Two Households, Both Alike in Blah Blah Blah… (Marnie)

[Matt Davis]

Matt was burying his head in the books at the local library! Perhaps a bit more literally than most other students, or what was expected. His head rested against the open book on the middle of his desk. He was meeting with a tutor today, something Matt had become accustomed to by now. He liked to show up a bit early and get a jump start on the research. Get into it, read through some stuff, and at least have -some- understanding of stuff going into it.

But gods was Shakespeare boring. And he didn’t really understand the whole point of reading it! Everyone, -everyone-, knew what happened in Romeo and Juliet. Except for Taylor swift, apparently. That song didn’t make any sense. He cracked open the book and read some.

Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

...What did that even mean!? Matt -knew- that no one...not a single soul ever spoke like that. How could anyone understand what they were saying!? It’d be a like a constant babel! Matt showed up about an hour before his tutor would be there, and so far all he had done was draw a little stick figure war scene where the filled in stick figures were kicking the empty circled stick figures buts… also there was a dragon, and Ozzy Osbourne. All things were better with Dragons and Ozzy.

The only real thing he realized about this passage was the line ‘A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;’ That was obvious. The point of the story everybody knew. Even back then they started with that! Spoiler warnings non existent back in the 1800’s it seemed...

[Marnie Sullivan]

When Marnie had first read Romeo and Juliet for class as a sophomore, she'd been disappointed to discover that it was hardly the classic love story she'd assumed. Neither the professor nor the book itself wasted any time smashin that expectation to pieces. Even more embarrassing was how her classmates all seemed to know beforehand - or at least, if they'd believed what she did, they were better at hiding it.

This time around, rereading it to prepare for tutoring a yogurt student, Marnie didn't mind nearly as much. She'd had her fill of love stories for the moment, especially the ones that didn't end with a dozen character deaths.

When Marnie strode into the library maybe ten minutes early, she planned on nabbing an empty table to wait and skim her borrowed copy of Romeo and Juliet a little more. Ten minutes were all she usually needed. Instead, as she scouted around for that seat, she spotted - with a hint of surprise - the boy she was pretty sure she was supposed to tutor. If she had the name right, anyway. Her friend Greg had pointed him out in the hallway the other day, something about being the new kid on the basketball team. If Greg was correct about his name being Matt Davis, well, that was definitely him; even sitting down the boy cut a distinct, imposing figure.

But hey, if he wanted to be early too, that boded well. And it would save her the trouble of having to flag him down later.

"Hi, are you Matt?" Marnie asked after approaching, waiting for confirmation before taking the seat opposite him. "I'm Marnie, I'm supposed to help with your English homework - you guys are doing Romeo and Juliet right now, right?" The professor had gotten her up to speed when she'd been paired with Matt for tutoring, but it couldn't hurt to start off on the same page.

[Matt Davis]

When Matt heard someone approach he lifted his head up from the book and slid the text over the parchment where the little battle took place. Fortunate for one of the little black stick-men who was about to be shredded by an awesome riff of Ozzy’s. Matt turned his head while standing up, twisting out of his seat so he stood in front of the newcomer.

“Yeah, I’m Matt. Matt Davis.” He responded quickly and with a wide smile. He offered his hand smoothly, the entire maneuver seeming quite natural for the young blonde man. He stood beside of his own chair while she moved to hers, and only sat down when she had. His eyes moved a bit as she leaned down to sit, examing the girl silently. She had some nice clothes, seemed cute. There were a heck of a lot of cute girls at this school, Matt considered.

“Yeah, that’s right… I just-... I don’t really know how t’read it. It’s almost in a foreign language. Like French-english. Is there a better book I can get, or somethin’?” He scooted the chair forward some, which unfortunately caused his long leg to hit against Marnies. He quickly moved his legs off to one side to remedy it with a simple ‘Sorry’ and an apologetic smile.

[Marnie Sullivan]

Marnie shook his offered hand, grip light, before sitting. He seemed polite enough, she thought; she didn't know many guys in the habit of standing until a lady was seated. Not that she was a lady, exactly, but she liked the gesture.

"I know what you mean, the language can get pretty old-fashioned and flowery," Marnie agreed. That and the meter of it made the book feel like an overly long and unnecessarily dense poem, in her opinion. "But there are a bunch of editions out there that have, like, footnotes and translations in them, too. Here, take a look at mine."

Marnie flipped to a page shortly into the first act, where the margins were laced with editor's notes and the text dotted with asterisks. Despite the copy being a library book, some of the lines had been highlighted as well. As she passed it across the table to Matt, something smacked against her shin suddenly, and Marnie stiffened involuntarily in her seat. His leg apparently, since he was apologizing.

"It's okay," she assured him quickly. Just an accident. It wasn't like he was Lucas, who might've stomped on her shoe attempting a game of footsie and then trying to play it off as a simle mistake. An accident, that's all this was.

[Matt Davis]

“So… the way to help me with reading this rediculous book is to read more notes that other people have put on the side of it, and the book itself?” He sighedout heavily and sat his head against his head. Matt hated reading school assigned books. Matt took the book and examined it warily, doing as he was told.

“Okay… so I have to ask, why do the schools try and get us to read this kind of stuff anyway? What does it matter about Romeo and Juliet if they don’t want us off doing the love at first sight bit, an’ being able to read this stuff aint gonna be important… and in order to understand it we need to get someone elses work on it. It’s reinventin’ the wheel, but stupid… reinventin’ the square wheel…”

Matt enjoyed his little rant, but he had grown accustomed to doing stupid things for stupid reasons just to get by, so already his eyes were scanning the page and trying to read the notes and corresponding passage. And rereading them… and again. Each time he read it felt like it just went through his head and missed his brain.

[Marnie Sullivan]

As she listened to him complain, Marnie could barely hold back a grimace. Sure, nobody really enjoyed reading anything assigned by a teacher - that made it work rather than fun, even if it was a book you'd already read. But she had genuinely enjoyed having all those extra notes to pore over. Anything to make it easier to understand and focus on the story, rather than making her head hurt.

But if Matt just saw that as extra work, well, maybe this would take a while. Hopefully he wasn't one of those kids who never read on principle.

"I know, you'd think they'd update the reading list at least, like, every fifty years or so," Marnie agreed. It sounded like Matt was more frustrated by the issue than she was, but maybe a little commiseration could help grease the wheels. "I mean, I get that all the classics have lasted this long because they're supposed to be the best - " she threw up her hands in mock enthusiasm to exaggerate her point - "but there are like thousands of books coming out every year, a few have to be good enough to read for class, right?"

That was probably her own biggest complaint, as far as reading for school went. New books were being published all the time, but how was she supposed to read them if she was stuck drudging through some dense novel she could barely understand?

[Matt Davis]

Misery loves company. When Marnie started agreeing with him and joining in on the ‘reading this stuff sucks’ bandwagon, Matt’s face practically lit up. Talking about this stuff was going to be helpful, he could already tell. He nodded some to Marnie’s complaint, though he didn’t particularly share it. He wasn’t much for reading and was almost surprised to hear that thousands of new books came out each year. There couldn’t be that much to talk about or worth putting in books after all of this time.

“Yeah? Well… I dunno, I don’t actually read all that much, y’know. Always kinda...found other stuff t’do. But there has to be some modern books worth a glance! At least more than this…” He motioned to Romeo and Juliet again.

“I mean… They probably picked this one jus’ ‘cause it’s been analyzed so much, they don’t have to do no more thinking… An’ it aint like we’re gonna come up with a better or original thought on it, y’know. All them other people already did it. We should have somethin’ new!”

He looked down at the book and sighed to himself. “Well… Aint nothin’ but a thought y’know? Guess we’ll just hafta buckle down an’ do this… an’ read some of these side bars y’showed me.” He sat back some in his seat while skimming through the side bar and looking back to the shakespearean text. He had to scan over the same passage multiple times still. It was hard to retain this kind of information.

[Marnie Sullivan]

So he wasn't really a reader, Marnie noted with a tinge of disappointment. Well, it wasn't too much of a surprise – this was tutoring, after all. At least he seemed enthusiastic enough; she had tutored a couple of people who were too indifferent to even say full sentences. So it could be worse.

“I think it's less... getting us to come up with new ideas about it, and more... I dunno, trying to get everybody on the same page,” Marnie suggested. “Like, yeah, there're other books I'd rather be reading, but I also like not being the only one who doesn't know Romeo and Juliet isn't actually this super romantic love story for the ages.” It wasn't a view she liked admitting to once holding, but she could make an exception today.

At any rate, Matt seemed willing to get past his complaints and get to work. That would matter more than whether he enjoyed reading on his own time, she figured optimistically.

“Okay, sounds good,” Marnie replied. “If you see something you don't really get, just let me know and we'll figure it out.”

[Matt Davis]

Matt seemed a little surprised at Marnie’s description that Romeo and Juliet wasn’t a timeless love story. He had always assumed that to be the case. He of course knew that that the love didn’t end well, but neither did those two in the Titanic but it was still a good love story. Or the Notebook. Something he would, of course, never admit to have watched.

“It’s...not an awesome love story? Wasn’t that like… the whole point of it? Star-struck lovahs, tragic love… love everlastin’ an’ all that such?”

He started to flip through the book, eyes drawn drawn down to the pages as he read. He only really read and understood one word at a time and truly the text was going in his eyes and out of his head without him even thinking about what was going on.

“S’what kinda books would ya rather be readin’? I kinda figured at a...different school like this they’d have us read somethin’ else. Y’know?”