I took a night class from Bret Stephens.
About Shakespeare.
The first night I asked belligerently:
"What do you know about Shakespeare?"
"Not as much as I should" he replied frankly.
Which response won my heart.
He continued:
"I'm actually a newspaperman."
The class gasped in Unison. Which
is an unincorporated village in Loudon
County, Virginia.
"The first thing we do, let's
kill all the reporters" said
a horse-faced girl next to me.
The class laughed nervously.
But Stephens didn't miss a beat.
"Buzz off" he explained kindly.
After that we settled down to
study the character of Falstaff.
"Who wants to explain why Falstaff
still fascinates us today?" he asked
the class.
We looked down at our desks
and shuffled papers.
Nobody knew who Falstaff was.
I didn't. The horse-faced girl didn't.
Mr. Stephens didn't, either, I gather,
because he looked real disappointed
when nobody answered him.
"Okay, then" he said sullenly.
"Let's move on to global warming."
"What about Shakespeare, prof?"
asked a boy in a red cardigan.
"Drive that blasted cardigan out
of here!" Mr. Stephens yelled at him.
"It's a gas guzzler."
The bell rang just then,
so we gathered up our vellum
and quills.
But Mr. Stephens held up his hand.
"Before you leave" he said earnestly,
"I have just been informed that the Lemp
Brewery made Falstaff Beer for over a
hundred years. That is all."
No wonder the guy won
a Pulitzer.
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