246/365 – A SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY

Word Count: 649

I’m telling you, the man had a parrot named Shakespeare that could speak every line of MacBeth. He stumbled a bit on Much Ado and hated Romeo & Juliet but was halfway through reading Julius Caesar when I first heard him recite at a barbecue at the guy’s house one summer night. All he had to do, the guy said, was read through it once and he’d remember every word. And he was a speed-reader at that; he’d go through a book in a month, less if the guy left the light on in the living room at night.

Frankly, I’ve never been fond of Shakespeare but when this parrot recited it, it was so well done that I’d become enamored with both the narrative and the characters. He seemed to understand each so well and spoke in such fine voice that the words came alive. His intonation was spot-on to add drama to the soliloquies in particular, but his interpretation and understanding of the language Shakespeare used was what involved me to tears.

So I bought a parrot myself. I put King Lear in the cage with him and waited. He pecked at it. I opened it up to the first page. When I came home from work it was still opened to the first page, and covered in parrot shit.

“What are you doing!” I cried. I switched the book to Taming of the Shrew which I’d found more interesting and relative and left that open. Worse! It was shredded as well as shat upon when I got home.

“The parrot next door can read and recite Shakespeare like nobody’s business,” I told him. “Bad parrot! Bad parrot!” I warned.

At the end of the first week I was beside myself. I threw out the desecrated tomes and brought the parrot back where I bought him. I explained my dilemma to the owner and told him that this parrot not only refused to recite, he wouldn’t make any sort of attempt to read.

The man was truly embarrassed and I did feel bad for him. “I think he’s more into horror,” he said, “like Stephen King, you know?” But he promised to keep a lookout for another Shakespearean parrot.

About three months later he did call and I went down to see what he’d gotten in. It was a beautiful female, brilliantly colored, bright-eyed and alert. “Yes, but does she like Shakespeare?” I asked. He poked her with his finger, a gentle nudge just under her breast.

“O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name.
Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love
And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.” *

I paid dearly for her and brought her home. She spouted off from Romeo and Juliet though I did give her other works which she seemed to read at a steady pace though when I asked her, would not repeat. I brought her over to the neighbor’s and he agreed to allow the two to study together for an hour a day. “Remember, he hates Romeo and Juliet and may not like listening to her,” he warned. I agreed to stop the sessions if it annoyed him and she showed no interest in anything but.

About a week later, I woke to pounding compounding the doorbell blaring repeatedly at my front door. Bleary-eyed, I made it down the stairs and threw opened the door to see my neighbor looking very upset in the six a.m. dawn.

“He’s dead! He’s dead!” he shouted and we both turned as one and hurried into my own living room. I threw off the drape and we both saw immediately and knew then the power of prose. Her perch was empty. She lay feet up on the bottom of the cage, cold and still, her breast pierced by a needle.

*William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, 2.2