I like to post something by Shakespeare to commemorate the anniversary of his birth and death every year. It was yesterday — both his birthday and his deathday — and I missed the date, alas. But I’m just not on top of things as well as I’d like to be this week. My school and writing loads are both, at the moment, heavy.

I’ve been thinking about middle school lately, since I’ve got a daughter in the thick of it and my son will embark upon it next year. Middle school is such a traumatic time of life, for nearly everyone. That’s just developmentally where humans are. (I might, in fact, be concerned about someone who didn’t find it awful in at least some ways.)

One monologue that I always come back to is Helena’s indignation from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Like many young person social dramas, a great deal of hurt follows a great deal of misunderstanding. I’m not trying to celebrate that. However, I find this monologue particularly poignant.

In the wonderful film version of this play from 1999, Calista Flockhart makes what might be one of her greatest performances ever, as Helena. She does an amazing job of portraying a young lady with not nearly enough self-respect but a fire in her belly.

***

Injurious Hermia! most ungrateful maid!
Have you conspired, have you with these contrived
To bait me with this foul derision?
Is all the counsel that we two have shared,
The sisters’ vows, the hours that we have spent,
When we have chid the hasty-footed time
For parting us,–O, is it all forgot?
All school-days’ friendship, childhood innocence?
We, Hermia, like two artificial gods,
Have with our needles created both one flower,
Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,
Both warbling of one song, both in one key,
As if our hands, our sides, voices and minds,
Had been incorporate. So we grow together,
Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,
But yet an union in partition;
Two lovely berries moulded on one stem;
So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart;
Two of the first, like coats in heraldry,
Due but to one and crowned with one crest.
And will you rent our ancient love asunder,
To join with men in scorning your poor friend?
It is not friendly, ’tis not maidenly:
Our sex, as well as I, may chide you for it,
Though I alone do feel the injury.

***

Ah, youth. As they say, it is wasted on the young.