“First Corinthians 13:3,” I said. “‘Though I give my body to be burned and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.”
“I called the doctor,” Ms. Harrows said. She was standing by the window looking out at the blazing sun. “He thinks I might have pneumonia.”
I sat down at the computer and fed in Hamlet. “Look on the bright side. At least we’ve got the E-and-R programs. We don’t have to do it by hand the way we used to.”
She sat down behind the stack. “How shall we do this? By group or by line?”
“We might as well take it from the top.”
“Line one. ‘Who’s there?’ The National Coalition Against Contractions.”
“Let’s do it by group,” I said.
“All right. We’ll get the big ones out of the way first. The Commission on Poison Prevention feels the ‘graphic depiction of poisoning in the murder of Hamlet’s father may lead to copycat crimes.’ They cite a case in New Jersey where a sixteen-year-old poured Drano in his father’s ear after reading the play. Just a minute. Let me get a kleenex. The Literature Liberation Front objects to the phrases, ‘Frailty, thy name is woman,’ and ‘O, most pernicious woman,’ the ‘What a piece of work is man’ speech, and the queen.”
“The whole queen?”
She checked her notes. “Yes. All lines, references, and allusions.” She felt under her jaw, first one side, then the other. “I think my glands are swollen. Would that go along with pneumonia?”
Greg Jefferson came in, carrying a grocery sack. “I thought you could use some combat rations. How’s it going?”
“We lost the queen,” I said. “Next?”
“The National Cutlery Council objects to the depiction of swords as deadly weapons. ‘Swords don’t kill people. People kill people.’ The Copenhagen Chamber of Commerce objects to the line, ‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.’ Students Against Suicide, the International Federation of Florists, and the Red Cross object to Ophelia’s drowning.”
Greg was setting out the bottles of cough syrup and cold tablets on the desk. He handed me a bottle of valium. “The International Federation of Florists?” he said.
“She fell in picking flowers, “ I said. “What was the weather like out there?”
“Just like summer,” he said. “Delilah’s using an aluminum sun reflector.”
“Ass,” Ms. Harrows said.
“Beg pardon?” Greg said.
“ASS, the Association of Summer Sunbathers objects to the line, ‘I am too much i’ the sun,’” Ms. Harrows said, and took a swig from the bottle of cough syrup.
We were only half-finished by the time school let out. The Nuns’ Network objected to the line, “Get thee too a nunnery,” Fat and Proud of It wanted the passage beginning, “Oh, that this too too solid flesh should melt,” removed, and we didn’t even get to Delilah’s list, which was eight pages long.
“What play are we going to do?” Wendy asked me on my way out.
“Hamlet,” I said.
“Hamlet?” she said. “Is that the one about the guy whose uncle murders the king and then the queen marries the uncle?”
“Not any more,” I said.
Delilah was waiting for me outside. “‘Many of them brought their books together and burned them,’” she quoted. “Acts 19:19.”
“‘Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me,’” I said.
It was overcast Wednesday but still warm. The Veterans for a Clean America and the Subliminal Seduction Sentinels were picnicking on the lawn. Delilah had on a halter top. “That thing you said yesterday about the sun turning people black, what was that from?”
“The Bible,” I said. “Song of Solomon. Chapter one, verse six.”
“Oh,” she said, relieved. “That’s not in the Bible anymore. We threw that out.”
Ms. Harrows had left a note for me. She was at the doctor’s. I was supposed to meet with her third period.
“Do we get to start today?” Wendy asked.
“If everybody remembered to bring in their slips. I’m going to lecture on Shakespeare’s life,” I said. “You don’t know what the forecast for today is, do you?”
“Yeah, it’s supposed to be great.”
I had her collect the refusal slips while I went over my notes. Last year Delilah’s sister Jezebel had filed a grievance halfway through the lecture for “trying to preach promiscuity, birth control, and abortion by saying Anne Hathaway got pregnant before she got married.” Promiscuity, abortion, pregnant, and before had all been misspelled.
Everybody had remembered their slips. I sent the refusals to the library and started to lecture.
“Shakespeare—” I said. Paula’s corder clicked on. “William Shakespeare was born on April 23, 1564, in Stratford-on-Avon.”
Rick, who hadn’t raised his hand all year or even given any indication that he was sentient, raised his hand. “Do you intend to give equal time to the Baconian theory?” he said. “Bacon was not born on April 23, 1564. He was born on January 22, 1561.”
Ms. Harrows wasn’t back from the doctor’s by third period, so I started on Delilah’s list. She objected to forty-three references to spirits, ghosts, and related matters, twenty-one obscene words (obscene misspelled), and seventy-eight others that she thought might be, such as pajock and cockles.
Ms. Harrows came in as I was finishing the list and threw her briefcase down. “Stress-induced!” she said. “I have pneumonia, and he says my symptoms are stress-induced!”
“Is it still cloudy out?”
“It is seventy-two degrees out. Where are we?”
“Morticians International,” I said. “Again. ‘Death presented as universal and inevitable.’” I peered at the paper. “That doesn’t sound right.”
Ms. Harrows took the paper away from me. “That’s their ‘Thanatopsis’ protest. They had their national convention last week. They filed a whole set at once, and I haven’t had a chance to sort through them.” She rummaged around in her stack. “Here’s the one on Hamlet. ’Negative portrayal of interment preparation personnel—’”
“The gravedigger.”
“‘—And inaccurate representation of burial regulations. Neither a hermetically-sealed coffin nor a vault appear in the scene.’”
We worked until five o’clock. The Society for the Advancement of Philosophy considered the line, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” a slur on their profession. The Actor’s Guild challenged Hamlet’s hiring of non-union employees, and the Drapery Defense League objected to Polonius being stabbed while hiding behind a curtain. “The clear implication of the scene is that the arras is dangerous,” they had written in their brief. “Draperies don’t kill people. People kill people.”
Ms. Harrows put the paper down on top of the stack and took a swig of cough syrup. “And that’s it. Anything left?”
“I think so,” I said, punching reformat and scanning the screen. “Yes, a couple of things. How about, ‘There is a willow grows aslant a brook/That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.’”
“You’ll never get away with ‘hoar,’” Ms. Harrows said.
Thursday I got to school at seven-thirty to print out thirty copies of Hamlet for my class. It had turned colder and even cloudier in the night. Delilah was wearing a parka and mittens. Her face was a deep scarlet, and her nose had begun to peel.
“‘Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings as in obeying the voice of the Lord?’” I asked. “First Samuel 15:22.” I patted her on the shoulder.