While playing "real world" when they were toddlers, my youngest daughter and granddaughter understood perfectly when one asked for cookies, and the other responded, "Real cookies, or real, real cookies?" If the request was for real cookies, the girls would find flat rocks of pieces of bark and put them on an imaginary plate for the other to eat. Real, real cookies were chocolate chip! I loved watching them move between worlds so smoothly and assuredly. I think observing such clarity helped me in comprehending my own real, real world.
When I was in grad school, my Shakespeare professor told me "If Shakespeare were living today, he would write for soap operas and reality television." I felt like I had been kicked in the stomach and tears welled up in my eyes. Didn't Will write because he was inspired? Didn't we love his words because they were not quite sacred, but certainly as close as you can get? Later in the semester he informed me that most of the great English poets wrote for money! Zounds! and 'sblood! Doc shattered my idealism, and made me consider the more practical side of the literary arts.
What I thought to be real about Shakespeare was mostly mythic and untouchable; what I came to understand was that the the real, real Shakespeare connected to the common people as much as the elites. Will understood that his audiences often knew the story as well as he did, and they would scowl together when they witnessed a scoundrel manipulating innocence, or shake their heads in understanding unison at a young orphaned teenager's vascillations. The emotions and the life events that the characters portrayed were just as real, in the real world, and the audience knew it and loved it!
When I started hearing the former governor of Alaska talk about real Americans a couple of years back, I wondered what she meant? Did she mean those who pretend to be something, but in they weren't? It bothered me because, unlike the little ones in my family, I'm not quite sure about her comprehension skills regarding the differences between the real and the real, real world. In the last few days, the former mayor of a small Alaskan town has started talking again and the media are all confused. They wonder if she's a scoundrel or just vascillating! Yet, like Shakespeare's audience, real, real Americans are shaking their heads and scowling in unison because they know the story.