Editor’s note: The 6th through 12th graders of the Robinson Shakespeare Company, part of Notre Dame’s Robinson Community Learning Center, have been invited to perform Cymbeline this summer in Stratford-upon-Avon and present a workshop at Shakespeare’s Globe in London. Notre Dame Magazine reports on their journey here.
Forest Wallace, as Cloten, gives Shakespeare's verse a hip-hop update to woo the king's daughter Imogen. Cloten dismisses the music his attending lords play, then asks them to give him a beat. Listen to Forest's first attempt during an early rehearsal:
Hark, hark! the lark at heaven’s gate sings,
And Phoebus ‘gins arise,
His steeds to water at those springs
On chaliced flowers that lies;
And winking Mary-buds begin
To open their golden eyes:
With everything that pretty is,
My lady sweet, arise, arise
My lady sweet, arise.
Jason Kelly is an associate editor of this magazine.