In the English I Honors classes I teach, I work with some really bright, really thoughtful kids, and I get to do some really fun things with them, like introduce them to Shakespeare with Romeo and Juliet. One of the most confusing passages for readers is Mercutio’s long Queen Mab speech, which begins:
O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep;
Her wagon-spokes made of long spiders’ legs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
The traces of the smallest spider’s web,
The collars of the moonshine’s watery beams,
Her whip of cricket’s bone, the lash of film,
Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat,
Not so big as a round little worm
Prick’d from the lazy finger of a maid;
To help with their understanding by forcing them to read it line by line, I have them draw a picture of Queen Mab. In the past, they’ve come up with some striking examples.
This year, one young man was particularly persistent on one small detail: “Mr. Scott,” he began, “how can she have a whip made of a cricket’s bone? Crickets don’t have bones; they have exoskeletons.”
Smart aleck…