8. A TOUCH OF THE BARD

I arrived back in Costa Rica by plane. I flew in one of those two bit machines that jump and bump through the sky like a toy plane in the wind. It's fun until you realise that crashing into long grass is not an option and your dad won't fix it for you. We flew over volcanoes and strange water systems that looked from above like little rivulets made on the beach after the tide has gone. After we had touched down I sat for a bit until my mind had landed too. But before I came round I was approached by a man who was loading bags of luggage. He parked the trolley a metre from me, looked from side to side as if to check he was not being watched and then crouched down and started to whisper.
‘Hello, you speaka Eenglish?’ he said.
‘Yes I do.’
‘OK, please you do me a favour mister.’
Oh no. I wasn’t thinking straight and wasn’t ready to fend for myself.
‘I would like to come to know you.’ he said
‘Oh’
He looked around again and then knelt closer. He produced a book from his overcoat.
‘Please you teach me Shakespeare.'
'Shakespeare?'
'I learn it very good.’ I took the book from his hands.
‘You need to learn THIS?! Hamlet?’
‘ ‘Ere I learn it, else twas a tragedy. Yes indeed’
‘Oh dear, I see.’
‘Am finding it most difficult and unprofitable. Maybe your kind sir could help me.’
‘Well…look…’
Before I could find an excuse he ran off to attend to a large item of luggage leaving me with the book like some unexploded bomb. He walked back past me with a plastic box containing a labrador called MICHAELANGELO that was going to Bern, Switzerland. He returned a minute later.
‘Yes, I would like your Englishman’s help, good sir’
'Look I am not really-'
'Please hold your peace, it is thees here that is hard'



He showed me the passage he was having trouble with. Poor bastards, why do they teach old English before the new English. They should read Nick Hornby surely.
‘Please can you read this for me.’ He must have picked up a look from the Labrador because I suddenly felt sorry for him as though he needed letting out from a cage.
‘Well…. Ok… let me see ‘Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew..’ Well this is Hamlet talking to the audience about how awful the world is’ I found myself starting to translate it for him into more obvious words. ‘You see he is really very depressed, you know sad, and he hopes that he might disappear…’

My arms starting gesturing, I grappled with the poetry to make it more accessible, explaining bit by bit the conflicting motivations and tangled emotions of the young prince. Now, I should add, I studied Hamlet for A-Level so I had some vague recollection of the passage. It’s where Hamlet is pretty down (he’s always down of course) but he’s found out his mother’s started shagging his dead father’s brother and that’s really not helped his state of mind a great deal. I never got into Shakespeare at all. It was all too stilted and getting meaning from it was like wringing water from an old frilly white shirt. But here I was with a Costa Rican luggage handler finding a new appreciation for the bard. There was not a word out of place, Shakespeare the clever fucker. Not one word that did not push things forward. Why the change in my understanding? Maybe its because I’ve been doing some writing and have come to appreciate language better, or maybe its just time passing. Its time passing I think. You learn things when you are young but feel they disappear. In fact they trickle down into the recesses of your mind and one day, when you stumble across that cave with a luggage handler from San Jose you see the trickle has become a stalactite, glistening and something solid to touch. How nice.

I became theatrical. He had to stand back to stop being hit by my extended arm movement.
‘’With dexterous speed to these incestuous sheets’……yes, yes, that means… well ‘dexterous’ refers to hands or fingers, being too skilful, like a thief you see, someone that could open all these bags, but it’s a metaphor of course, emphasising how cunning the mother’s sexual desire is… ‘How weary, stale flat and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of the world….tis an unweeded garden’…well all these words are about his depression and how useless everything seems, tired and dead and flat…you know, a garden that is overgrown’
‘A garden that is overgrown. It very beautiful no sir?’
‘Well not really. Its gone off you see. Like bad cheese. Really not a nice garden at all.’
‘Yes, yes, I understand. Hamlet has gone off in his head. Like bad cheese! Oh how you could be my English teacher! Like bad cheese!’
‘Steady on old chap.’
‘Steady on old chap?’
‘It mean’s to calm down.’
‘Oh very good, calm down. You are a most excellent teacher!'
'Am I?'
'Yes, yes, most dextrous!'
'Why thank you.'