William Shakespeare's Anti-Poverty Campaign in Coon Rapids, Minnesota, on the Afternoon of Saturday, 20 May

At 1:30 in the afternoon of Saturday, 20 May, the anti-poverty social worker William Shakespeare was hard at work in Coon Rapids, Minnesota.

 

Grade 8 student Damon Preston [data privacy pseudonym] uttered these lines as Iago, at once dissing the ingenuous Roderigo and hatching his connivance:

 

Thus do I ever make my fool my purse;

For I mine own gain’d knowledge should profane,

If I would time expend with such a snipe

But for my sport and profit.

 

I hate the Moor.  He holds me well.

The better shall my purpose work on him.

Cassio’s a proper man.  Let me see now---

To get his place, and to plume up my will

In double knavery:  how?  How?  Let’s see---

After some time t’ abuse Othello’s ear

That he is too familiar with his wife.

He has a person and a smooth dispose

To be suspected, fram’d to make women false;

The Moor a free and open nature too.

And will as tenderly be led by th’ nose

As asses are. 

I have’t!  Hell and night

Must bring this monstrous birth to the world’s light.

 

“What do you think, Evelyn?” I queried thirty-two year-old Evelyn Patterson [data privacy pseudonym], mother of Damon.  “Is your son a dirty dog, or what?  You everknown such a dirty dog?”

 

Evelyn grinned expansively.  She knew that I knew she had known many a two-timing, dirty dog such as Iago.  That Iago would use his lackey Roderigo to secure his revenge upon both Cassio and Othello came as no surprise to Evelyn whatsoever.  Such things had happened in Cabrini Green on Chicago’s South Side many times during her youth.

 

A few stanzas down, I read, as if Othello to Evelyn’s Desdemona,

 

It gives me great wonder and content

To see you here before me.  O my soul’s joy

If after tempest come such calms,

May the winds blow till they have waken’d death!

If it were now to die,

‘Twere now to be most happy;  for I fear

My soul hath her content so absolute

That not another comfort like to this

Succeeds to unknown fate.

 

And Evelyn as Desdemona returned,

 

The heavens forbid

But that our loves and comforts should increase

Even as our days do grow.

 

To which her son as the dirty dog Iago said in an aside, as if to the groundlings at the Bard’s Globe Theatre circa 1600:

 

O you are well tun’d now,

But I’ll set down the pegs that make this music,

As honest as I am.

 

“Da-mon“ I chastised, “You are such a dirty dog.”  The eighth grader, who has been my student in the New Salem Educational Initiative since he was in first grade, broke a smile threatening to swallow the  Missouri River at the Kansas City bend.

 

On down, Damon uttered these lines of Iago, who was urging the gullible Roderigo to provoke Cassio into a fight that would sully his reputation as a steady, circumspect soldier,

 

Sir, he is rash and very sudden in choler, and haply

With his truncheon may strike at you.  Provoke him that

he may, for even out of that then will I cause these of  Cyprus to

mutiny.    

 

“Da-mon,” I teased, “Now quit that instigatin’,” as Damon’s mouth opened with a chuckle to that Big Muddy width.

 

After I read Roderigo’s willing response and parting, adieu, Damon followed with this aside from Iago:

 

If this poor trash of Venice, whom I thrash

For his quick hunting, stand the putting-on,

I’ll have our Michael Cassio on the hip,

Abuse him to the Moor in the rank garb,

Make the Moor thank me, love me, and reward me

For making him egregiously an ass

And practicing upon his peace and quiet

Even to madness.  ‘Tis here, but yet confus’d:

Knavery’s plain face is never seen till us’d.

 

“Da-mon,” I continued the tease, then turning to Evelyn, I said, “Can you believe that your child would say such a thing and plot such a low-life scheme?” Evelyn grinned the Mississippi in the direction of her son’s Missouri.

 

Further down, I read Emilia’s part to Evelyn’s Desdemona, this exchange coming after Iago had treacherously prodded his wife Emilia (an attendant and friend to Desdemona) to snatch the scarf from Desdemona that Othello had given her as a first token of love, and Othello had demanded the scarf from Desdemona in a fit of rage, in his conviction that his wife had given the scarf to her presumed lover, Cassio:

 

Emilia:                  Is not this man jealous?

 

Desdemona:      I ne’er saw this before.

                                Sure, there’s some wonder in the handkerchief.

                                I am most unhappy in the loss of it.

 

Emilia:                  ‘Tis not a year or two shows us a man.

                                They are all but stomachs, and we all but food.

                                They eat us hungrily, and when they are full

                                They belch us.

 

Desdemona:      Something, sure, of state,

                                Either from Venice, or some unhatch’d practice

                                Made demonstrable here in Cyprus to him,

                                Hath puddled his clear spirit.

 

Emilia:                  Pray heaven it be state-manners, as you think,

                                And no conception, nor no jealous toy

                                Concerning you.

 

Desdemona:      Alas the day!  I never gave him cause.

 

Emilia:                  But jealous souls will not be answer’d so.

                                They are not ever jealous for the cause,

                                But jealous for they are jealous.

 

Desdemona:      Heaven keep that monster from Othello’s mind!

 

 

“Now, Evelyn,“ I said with a show of innocence, “you know that no guy has ever belched you out.  And I sure know that you ain’t never seen nobody that jealous.”  Evelyn flashed the Big Muddy.

 

After Othello went on to suffocate his beloved wife and then kill himself upon the realization of his terrible rash action and naive false belief in Desdemona’s guilt as related by the dastardly Iago, Evelyn, Damon, and I had a rousing discussion about Freudian id-based behavior in which the superego is absent and the ego fails to do its duty as the wise driver of the personality (these two had both read my Psychology chapter from Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education).  And Evelyn regaled us with many an example of people in her life who had shown such enormous, jealousy-driven, lapses in judgment.  

 

Thus did an afternoon that might have been given to trash television and video games provide instead the wisdom of the greatest dramatist who ever trod the planet. Having followed Damon, Evelyn, and little Javon (now in second grade) through two residences in North Minneapolis, one in far South Minneapolis, another on St. Paul’s East Side---  then provided moving services when Evelyn found cheaper and better housing in Coon Rapids---  I marveled at what the Bard, a tenacious teacher, and two impoverished but highly intelligent students had wrought on this Saturday afternoon.

 

Evelyn and I continued to discuss the themes of Othello as I gave her a ride to Walmart for her weekly shopping.

 

As I waited for her in my car, I smiled the Big Muddy at the Bard, he smiled through his goatee at me, and we celebrated the power of education to end cycles of poverty on this one earthly sojourn.