Proverbs, Shakespeare, and an Education of Connections

I was feeling disappointed toward the end of our school year, when I realized my grand plans for Shakespeare would not be realized. We would not read Henry V. We would not even read As You Like It. Instead, we would barely finish memorizing the passages from Henry IV, Part I from How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare.

First Son surprised me in the last weeks of school, though. We were reading through some passages of conversation between Falstaff and Prince Hal quoted in How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare where Prince Hal says:

Thou didst well, for wisdom cries out in the streets and no man regards it.

Immediately, First Son announced, "That's in Proverbs."

And we all learned on the following page:

And here we have another one of those remarkable epigrams that Shakespeare drops into the dialogue like an extra piece of candy that we didn't expect. It is an allusion to Proverbs, 1:20:

Wisdom cries out in the streets and no man regards it.

"How did you recognize that?" I asked First Son.

"Oh, I just remembered it."

Somewhere, at some time, in our years of reading Scripture or in the hours he's spent in classes or at adoration in our parish, that bit of Proverbs nestled in his mind, ready to be sparked by a bit of Shakespeare.

We will begin next year with As You Like It and hopefully make it through that play and Henry V, but if we don't, I will console myself that my children are storing up what we do read somewhere in their hearts and minds. Perhaps someday, years from now, they will be reading or listening or watching and will recognize an allusion to Shakespeare. Perhaps they may even remember fondly the dramatic scenes re-enacted by such illustrious action figures as Darth Vader in the role of Macbeth.