Yesterday was Open House at Neil’s school. As part of their Open House presentation, his grade 4/5 class selected 5 scenes from Shakespeare plays and performed them. We saw Hamlet fight Laertes and die by Laertes’ poisoned sword; Romeo grieve and commit suicide when he finds Juliet, seemingly dead; and Neil, as Petruchio, ably teasing Katherine in Act 4, scene 5 of Taming of the Shrew.
True to the drag tradition of old theatre, Katherine was played by another boy. In this scene, Petruchio is saying “This is a man, old, wrinkled, faded, not a girl as you say he is.”
Neil’s been having a great time learning about Shakespeare, and even delighted a librarian by taking out several Shakespeare plays. Right now (in his current obsession, Roller Coaster Tycoon 3, he’s building a Shakespeare-themed amusement park with rollercoasters like “Katherine’s Revenge.”