William
Shakespeare’s 5th Grade Progress Report
by Bob Iozzia
Progress
Report for:
Student: William Shakespeare
School: Stratford Elementary
Grade: 5th
Teacher: K. Lear
Teacher’s Comments
Marking Period 1: Bill’s final year
in elementary school has gotten off to a rocky
start, especially when compared to elder cousin
Juliet’s standing at the same point in her
school career. He displays little interest in his
studies, except for Ribald Tales,
in which he excels—he appears to take
unusual delight in regaling his classmates with
bawdy stories, where his potty-mouth is best
suited. Regarding Vocabulary (and
related subjects Penmanship and Spelling),
half the time, I have no idea what he is saying;
I think he has made up his own language as a
larkish prank. In Driver’s
Education, my continued attempts to have
him drive on the right side of the road have
fallen upon stubborn ears. In fact, the cheeky
lad had the audacity to boast, “Someday, my
good fellow, all of England will follow my lead
and drive on the left side of the road. I will be
famous for this. Mark my words." When I
rebuked him for being insolent, this human
tempest snarled, “Who died and made you King?”
Marking Period 2: Not much change from the
previous marking period, except that the second
term seems to have unfolded as an even greater
comedy of errors. He continues to employ a made-up
language, which negatively impacts his writing.
At this rate, his assured place in society will
be as an employee of a fast-food mutton shoppe,
except that the kitchen serfs will not understand
his orders. Of course, he may not live long
enough to suffer this fate if he continues to
drive on the wrong (left) side of the road. He
does seem to have some sway with his classmates,
however, as several of them are now also driving
on the wrong side. I hope these violent delights
will not have violent ends.
Marking Period 3: BILL IS A VERY
EXASPERATING YOUNG LAD!!! I still don’t know
what the devil he’s talking about in both
his written and oral work. I’m afraid he has
no aptitude for drama, his poetry is confusingly
disjointed from measure to measure, and his
comedies fall as short of their mark as a dwarf,
married to a giant woman, on his wedding night. I
also have caught him copying from one of his
neighbors, a foreign exchange student from
Canterbury named Marlowe. Please impress upon him
that, as of last year, plagiarism is no longer
acceptable in polite literary circles. He has one
remaining marking period in elementary school.
With God’s grace and my patience, he will
see the error of his ways and reform. If not, I
fear that life in middle school and beyond will
either be much ado about nothing or he will come
to open the purple testament of bleeding war. One
bright note: all of his classmates and I are
driving on the left side of the road now …
and it is liberating!! I’ve never felt more
alive. I just pray I don’t die a muddy death
in the process.
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