Absent. The English Teacher: The English Teacher

11. Reason Not...

1 11 R RE EA AS SO ON N N NO OT T … … Later that morning the twins came for their lesson on King Lear. They brought George a roasted mealie purchased from a road vendor, which he graciously accepted, but put aside for the child (he still couldn’t think of it as a girl). The twins also brought news that Hillside Dam was spilling, and George resolved to take a walk there after the lesson. The boys had done their homework: they understood the terms ‘synecdoche ’ and ‘ambivalent’, and they had found three examples of paradoxes, all from literature, all indeed from a single text, a play by William Shakespeare called… “Don’t tell me! Macbeth?” “Yes.” The twins dropped their eyes. “And they’re all from the first scene of the play? And you got them from your sister?” “Yes.” Searching the ground outside George’s khaya, for what? Harvester ants? Diamonds? “Now boys,” tut-tutted George, “that is not the way to do research. Can’t you think of a single paradox in life? How about fighting for peace? How about having to kill to live? How about needing light to cast a shadow? Remember the mealie? Have you heard the phrase ‘true lies’, boys? Incidentally, that’s called an oxymoron. It’s what King Lear is about. Remember Edgar’s final words?” The boys nodded and took their eyes off the ground. “‘Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say’. Think about it. If you always said what you felt what would happen to you?” Both boys smiled, then shook their heads. “We would be in big trouble ,” said Skelter. “Big, big trouble,” his brother affirmed. “In general we speak our feelings in private, and what we ought to say in public. It’s how we cope as social animals. We need ritual, to play roles, 69 to dissemble, in short, to lie. When Lear asks his daughters, in a public, not a private place, ‘Which of you shall we say doth love us most’, his older daughters, Goneril and Regan go the ‘ought to’ route, while his youngest, and favourite, daughter, Cordelia, goes the ‘feel’ route. Which route precipitates the terrible tragedies that follow? Of course you wouldn ’t know because you haven’t even read the play yet. But I’ll tell you, boys, it’s the ‘feel’ route. We don’t condemn Cordelia for saying what she feels, but for saying what she feels in a public place: a state room in the palace, filled with courtiers. “At the back of Shakespeare’s mind when he wrote King Lear was a conflict beginning to tear England apart: the Protestants versus the Catholics; Roundheads against Cavaliers –” (George’s thoughts were briefly interrupted by a memory of boarding school where circumcised boys were called ‘roundheads’, and uncircumcised boys were called ‘cavaliers ’). “Have you heard of a gentleman called Sir Francis Walsingham?” The boys shook their heads. “Well, sit down and I’ll give you a bit of necessary historical background, necessary for the partial understanding – it can only ever be partial – of Shakespeare’s greatest play.” The boys made themselves comfortable on the ground while George sat on the step outside his quarters. He had closed the door to his room so that the boys would not discover his secret. “Walsingham created – no boys, don’t take notes – the world’s first Secret Service, the prototype of MI6, the CIA, the KGB, and our own CIO. Walsingham was rabidly antiCatholic . He fled England during Mary Tudor’s reign of terror. She was known as ‘bloody Mary’ because of all the Protestants she had killed. While in Paris he witnessed the massacre of French Protestants on St Bartholomew’s Eve. When Elizabeth, who, like Shakespeare, was a Protestant in the head (what you ought to say) and a Catholic in the heart (what you feel) – which probably explained her capriciousness (Lear, you know, is capricious)… now where was I? Oh yes, when Elizabeth came to the throne, Walsingham returned to England to serve her and soon became Secretary of State. His secret service was dedicated to the sniffing out of Catholic subversives at home and on the continent. At that time a Spanish invasion of England was imminent. Have you heard of the Armada ?” 70 “Yes, we did it in Form 2 with Mrs Drake.” “Any relation to Sir Francis?” “She...