Street Theatre
Back when I was a callow youth,
I was walking in through the entrance of what was then the Broadway store in the Northridge Mall. My father was once again arguing the points for his position that the real reason we went to India was to provide the locals with various leather bound copies of all Shakespeare’s plays, typeset in Hindi, or Hindustani I don’t remember which. Missing the point that my father spoke neither of these languages, and thus was running lino-type in a foreign tongue, I said, “You mean you typeset Shakespeare?”
My father stopped in the middle of the perfume section, women’s swimsuits to the left, women’s evening wear to the right, placed his left hand over his heart, raised his right hand above his head, and began to declaim in Stentorian tone,
“Once more into the breach dear friend, once more into the breach, Or close up these walls with our immortal English dead. In peace there’s nothing, so becomes the man. Then give the eye a terrible aspect, and the face the visage of the tiger, And cover up fair nature with hard favored rage.”
The store went very quiet. Everyone stopped shopping. My father turned to a frightened sales girl, leaned towards her and said, “What’s the matter with your, GIRL! Do you not recognize the Bard? Have you no culture?”
Then mum asked us to leave and wait for her in the car.
Although the quote is wrong, that’s now the way I always remember it.
On a related note, I once saw Orson Welles on a talk show. He said that in order to be treated as if you are extremely cultured you don’t have to actually quote Shakespeare, just make it sound like Shakespeare.