by Ian Doescher
CHER
—Two piles
Created I, dividing them in twain.
Was’t incorrect?
CLERK
—We must redo it wholly!
Art thou an idiot, thou fawning lout?
JOSH
She did not know—I bid thee watch thy words.
I’ll not have thee abuse her cruelly.
CLERK
She set us back another day or more!
When no one looks for the September call,
She spends her time thereon! We are undone!
CHER
Apologies.
CLERK
—Forget what thou hast done
And take thine empty head unto the mall.
[Cher walks aside, crying.
JOSH
[to clerk:] What is thy problem, clack dish? Wherefore be
Ye so unkind unto this harmless lass?
CLERK
I shall be fir’d since she moronic is.
JOSH
She is no moron. If thou sett’st thy mind
Upon what thou hadst been assign’d, ’twould not
Have happen’d—say thou moron only if
Thou shalt look in the mirror and so speak.
CLERK
If thou wert working ’stead of wooing, she
Would not be such a bother hereabout.
[The clerk packs up his things to leave.
JOSH
What baseless accusation’s this, thou rogue?
CLERK
Thou knowest what I mean precisely, Josh—
This is a multimillion ducat case,
Not thine excuse to play at puppy love.
JOSH
We have work’d steadily upon this suit,
With steadfast purpose and unflagging toil.
CLERK
Now thou and she may toil howe’er ye shall—
And work upon your purpose of romance—
For my part, I shall sickness claim today.
[Exit clerk. Josh approaches Cher and sits next to her.
CHER
Is’t true I have destroy’d the lawsuit whole?
JOSH
Nay, for destruction thou art suited not.
CHER
Did I, then, set him back beyond all hope?
So much work still remaineth to be done,
And he can ill afford to lose this time.
JOSH
Put all thy hopes on me, thy loser friend,
For through my care the work may yet be done.
The matter shall not make his spirit ill;
No time or labor shall be lost, I swear.
Canst thou imagine what the blackguard spake?
To make thee worry needlessly, as he
Did, was an action most detestable.
’Twas his fault that the work was not fulfill’d,
Yet he would blame us for flirtatiousness.
Imagine saying we were—well, thou know’st.
CHER
Thou knowest well, and have devoted been
Unto this case—no fault or blame could e’er
Fall on thy shoulders, thou who labor’st so.
JOSH
The case hath been an opportunity
For me to learn more of the law’s delays,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of th’unworthy takes.
For I, who one day hopes to lawyer be,
’Twas an experience profound and useful.
Thou, though, hath not a need to labor thus.
Go out and spend thy days in carefree joy—
Unto the mall fly with thy merry friends
And gather thee thy rosebuds whilst thou may.
CHER
Belike thou think’st ’tis all I ever do,
To pass my days in joyful merriment—
Experienc’d in spending, nothing more,
A harpy with her father’s ducats arm’d.
JOSH
Nay, prithee, ’twas not mine intent at all.
Thou—er. I…um. We—ha. [Aside:] My functions fail,
As though I were a fish who play’d the harp.
[To Cher:] Thou, Cher, art young and passing beautiful,
And I—
CHER
—And thou?
JOSH
—And I, um, er. Well…what?
CHER
Thou think’st me beautiful? Those were thy words,
The few I heard amidst the gibbering.
JOSH
An ounce of beauty hast thou. Yea, or two.
In faith, thou knowest thou art gorgeous, Cher—
A face that would make Helen envious.
Thou also art most popular, thy clique
Surrounding thee an ’twere a swarm of bees,
And thou the queen who sits as centerpiece.
Yet—O! I almost did forget myself,
For this—what quoth I of thy beauty rare—
Is not the reason wherefore I have come
Expending ev’ry day in working here.
For I, who one day hopes to lawyer be,
’Twas an experience profound and useful.
CHER
Those were thy words already, moments hence—
If thou repeat’st thyself, learn not new lines,
Another player may be call’d upon
To act the part of lover, sighing like furnace.
JOSH
No other player seek, for I am he,
Yet must remember why I hither came:
Mel. I am here for Mel, for he alone
Doth care about me in this ruthless world.
CHER
Nay, ’tis not so. Melodramatic be
Thou not, and seek not others for this scene,
For thy world doth contain abundant care—
My father’s not alone in loving thee.
JOSH
O, he is not?
CHER
—Nay.
JOSH
—Dare I one word more?
Do thy words mean thou car’st for me as well?
CHER
More care have I than I could ever tell.
[They kiss joyfully. Exeunt.
A wedding.
Enter BALTHASAR on balcony.
BALTHASAR
[singing:] Faithfully guarded, remain ye behind,
The blessing of love shall preserve you!
Triumphant courage, love, and happiness,
Connect under faith that shall serve you!
You champion of youth, remain!
You ornament of splendor, reign!
See now the splendors of the wedding feast,
And know you delights of the heart!
Sweet-smelling room, which was deck’d for romance, Proclaimeth the strength of love’s art!
You champion of youth, &c.
Enter LADY TOBY GEIST and MASTER WENDELL HALL, arrayed as bride and groom, with their backs to the audience. Enter MINISTER.
Enter CHER, aside. Enter DIONNE, TAI, JOSH, MURRAY, TRAVIS, AMBER, LADY STOEGER, and various GUESTS aside, seated.
CHER
’Tis plain to see what would, thereafter, hap—
Yet think ye not it is my nuptials!
As if! As if I, but sixteen, would wed,
As if it were Kentucky where I dwell,
As if we quickly play’d the wedding bells,
As if I ready were for such commitment.
MINISTER
Now wife and husband! Ye may gladly kiss.
[Lady Geist and Master Hall kiss.
All begin moving toward tables to sit.
TRAVIS
A stirring ceremony, truly.
TAI
Sweet Travis, paramour—thou art so right.
STOEGER
[aside:] How my mind serious and body strong
Do love the romance of a wedding day!
TAI
[to Dionne:] When I have mine own wedding, some sweet day,
A grand motif of flowers I desire,
With garlands to surround my bridely frame—
DIONNE
Nay, nay. When I am wed, I plan to wear
A sailor’s dress—yet made to be a gown—
My bridesmaids all adorn’d in sailors’ hats.
MURRAY
[to Travis and Josh:] They plan our weddings far too soon, methinks.
[To the women:] I pray, cease thy “’Til death do us part” noise—
’Tis mumbo jumbo ’til we older are—
It fills my head with bugs.
JOSH
—Yea. Bugs. Me, too.
[All laugh.
STOEGER
Girls, quickly come—our Lady Geist shall throw
The nuptial bouquet, which doth portend
Who shall stand next upon the wedding dais.
[Dionne and Tai follow her to where Lady Geist prepares to throw the bouquet.
JOSH
[to Cher:] We menfolk have a wager over who
Shall capture the bouquet when it is thrown—
Two hundred ducats is the current sum.
CHER
Leave it to me, my love—’tis mine in sooth.
[Cher follows to where the bouquet will be thrown.
GEIST
Pray, gather ye around. ’Tis throwing time!
[Lady Geist throws the bouquet, which Cher initially catches. In confusion, all stumble and fall together. Cher emerges with it.
MURRAY
Are not our ladies humorous, my friends?
JOSH
Yea, and their loveliness knows naught of ends.
[Cher returns to Josh and they kiss. Exeunt omnes.
Enter JANE, a narrator.
JANE
The wedding was like other weddings where
The parties have no taste for finery
Or crude parades. Yet, Amber—most unfair—
Declar’d it shabby unrefinedly.
In spite of these perceived deficiencies—
Too few lace veils, for satin small expense—
This counter’d all the insufficiencies:
The wishes, hopes, predictions, confidence
Of this small band of true friends who came nigh
To witness ceremony and communion,
Which all, in turn, were fully answer’d by
The perfect happiness of their sweet union.
Here is our end, conclusion, and finis—
In love, friends, may ye no more clueless be.
[Exit.
END.
Could I write a Pop Shakespeare series and not include Clueless? As if!
I first saw Clueless sometime in the late ’90s—if not in the theater, then shortly after. High school—which was formative for my love of Shakespeare—introduced me to Jane Austen; we read Pride and Prejudice in my junior year. As someone who has always been intrigued (this won’t surprise you) by modern adaptations of the classics, Clueless—which is based on Austen’s novel Emma—was right up my alley. Its enduring popularity makes it a great addition to the Pop Shakespeare series. (In preparation for writing this book, I watched Clueless and then read Emma for good measure.)
This is the first love story I’ve adapted, if by a love story we mean one that ends when lovers come together. The plot is probably closer to one Shakespeare might have created than any of my other books. Therefore, I decided early on that this book would be written as though it could take place in Shakespeare’s time. Although Clueless contains cell phones, computers, cars, TVs, and so on, William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Clueless strips away the technology to leave a tale that could have been written in the 1600s. Mostly. There are still anachronisms—the characters talk about Jason Priestly, the mall, and Beverly Hills—but the setting is the turn of the seventeenth century. I confess that winding the clock backward on the story leads to a few odd moments. In the movie, after Cher is robbed she calls Josh from a pay phone; in my adaptation, he happens along just when she needs him.
I embellished the script of Clueless so that nearly every line has additional content and Shakespearean turns of phrase. As a result, this is my longest Shakespearean-style adaptation of a film, even though Clueless is shorter than most movies I’ve adapted. Only one character has a unique way of speaking; Travis, who is not known for his smarts, has just nine syllables in each of his lines of iambic pentameter. (Devoted readers know that I did the same thing with Jar Jar Binks.) It bears mentioning that I also needed a Shakespearean equivalent to the phrase “As if!” I made each “As if!” from the movie into an anaphora, a device in which multiple lines start with the same words.
Two new characters appear in my adaptation. Balthasar—named for the character of Much Ado About Nothing who sings “Sigh no more, ladies”—provides the music. Clueless is the first movie I’ve adapted that has a soundtrack composed almost entirely of popular music, and the regular appearance of Balthasar is my way of featuring the film’s songs. Jane, the narrator who gives the prologue and epilogue, is my nod to Jane Austen. Strangely, William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Clueless is an adaptation of an adaptation, and as a lifelong reader of Jane Austen I wanted to pay homage to the story’s original creator. Jane’s words are adapted directly from the beginning and end of Emma. (Of course, the wedding my epilogue mentions is the marriage of Lady Geist and Master Hall, not that of Emma and Mr. Knightley.)
Until next time, readers. I hope you enjoyed this merry detour into the ’90s.
The 1590s, that is.
Thank you for being you: Jennifer Creswell, Liam Creswell, Graham Doescher, and J. Thomas.
Thank you for family: Bob and Beth Doescher, and Erik, Em, Aracelli, and Addison Doescher. Holly Havens, and Mona and Roland Havens. Jeff and Caryl Creswell, Joel Creswell, Sibyl Siegfried, and their daughter Sophie, and Katherine Creswell and Spencer Nietmann.
Thank you for friends: Josh Hicks, Alexis Kaushansky, and their daughter Ruby. Tom George and Kristin Gordon George. Apricot, David, Isaiah, and Oak Irving. Chloe Ackerman and Graham Steinke. Lucy Neary, Melody Burton, Jeannette Ehmke, Ali Wesley, and Jerryn Johnston. Heidi Altman and Scott Roehm, Chris and Andrea Martin, Naomi Walcott and Audu Besmer, and Ethan Youngerman and Rebecca Lessem. Emily, Josiah, and Bryony Carminati, Helga, Michael, Isabella, and Lottie Scott, and Ryan, Nicole, Mackinzie, Audrey and Lily Warne-McGraw. Travis Boeh and Sarah Woodburn, Chris Buehler and Marian Hammond, Erin and Nathan Buehler, Anne Huebsch, Tara and Michael Morrill, and Ben and Katie Wire. Steve Weeks and Dan Zehr. Kim Hoare, Callista and Geoff Isabelle, Ann, Daniel, Lewis, and Molly Orr, John Rohrs and Andie Wigodsky.
Thank you for my books: Jhanteigh Kupihea, Rebecca Gyllenhaal, Nicole De Jackmo, Ivy Weir, Jane Morley, Christina Schillaci, Kelsey Hoffman, Brett Cohen, Andie Reid, and everyone else.
Thank you for teachers and parent figures: Jane Bidwell, Doree Jarboe, Bruce McDonald, and Janice Morgan. Jim and Nancy Hicks, and Joan and Grady Miller.
Thank you for colleagues: Bernie Arnason, Mark Fordice, Jeremy Graves, and Dave Nieuwstraten. Giacomo Calabria and Farshad Farahat.
Thank you for hope: Antwon Chavis, Nate Housel, and K. Thomas.
Thank you for memories, and rest in peace: David Bartlett and Omid Nooshin.
You don’t need to be a Shakespeare scholar to enjoy William Shakespeare’s Taming of the Clueless. But if you’ve come to this book with more knowledge about the 1990s than the 1590s, or more experience dancing at the bar than st
udying scansion with the Bard, this reader’s guide may help deepen your understanding of the language and structure of the book, all of which is inspired by Shakespeare’s work.
The Language
Let’s begin with the rhythm of Shakespeare’s language, which is used throughout William Shakespeare’s Taming of the Clueless, and which can be a difficult hurdle for new readers to jump. Shakespeare wrote his plays in a specific syllabic pattern known as iambic pentameter. An iamb is a unit of meter, sometimes called a foot, consisting of two syllables; the first is unstressed, or soft, and the second is stressed, or emphasized. An iamb sounds like “da-DUM,” as beyond (“be-YOND”), across (“a-CROSS”), and Boleyn (“bo-LEYN”). Pentameter is a line of vers containing five feet. So iambic pentameter consists of five iambs, or ten syllables alternating in emphasis. A famous example of this meter, with the stressed half of each iamb in bold, is:
I’d rather be a hammer than a nail.
However, as much as we associate Shakespeare with iambic pentameter, he broke the rule almost as often as he observed it. The most famous Shakespearean line all has eleven syllables, not ten: “To be or not to be, that is the question.” That last -ion is known as a weak ending, or an unstressed syllable. Shakespeare often used weak endings, added two unstressed syllables where there should be one, and left out syllables entirely.
Let’s see iambic pentameter in action with this speech from Act V, scene 1 (see this page).
MEL
Unless thou hast into a vulture turn’d—
Which paceth to and fro and back and forth
Until a living animal hath turn’d
To carrion that sates the appetite—
Thou shouldst not tut about like one who waits.
Hast thou some matter burning in thy heart
That causeth thee to fret and sigh and groan?
Why dost thou dance athwart my office door
As if thou had some issue to discuss
Yet wert afraid to bring the matter forth?
Mel’s speech follows the rules of iambic pentameter. I hear the rhythm most clearly in line 41: “That causeth thee to fret and sigh and groan?”
If you read this speech aloud, you may notice that the dialogue sounds unnatural if spoken according to how the individual lines are broken. Rather, punctuation should guide how lines of iambic pentameter are spoken, as if the speech were written as prose. Consider lines 35–39: “Unless thou hast into a vulture turn’d— / Which paceth to and fro and back and forth / Until a living animal hath turn’d / To carrion that sates the appetite— / Thou shouldst not tut about like one who waits.” This single sentence is split across five lines. When read aloud, each line that ends with no punctuation should roll into the next line.