When I was thirteen/fourteen I listened to Shakespeare plays on the radio of Mrs. Purcell, the blind woman next door. She told me Shakespeare was an Irishman ashamed of what he came from. A fuse blew the night we listened to Julius Caesar and I was so eager to find out what happened to Brutus and Mark Antony I went to O’Mahony’s Bookshop to get the rest of the story. A sales clerk in the shop asked me in a superior way if it was my intention to buy that book and I told him I was thinking about it but first I’d have to find out what happened to everyone in the end, especially the one I liked, Brutus. The man said never mind Brutus, pulled the book away from me and said this was not a library and would I kindly leave. I backed into the street embarrassed and blushing and wondering at the same time why people won’t stop bothering people. Even when I was small, eight or nine, I wondered why people won’t stop bothering people and I’ve been wondering ever since.
The book was nineteen shillings, half a week’s wages. I wish I could say I bought it because of my profound interest in Shakespeare. It wasn’t that way at all. I had to have it because of a film I saw where an American soldier in England went around spouting Shakespeare and all the girls fell madly in love with him. Also, if you even hint that you read Shakespeare, people give you that look of respect. I thought if I learned long passages I’d impress the girls of New York. I already knew “Friends, Romans, countrymen,” but when I said it to a girl in Limerick she gave me a curious look as if I were coming down with something.
Going up O’Connell Street I wanted to unwrap my package and let the world see me with Shakespeare in my oxter but I didn’t have the nerve. I passed the small theater where I once saw a traveling company perform Hamlet and remembered how I felt sorry for myself for the way I’d suffered like him. At the end of the play that night Hamlet himself returned to the stage to tell the audience how grateful he and the cast were for our attendance and how weary he was, he and the cast, and how much they’d appreciate our help in the form of small change, which we could deposit in the lard tin by the door. I was so moved by the play because so much of it was about me and my gloomy life that I dropped sixpence into the lard tin and wished I could have attached a note to let Hamlet know who I was and how my suffering was real and not just in a play.
Next day I delivered a telegram to Hanratty’s Hotel and there was the cast from Hamlet, drinking and singing in the bar while a porter ran back and forth loading a van with their luggage. Hamlet himself sat alone at the end of the bar, sipping his glass of whiskey, and I don’t know where the courage came from but I said hello to him. After all, we both had been betrayed by our mothers and our suffering was great. The world would never know about mine and I envied him for the way he was able to express his anguish every night. Hello, I said, and he stared at me with two black eyes under black eyebrows in a white face. He had all those words from Shakespeare in his head but now he kept them there and I blushed like a fool and tripped over my feet.
I rode my bicycle up O’Connell Street in a state of shame. Then I remembered the sixpence dropped into the lard tin, sixpence that paid for their whiskey and singing at Hanratty’s Bar, and I wanted to go back and confront the whole cast and Hamlet himself and tell them what I thought of them with their false stories of weariness and the way they drank the money of poor people.
Let the sixpence go. If I went back they’d surely throw Shakespeare words at me and Hamlet would stare at me again with his cold black eyes. I’d have no words for that and I’d look foolish if I tried staring back at him with my red eyes.
My students said spending all that money on a Shakespeare book was dumb, no disrespect intended, and if I wanted to make an impression on people why didn’t I go to the library and copy down all the quotes? Also, you’d have to be pretty dumb to be impressed with a guy just because he quoted this old writer that no one could read anyway. Sometimes they have these Shakespeare plays on TV and you can’t understand a word, so what’s the use? The money I paid for the book could have been spent on something cool like shoes or a nice jacket or, you know, taking a girl to the movies.
Some girls said that was real cool the way I used Shakespeare to make an impression on people though they wouldn’t know what I was talking about. Why did Shakespeare have to write in that old language nobody could understand? Why?
I couldn’t answer. They said again, Why? I felt trapped but all I could do was to tell them I didn’t know. If they waited I’d try to find out. They looked at one another. The teacher doesn’t know? How could that be? Is he for real? Wow. How did he get to be a teacher?
Hey, teacher man, you got any more stories?
No, no, no.
You keep saying no, no, no.
That’s it. No more stories. This is an English class. Parents are complaining.
Aw, man. Mr. McCourt, you ever in the army? You fight in Korea?
I never thought much of my life but I went on doling out bits and pieces of it, my father’s drinking, days in Limerick slums when I dreamed of America, Catholicism, drab days in New York, and I was surprised that New York teenagers asked for more.
I told them that after my two years in the army the GI Bill helped me doze through four years at New York University. I worked nights to supplement my allowance from the government. I could have attended part time, but I was eager to graduate and impress the world and women with my degree and my college knowledge. I was expert at making excuses for late papers and missed exams. I shuffled and mumbled the mishaps of my life to patient professors, hinted at great sadnesses. The Irish accent helped. I lived on the edge of faith and begorrah.
University librarians poked me when I snored behind a stack of books. One librarian told me snoozing was strictly forbidden. She was kind enough to suggest that out in Washington Square Park there was no end of benches where I could stretch till the cops came. I thanked her and told her how I’d always admired librarians, not only for their mastery of the Dewey Decimal System, but for their helpfulness in other areas of daily living.
The professor of education at New York University warned us about our teaching days ahead. He said first impressions are crucial. He said, The way you meet and greet your first class might determine the course of your whole career. Your whole career. They’re watching you. You’re watching them. You’re dealing with American teenagers, a dangerous species, and they’ll show you no mercy. They’ll take your measure and they’ll decide what to do with you. You think you’re in control? Think again. They’re like heat-seeking
missiles. When they go after you they’re following a primal instinct. It is the function of the young to get rid of their elders, to make room on the planet. You know that, don’t you? The Greeks knew it. Read the Greeks.
The professor said that before your students enter the room you must have decided where you’ll be—“posture and placement”—and who you’ll be—“identity and image.” I never knew teaching could be that complicated. He said, You simply cannot teach unless you know where to position yourself physically. That classroom can be your battleground or your playground. And you have to know who you are. Remember Pope: “Know thyself, presume not God to scan / The proper study of mankind is man.” First day of your teaching you are to stand at your classroom door and let your students know how happy you are to see them. Stand, I say. Any playwright will tell you that when the actor sits down the play sits down. The best move of all is to establish yourself as a presence and to do it outside in the hallway. Outside, I say. That’s your territory and when you’re out there you’ll be seen as a strong teacher, fearless, ready to face the swarm. That’s what a class is, a swarm. And you’re a warrior teacher. It’s something people don’t think about. Your territory is like your aura, it goes with you everywhere, in the hallways, on the stairs and, assuredly, in the classroom. Never let them invade