“I just decided that I would like to be a person who has read all of Shakespeare’s plays and that was going to be my New Year’s resolution.” Elizabeth Sylvia, Mattapoisett resident and published poet, explained the impetus behind her work.
Working as an English teacher meant she had more than a passing familiarity with the Bard of Avon, but she wanted to dig into his works, “completionist” style. Two years of work later, she has published her first book of poems titled “None but Witches,” itself a line from the play, “A Comedy of Errors.”
“There wasn’t (initially) any writing component to that resolution, but once I started reading the plays …” recalled Sylvia.
The first poem she was inspired to write came while reading “Titus Andronicus,” one of Shakespeare’s bloodier tragedies.
“It’s about the corrosive nature of vengeance and about how good it feels when you’re thinking about revenge but how bad it really is for you in the end. How you destroy the things you love,” explained Sylvia.
Vengeance is certainly a powerful notion and one worth putting pen to paper for. But as Sylvia continued through Shakespeare’s works, the urge to write only grew. Finally, after realizing she had 28 poems from the catalog already, she decided to go all in.
“It morphed into a writing project because I was so … not even necessarily inspired. Sometimes I was inspired, but other times I was actually kind of irritated or frustrated or angry with the situations Shakespeare created, especially for a lot of his female characters.”
Overall, Sylvia wanted to pay more attention to the women in Shakespeare’s plays, whether that be the popularly mourned figures like Juliet and Ophelia, those strong-willed and outspoken types like Beatrice or the outright schemers like Lady Macbeth. When it comes to her style, Sylvia noted that while she was inspired by Shakespeare’s works, she didn’t want to try to sound like him.
“A lot of the poems inhabit… not a world of Shakespeare, but a contemporary world that’s influenced by the things I read,” Sylvia said. “Some of the poems are about my own experience, some of them are more ideas driven, some of them are really about the plays. So there’s really a range there.”
Using her own voice and style meant eschewing iambic pentameter. “I deliberately said when I was working on this project that I was not going to write any sonnets… because I know that I can’t write Shakespeare better than Shakespeare could write himself. But I don’t think any writer could spend two years reading Shakespeare, who was so inventive with language and so complex with language and so free to move the pieces of language around without being influenced by that kind of… diversity and seniority of language.”
Still, when it comes to the Bard, she was emphatic that his works were for everyone.
“If you want to read Shakespeare, I would say just do it,” said Sylvia. “And especially since the pandemic, there have been some fantastic kind of… mostly audio with a little bit of video presentations on YouTube, where wonderful stage actors have staged sort of ‘Zoom Shakespeares.’ So if you don’t want to read, be a listener.”
Much like poetry, hearing Shakespeare perform rather than reading it off the page can be an entirely new experience, bringing depth to words a reader might otherwise have glanced over.
“I think the misconception of Shakespeare is that you have to be really smart to enjoy Shakespeare,” said Sylvia. “Shakespeare, especially when performed, was by intention made to appeal to a wide variety of audiences. And sometimes that is fat jokes and sexual innuendos and ridiculous things happening.”
Some of his fat jokes were in fact the inspiration for one of her poems called “Nell’s Own.”
“I think (“Nell’s Own” is) one of my favorites, and it’s been a crowd favorite too,” she said.
The eponymous Nell is a character from “A Comedy of Errors.” She never actually appears on stage; instead, her appearance is described as a source of mockery. “Basically, there’s almost two entire pages of the play in which two characters laugh about how fat she is,” said Sylvia. Unsatisfied with Shakespeare’s attempt at getting a cheap laugh, Sylvia took a crack at reclaiming the narrative.
“I wrote a poem from her perspective… turning all that mockery around into a source of power.”
The offhanded body shaming isn’t the only critique she levels against the full folio.
“Shakespeare was a product of his time,” she noted, for better or for worse. “As much as he transcended his time, which I think he also did, I think the idea of personal will, especially when it came to young women, was not something that he espoused.”
Certainly, social attitudes have changed since Shakespeare’s time, though many of his works and characters continue to be thematically relevant and emotionally relatable.
For Sylvia, the character closest to her heart is Audrey, a simple goatherd from “As You Like It.” While much of the play is about nobility fleeing their riches to live in the woods, Audrey regards her farm life as something to escape from. When the opportunity presents itself, Audrey marries the royal clown – yes, clown – without hesitation, moving into the ranks of minor nobility and leaving behind her role as a goatherd.
“I always think of her as a character Shakespeare would have written for people like him, who moved to London from the countryside and were really excited to be… exposed to all of these experiences that they wouldn’t otherwise have had,” Sylvia explained.
Small-town life might be charming in our current digital age, but back before indoor plumbing one could understand the appeal of a metropolitan lifestyle.
When asked what other characters struck a particular chord with her, she named various mothers from Shakespeare’s early historical plays due to their repeated and inevitable loss.
“(They’re) trying to ensure the safety of their children in a world where everything is so much out of their control,” she explained, noting that if there was a mother present, one or more of her children were bound to come to a grisly end, and how that impacted her. “I think when you’re a mom you feel that way. Like you want everything to go right for your kids and you just… like there are so many things that you don’t have any power over.
“My kids are not in any danger of being beheaded, but I think that feeling of ‘How can I keep them safe when I just don’t have the power to be able to do that?’ is something that any mom can connect to.”
Sylvia’s connection occurred at the same time as the separation of families at the U.S.-Mexican border. The televised mourning of mothers trying to find their children, she felt, was reflected in the stories she now read, further deepening the emotion she found in them, something she attempted to capture in her anthology.
Those interested in hearing more of Sylvia’s work can attend the reading at the Mattapoisett Public Library on Saturday, October 22, at 2:00 pm. Author Wendy Drexler will also be reading poems from her work “Notes from the Column of Memory,” which should please fans of sonnets, as it contains several around the central themes of time, family and memory.
In closing, Sylvia offered this bit of simple advice to aspiring bards.
“If you want to write poetry, then I would say write poetry.” She also mentioned her own poetry group, which she cited as a huge source of support and encouragement through her writing process. “I think the number-one thing people interested in writing poetry should do is find other people to write with.”
By Jack MC Staier