infect my eyes…’

And you couldn’t be criticised for being indulgent, for this was the bard, this was CULTURE.

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