Bob Smith: A Memoir: Hamlet's Dresser

By STEPHANIE MISKELL

A memoir is an account of recollections of one's life and observations. Unlike an autobiography or biography, it does not seek to reconstruct an entire life, but only to shine a light on the aspects of that life a writer chooses to collect again and observe.

New York Shakespeare director, teacher and scholar Bob Smith has chosen in his memoir to illuminate three central forces that shaped his life.

These are his sister's severe disability and its profound effect on his family and childhood, his abiding passion for Shakespeare, and the insights he has gained in his relationships with the elderly people he teaches.

The book segues continually between the present (the writer in his late 50s, living alone, reading Shakespeare with senior citizens in New York community centres) and the past.

Smith grew up in the conformist 1950s in Connecticut. His home life revolved around caring for his younger sister Carolyn, brain damaged at birth.

From an early age he shared the work of cleaning, dressing, feeding and protecting her, while at the same time coping with the burden of his parents' anguish and grief. His mother was often near to despair, his father increasingly distant.

The adult Smith remembers his younger self's mix of ignorance, fear, knowledge, sorrow and guilt with a still palpable ache. As a 7-year-old, he prayed for the blood clot to melt and his missing, much-loved sister to be restored (echoes of Twelfth Night).

The child found no comfort in the leaden silence of his home, or at school where he struggled to fit in, or by way of his grandmother's guilt-driven Catholicism.

Instead he discovered solace in the art and wisdom of a writer 400 years dead. One day at the age of 10 in his local library, he read the words that started him on his remarkable journey: "In sooth, I know not why I am so sad" (Antonio in the opening lines of Merchant of Venice).

In a way the whole book is in response to that implied question. The answer is both simple (Carolyn) and complex (the mystery of the human condition which combines joy with suffering, connection with separation).

The young Smith went on to immerse himself in the works of Shakespeare.

As a 17-year-old he started his career as a backstage dresser in the local Stratford theatre.

Forty years later his knowledge, empathy and awe for the works are undiminished and truly impressive.

The book's narrative is rewarding enough - the many vignettes of the lives of the brilliant old people are a highlight - but the true gift of Hamlet's Dresser lies in the frequent Shakespearean extracts Smith offers to illuminate some truth or other.

If you already value Shakespeare, read and treat yourself to some new or familiar insight. If you have always wondered what all the fuss is about, read and discover the pleasure.

Smith will engage you meaningfully with the texts and reveal the bard's insights into such matters as love, mortality, lost innocence, memory, forgiveness. And it won't feel like an English lesson.

Simon and Schuster

$34.95

* Stephanie Miskell teaches English at Northcote College.