When I was little I liked to look at the ads in the back of my mother’s magazines. She would get the usual ones, like Vogue and Vanity Fair, but she was an art director, so she also received magazines advertising plays, art shows, and exhibits. It was when looking through those pages that I found a flyer advertising a new Shakespeare exhibit at the museum downtown. There, in large bold letters were the words “All the World’s a Stage.” I liked it: World’s a Stage. Now granted, those aren’t the small, three words that usually change a person’s life, but they changed mine. I immediately went to write the quote on the portion of my bedroom wall hidden by my mattress next to such gems as “Jerk” and “Peccadillo” and the initials of my first crush trapped within a crudely drawn heart. I would take my dad’s old camping flashlight and shine it at my wall when everyone was asleep and repeat the words quietly to myself. I had no idea what many of them meant, only that they had caught my interest and I liked the way they sounded. Now I had my first quote on the wall, and after repeating it 10 times, I fell asleep and forgot about it. I didn’t remember until weeks later when I lay awake for another midnight reading session. “World’s a Stage” glared back at me in bright red marker. From then on, I began to repeat it in my head while going about my life, and began to write down the conversations and arguments I would overhear at home. 

Then one day, I sat my older brother and our parents down and proceeded to put on a play, or what I called, “Shakespeare.” Imagine the shock on my parents’ faces when what they thought would be a child’s version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream or Romeo and Juliet became a half hour performance of every single argument my parents had had that week, along with a few between myself and my brother. You see, as I interpreted it, if the world was a stage then I could perform my world on a stage. I even passed out a program after I
introduced my little one--person show with me playing the roles of Mommy and Daddy and my brother, Jakey. It had acts with titles such as “Who is Texting You,” “Mom Said You Can’t Do That,” “Stop or I’m Leaving,” “You Deal With Your Son” and the final act titled “F--- off!” I was very pleased with myself, and finished my performance with a flourish and a bow, expecting cheers from my humble crowd. Instead, they sat on the sofa dumbfounded, my parents looking at me in shock while my brother’s eyes darted between the program, our parents, and me. Finally, my mom raised a timid hand to break the cold, dead, silence and asked me a question.

“How, honey, is this Shakespeare exactly?”

I responded with a grin. “Well, Mommy, all the world’s a stage!”

My parents filed for divorce two weeks later.

I wonder sometimes if my play caused it. I mean, I know it wasn’t because of me, but maybe it was the final straw, the final nail in the coffin of their relationship. I think about it a lot actually.