Learning to Love

Shakespeare changed my life forever.

It happened twenty years ago. I was a freshman at UW–Milwaukee. I was nineteen years old and an average student at best. I was still looking for something to give my life focus and purpose. I wanted to learn—that’s why I was going to college—but I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to learn.

I remember signing up for an anthropology class and falling asleep during the very first lecture. I realized, after I woke up, that I was probably not destined to be an anthropology major. So I scrambled to drop that class and sign up for another.  I pored over the course catalog looking for something, anything, to suit me. Geology of the Planets? No.  Modern Ballet?  Definitely not. Shakespeare? 

Romeo and Juliet had been required reading back when I was a freshman in high school. I liked the story—two star-crossed kids fall into a blissful love before things go horribly wrong. But the language. Who talks this way? Is this Old English? My high school teacher explained that it was actually modern English and that the beauty of the work was to be found in the rich complexity of the language. That was fascinating to me.

So, what the heck, what have I got to lose? I’ll sign up for a college Shakespeare class. I might learn something useful. Or, failing that, something poetic. 

I showed up at the appointed time only to find people spilling out into the hallway. The classroom was small and too many people wanted to learn. Standing room only. It was the strangest thing. Normally I would have walked away and looked for another class on some other subject, something without a sign-up hassle, something with a chair I could sit on, but I decided to stay. I waited in the hall until the class ended and then asked the teacher if I could join. She said she would add me to the waiting list—if enough people dropped out, I was in.

I went to the bookstore and bought the plays and started reading them although I was not even sure I had a place in the class.

Fortunately, after a week, enough people found Shakespeare’s words too much to bear, thereby allowing me a seat, just inside the door. The room was still crowded, and I felt more than a little claustrophobic, even by the door. But I stayed. 

As the days passed, I learned to appreciate Shakespeare. The teacher made the words come alive. She would relate the plays to our modern experience. And she would ask questions of the class, calling on people to read passages aloud or give opinions on the characters, plots, subplots, setting, imagery, language. I began to understand how all the elements came together to form a harmonious whole. Sometimes the words seemed to flow like music from the page. A grand symphony. It was beautiful.

And then I saw her. A fellow student, sitting in the front row, in the opposite corner of the room, with light from the windows sparkling in her red hair. I could view little more, except at those rare times when she would turn just enough so I could behold her face.

One fairer than my love! The all-seeing sun ne'er saw her match since first the world begun.

Humbly, reverently, I began my silent worship. I could not think of approaching her, for she was the forever unattainable ideal of truth and beauty, I merely the worthless and hopeless admirer.

Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue, nor any unproportioned thought his act.

And so the days passed without so much as a word. Yet I found immeasurable joy in being there, learning the plays and witnessing such beauty.

Then one bright day, her eyes met mine—for an instant. 

As all the world is charmed by the sun, so I by that; it is my day, my life.

A few moments later, to my wonderment, the touch of her eyes was again bestowed upon me. A smile welled forth from my newly created soul. Did her eyes smile in return? O, learn to read what silent love hath writ.

The following days held a few more faint smiles, tingling fear, momentary eternity.
Yet I suffered such passion when these miracles were upon me that I knew not with certainty what to make of them once they passed. Was I simply deluded? Could these few happy moments genuinely portend a true and lasting love? 

Is't possible that on so little acquaintance you should like her? That but seeing you should love her?  And loving woo? And, wooing, she should grant? 

What if she did not requite my love? Miserable most, to love unloved. Yet I was already in love, already in misery. But what greater misery could lie ahead if she shunned my love? Be wary then; best safety lies in fear.

My wretched meekness allowed the last day of class to arrive with no firm thought or preparation. So much time had passed without a word, and now I was about to let my love depart my life forever. What passion hangs these weights upon my tongue?

When the final class came to a close, I lingered in the room, my head bowed, my hands clasped in front of me on a paperback play. I gazed on my soon-to-be-lost love and thought of how much I had enjoyed my days in this class.

As she came near where I stood, our eyes met. And we both smiled.

If thou hast any sound or use of voice, speak to me. If there be any good thing that may be done that may to thee do ease and grace to me, speak to me.

And then came The Word.

“Bye,” she said, lightly, questioningly.

And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods make heaven drowsy with the harmony.

As she continued on her way, I turned aside and raised the play I held in my hand—I thus bit into the binding of The Winter’s Tale.

Today, more than twenty years later, I still have that book, and I can still discern the teeth marks in the spine. I’ll be sworn on a book, she loves you.

The day of the final exam gave us an opportunity to talk to each other—we both arrived quite early—and we exchanged many thoughts and smiles, while unrestrained joy permeated my soul.

Until that day, all I had known of love I had learned from books, not the lessons of life.

I signed up for a Shakespeare class and fell in love. With the plays and the sonnets and the woman who would be my wife.

—Dean Andrade

Dean Andrade has a Master’s Degree in English from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. He works as the editor of Milwaukee Publishers, LLC, which recently which recently published Frank Zeidler’s political memoir, A Liberal in a City Government.