Tell Tale: Short Stories

A blank look appeared on the young man’s face, and he clearly wanted to sit down.

“‘The first thing we do,’” said Dr. Burbage, “‘let’s kill all the lawyers.’”

This was greeted with laughter and a smattering of applause, as the questioner sank back in his place. But they hadn’t given up yet, because another foot soldier quickly took his place.

Now is the winter of our discontent.

“Too easy, move on,” she said, as another soldier bit the dust to allow the next brave soul to advance over his fallen comrades. But one look at this particular young man, and Dr. Burbage knew she was in trouble. He was clearly at home on the battlefield, his bayonet fixed, and ready for the charge. He spoke softly, without once referring to the text.

Take but degree away, untune that sting, And, hark, what discord follows! Each thing meets …

She couldn’t remember the play the lines were from, and she certainly wasn’t able to complete the verse, but he’d made a mistake that just might rescue her.

“Wrong word,” she said firmly. “Not sting, but string. Next?” she added, confident that no one would doubt she could have delivered the next four lines. She would have to look up the scene once she was back in the safety of her room.

Dr. Burbage stared defiantly down at a broken army in retreat, but still their commanding officer refused to surrender. Lowell stood among the fallen, undaunted, unbowed, but she suspected he only had one bullet left in his barrel.

The painful warrior famoused for fight,

After a thousand victories once foil’d—,

She smiled, and said:

—Is from the book of honour razed quite,

And all the rest forgot for which he toil’d.

“Can you tell me the number of the sonnet, Mr. Lowell?”

Lowell just stood there, like a man facing the firing squad, as his fallen comrades looked on in despair. But in her moment of triumph, Margaret Alice Burbage allowed her pride to get the better of her.

“‘I would challenge you to a battle of wits,’ Mr. Lowell, ‘but I see you are unarmed.’”

The students burst out laughing, and she felt ashamed.

* * *

Professor Burbage looked down at her class.

“If I may be allowed to leave you with a single thought,” she said. “It has been my life’s mission to introduce fertile and receptive minds to the greatest poet and playwright that ever lived in the tide of times. However, I have come to realize in old age that Will was also the greatest storyteller of them all, and in this, my final lecture, I shall attempt to make my case.

“If we had all been visiting London in 1595, when I would have been a whore or a lady-in-waiting—often the same thing…” Professor Burbage had to wait for the laughter to die down before she could continue, “I would have taken you to the Globe Theatre on Cheapside to see the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, and for a penny, we could have stood among a thousand groundlings to watch my great ancestor Richard Burbage give you his Romeo. Of course we would have marveled at the poetry, been entranced by the verse, but I would suggest that it would have been the tale that would have had you on the edge of your seats as we all waited to find out what was going to happen to our hero and his Juliet. What modern playwright would dare to poison the heroine, only to bring her back to life to find her lover, thinking she was dead, has taken his own life, and she, no longer wanting to live, stabs herself? Of course, we are all familiar with the story of Romeo and Juliet, but if there are those among you who have not read all thirty-seven plays, or seen them performed, you now have a unique opportunity to find out if I’m right. However, I wouldn’t bother with The Two Noble Kinsmen, as I’m not altogether convinced Shakespeare wrote it.”

She looked at her enthralled audience, and waited only for a moment before she broke the spell.

“On a higher note, I would also suggest that if Shakespeare were alive today, Hollywood would insist on a happy ending to Romeo and Juliet, with the two star-crossed lovers standing on the prow of Drake’s Golden Hind staring out into the sunset.”

It was some time before the laughter and applause died down, and she was able to continue.

“And as for the politically correct, what would the New York Times have made of a fourteen-year-old boy having sex with a thirteen-year-old girl on Broadway?”

While the professor waited for the applause to die down, she turned to the last page of her notes.

“And so, ladies and gentlemen, despite this being my final lecture, you will not escape without attempting the Burbage witch test to discover who among you is a genuine scholar.” An exaggerated groan went up around the room, which she ignored. “I shall now read a couplet from one of Shakespeare’s plays, in the hope that one of the brighter ones among you will give me the next three lines.” She looked up and smiled at her audience, to be met with apprehensive looks.

For time is like a fashionable host

That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand.