If We Were Villains

by M.L. Rio

“Do you ever wonder if Shakespeare knew these speeches half as well as we do?”

He rose from his seat and said, “I would give all my fame for a pot of ale!” as he made his way to the bar.

We had, like seven siblings, spent so much time together that we had seen the best and worst of one another and were unimpressed by either.

had my suspicions that they were interesting people but disinterested parents

Per aspera ad astra. I’d heard a variety of translations, but the one I liked best was Through the thorns, to the stars.

The future is wide and wild and full of promise, but it is precarious, too. Seize on every opportunity that comes your way and cling to it, lest it be washed back out to sea.”

The last words were out of my mouth before I could catch them,

How could we explain that standing on a stage and speaking someone else’s words as if they are your own is less an act of bravery than a desperate lunge at mutual understanding? An attempt to forge that tenuous link between speaker and listener and communicate something, anything, of substance.

but the girls were hardly recognizable. Night had fallen, and with it came short slinky dresses and dark mascara and satin lipstick, transforming them from mere girls to a coven of bewitching nocturnal creatures.)

One thing I’m sure Colborne will never understand is that I need language to live, like food—lexemes and morphemes and morsels of meaning nourish me with the knowledge that, yes, there is a word for this. Someone else has felt it before.

“Is it just me,” Alexander said, “or is this the longest day of everyone else’s life?” “Well,” James said. “Certainly not Richard’s.”

Colborne nods vaguely. Then his expression changes, shifts, brow furrowing. “Do you blame Shakespeare for any of it?” The question is so unlikely, so nonsensical coming from such a sensible man, that I can’t suppress a smile. “I blame him for all of it,” I say.

“Would you carry my heart like a jewel in a box?”

“Anything can feel like punishment if it’s taught poorly.”

“My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself,” he said. “Because it is an enemy to thee.” The balcony scene. Too mistrustful to guess at the meaning, I said, “Don’t do that, James, please—right now can we just be ourselves?” He crouched down, lifted the mangled script from the floor. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s easier now to be Romeo, or Macbeth, or Brutus, or Edmund. Someone else.”

“This cold night will turn us all to fools and madmen.” “Stop that. I can’t understand you.”

But that is how a tragedy like ours or King Lear breaks your heart—by making you believe that the ending might still be happy, until the very last minute.