The Play's the Thing

[image error] Maria. Why appear you with this ridiculous boldness before my lady?
Malvolio. "Be not afraid of greatness": 'twas well writ.
Olivia. What mean'st thou by that, Malvolio?
Malvolio. "Some are born great"--
Olivia. Ha?
Malvolio. "Some achieve greatness"--
Olivia. What say'st thou?
Malvolio. "And some have greatness thrust upon them."
Olivia. Heaven restore thee!
Malvolio. "Remember who commended thy yellow stockings"--
Olivia. Thy yellow stockings?
Malvolio. "And wish'd to see thee cross-garter'd."
Olivia. Cross-garter'd?
Malvolio. "Go to, thou art made, if thou desir'st to be so"--
Olivia. Am I made?
Malvolio. "If not, let me see thee a servant still."
Olivia. Why, this is very midsummer madness.

--Shakespeare, Twelfth Night



Outside, the early dark falls in a freezing rain. The fire indoors is necessary, and I pull as close to it as I can without lighting my sweater as a flare. And then I reach for one of the free calendars saved from the mail (World Wildlife Fund, Humane Society, Defenders of All-That-Was-Once-Natural-and-Soon-Is-to-Be-No-More) and begin charting summer.

Not my summer--that still exists to me only as hopeful scrawls over June and July weekends of the motorcycle rallies I want to attend and may never get to--but my child's. It is so complex, and must be mapped so far in advance, that I need a separate flowchart for it. God help me if I schedule Farm Camp for the best week of Wayfinders, or town camp when Seewackamano is full of his friends. All heaven help me! This is my midsummer madness, in the frozen heart of winter.

The centerpiece of the summer camp lineup, and possibly of our whole life up here in the boondocks, is Shakespeare camp. For years now, we have been in thrall to a periodic transport of magic: the child's production of plays over four hundred years old, written countless galaxies from the iWorld that is all these children really know. Together, on an outdoor stage in the Catskills dubbed The Little Globe, they offer up the truest proof that great literature can live, its meaning as immutable as granite, forever.

For two weeks, the actors immerse themselves in old English, in characters and rituals and historic detail that is as foreign to them as the back side of the moon. My son bounds out of the car every morning with his lunchbox and disappears into sixteenth-century England. And then, one humid summer evening, we convene.

The fanfare sends its gathering notes over the mountain pines. Parents wait, motionless, on bench and blanket. Then the costumed children--six years old, ten, fifteen--emerge from the woods behind the stage, or file down the aisles. The play begins, their small voices now big with immortal poetry. They do not recite the lines; they live them, for they comprehend. They know who they are, completely and down to the bone: Puck, Orlando, Beatrice.

In another week, the muslin shirts and embroidered bodices will again hang silent in the director's home, waiting for another summer to begin, and my son will be splashing in a pool, or riding bicycles with friends, or making animations on a laptop. But because of a small miracle that is actually quite large (this is here, by chance and by the Ashokan), a boy has learned that two weeks can be marked on a calendar. They can also be timeless.