Day 49.5: Brutus' Harlot - hELArious Lizzy

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SWBAT…make it through Friday without being eaten by English teacher.

Today was a fun Friday – thank goodness. This crazy week deserved it. My afternoon classes watched the Julius Caesar movie in place of acting (too crazy for a pep rally Friday) and we paused periodically to examine what we were seeing. It wasn’t until 7th period I figured out how to put on subtitles – that would’ve made life easier about two months ago. Anyway, I assigned my kids the role of marriage counselor, because we were watching the end of Act II Scene 1 and the beginning of scene 2. At the end of the first scene, Brutus’ wife Portia (no, dear tenth graders, NOT the car) begs her husband to tell her what is going on, and who the men were who visited them in the dead of night. In Scene 2, Caesar’s wife Calpurnia tried and failed to convince Caesar to stay home March 15 after having a horrific dream in which Caesar is murdered. The kids’ job was to compare the two relationships, using dialogue, physical proximity, and camera angles as evidence.

Their favorite part of the class was when I said “whore” two or three times. Brutus and Portia have a very strong, respectful, loving marriage; it is obvious by the way she stands up to him and the way he responds to her pleas. When he says he does not wish to share what is bothering him, she reasons that because of his marriage vows, his respect for her intelligence, and her role as his wife and other half, she should know what is going on. I love her speech:

“Within the bond of marriage, tell me, Brutus,
Is it excepted I should know no secrets
That appertain to you? Am I yourself
But, as it were, in sort or limitation,
To keep with you at meals, comfort your bed,
And talk to you sometimes? Dwell I but in the suburbs
Of your good pleasure? If it be no more,
Portia is Brutus’ harlot, not his wife.”

I asked the kids what a harlot was, and there was silence – many of them knew but were afraid to say words like “prostitute” or “hooker” out loud in fear of getting in trouble. So I summarized: “Brutus, if I am not treated like your wife, I might as well be your whore.” Once they got over the initial shock and uneasy chuckling that always follow a teacher saying inappropriate things, I asked them, “We know Brutus is an extremely honorable man and well-respected. How do you think it made him feel to know his wife felt like she was treated like his whore?” They reasoned that it was probably quite a blow to his sense of masculinity and husbandry, and indeed Brutus promised to tell Portia everything.

The following scene in the film starts with Calpurnia shrieking in bed that Caesar is murdered. Instead of comforting his wife and assuring her that he was in fact alive, Caesar’s first inclination is to call for a sacrifice. When Calpurnia begs him to stay home, he pretty much says, “Hell no woman!” (they liked that too) and only relents to make her stop nagging. At Decius Brutus’ suggestion that Calpurnia’s dream is in fact a prediction of Caesar’s power over and love from the Roman people, Caesar blows off his wife and goes to work anyway (epic fail on his part). Caesar and Calpurnia don’t touch the entire scene. The kids decided that if Calpurnia had pulled a Portia and said, “I’m not your wife, I’m your whore!” Caesar might have said something like, “Well, you can’t have my kids anyway, so what’s the difference?” I think the only vocab word my kids will retain from this entire play is the word “barren”, poor Calpurnia. They don’t have too much pity for Caesar. He is, after all, the tragic hero. I imagine his death on Monday will be a relief for many of them.

If you’d like to see Act II Scene 2 performed by high schoolers with puppets, see below, because, well, why not?