memories...
Dec. 11th, 2011 09:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smg01I had some really great teachers in school. Last night I was remembering a story about my high school Shakespeare teacher. Mrs. Fambrough was short, a little stocky. Tended to wear semi-dramatic jewelry. A classmate once mentioned how you would look at her outfits and think that they shouldn't work, but somehow they did and they looked fantastic. She had kind of a flat, nasal voice. A sly sense of humor. And complete control of a class.
One day, as we were doing Henry IV, part one, she related this story. It'll be obvious fairly quickly, at least in part, where it's going to go, but I don't think it suffers for.
She described the day a number of years previous that she was teaching a freshman class. They were in either new or temporary classrooms--I can't remember the exact circumstances, but the upshot was that there were no clocks in the rooms. (I bet you can guess where this might be going.)
On that day, she gave a rousing lesson on subject-verb agreement. At the end, she asked if anyone had questions. One boy's hand immediately shot up:
"Yes?"
"What time is it?"
Mrs. Fambrough shook her head and then told us what happened next:
"So I fixed him with my Fambrough eye and I said:
What a devil hast thou to do with the time of the
day? Unless hours were cups of sack and minutes
capons and clocks the tongues of bawds and dials the
signs of leaping-houses and the blessed sun himself
a fair hot wench in flame-coloured taffeta, I see no
reason why thou shouldst be so superfluous to demand
the time of the day."
"Nobody ever asked me what time it was again."
She went on: "He probably went home that night and said that his teacher didn't let people ask questions. The truth is, we love questions. It's just stupid questions that we don't like."
It's been well over twenty years and that story still makes me smile. Mrs. Fambrough was a hell of a teacher.
One day, as we were doing Henry IV, part one, she related this story. It'll be obvious fairly quickly, at least in part, where it's going to go, but I don't think it suffers for.
She described the day a number of years previous that she was teaching a freshman class. They were in either new or temporary classrooms--I can't remember the exact circumstances, but the upshot was that there were no clocks in the rooms. (I bet you can guess where this might be going.)
On that day, she gave a rousing lesson on subject-verb agreement. At the end, she asked if anyone had questions. One boy's hand immediately shot up:
"Yes?"
"What time is it?"
Mrs. Fambrough shook her head and then told us what happened next:
"So I fixed him with my Fambrough eye and I said:
What a devil hast thou to do with the time of the
day? Unless hours were cups of sack and minutes
capons and clocks the tongues of bawds and dials the
signs of leaping-houses and the blessed sun himself
a fair hot wench in flame-coloured taffeta, I see no
reason why thou shouldst be so superfluous to demand
the time of the day."
"Nobody ever asked me what time it was again."
She went on: "He probably went home that night and said that his teacher didn't let people ask questions. The truth is, we love questions. It's just stupid questions that we don't like."
It's been well over twenty years and that story still makes me smile. Mrs. Fambrough was a hell of a teacher.
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no subject
Date: 2011-12-12 03:59 am (UTC)HAHAHAHAHA Shakespeare brings it.
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Date: 2011-12-12 04:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-12 12:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-13 04:46 am (UTC)