There's really no excuse for this … I just wanted to write something with Ten, Rose and Shakespeare. Just because I can.
"Knock, knock."
Rose looked up to see the Doctor's cheerful face poking around her bedroom door. He rapped gently on the door and grinned.
"Up to anything?"
"Why do you ask?" Rose replied, returning the infectious grin.
"Just wondered," he said, wandering in nonchalantly. He shoved his hands in his trouser pockets and looked around, inspecting the various posters and photographs that adorned Rose's bedroom walls. "Thought you might want to go and save a world or two before bedtime."
"Are there any that need saving?"
"Not as such, no." He grinned again and waved his hand dismissively. "Minor detail." Rose giggled.
"Thanks for the offer, but I'll have to decline," Rose sighed, settling herself further into her bedcovers. She looked back down at the behemoth of a book on her lap and tried to read again.
"What could possibly be more interesting than saving the lives of several million aliens?" the Doctor asked in a mock-affronted voice. Rose shot him a reproachful glance before returning to her book.
"I'm reading."
"Oh. Whatcha reading?"
"Shakespeare."
"Oh."
As Rose frowned down at the tiny writing, she heard the Doctor cross the room and settle himself on the end of her bed.
"Which play?"
"Romeo And Juliet," she said, not looking up. "I'm on Act Two." She sighed and sat up, arching her back and rolling her neck to stretch it before pouting slightly. "I don't get it."
"What d'you mean?"
"I mean, I don't get it. Why does he have to write so weirdly?"
"Well, if you don't understand it, why are you reading it?"
"Cause I watched the film again the other day and it reminded me of school, so I wanted to see if I remembered any of what I'd learned," she explained, putting a scrap of paper in her page and closing the book. "I was gonna do English Lit for A Level until the Jimmy Stone fiasco put an end to that."
"I'm impressed," the Doctor said, sounding it. "Wouldn't have put you down for a girl who appreciates her literature."
"I appreciate Leonardo Di Caprio in a swimming pool," she retorted, her eyes flashing mischievously. "My entire class had such a crush on him when we watched that film. We did Romeo And Juliet for GCSE, see, and our teacher thought we'd understand it better if we watched the film." She sighed and shoved the book off her lap with a disgruntled huff. "Still don't get it, though."
The Doctor smiled gently. He had to admire her perseverance – she had freely admitted to not understanding the finer points of Shakespearean verse and yet she continued to read it. He decided he would never truly understand humans, and then decided that that was what he liked most about them. Apart from the restorative powers of their tea, of course.
"Which bit don't you understand?" he asked her, pulling his legs up onto the bed and crossing his legs. Rose reached over for the copy of the complete works of Shakespeare, opened it at the page she had marked and passed it (with some difficulty – it was incredibly heavy) over to the Doctor.
"That bit there, the bit where Romeo's just about to go, after the balcony scene." She rubbed her neck and crawled out from underneath her duvet so that she could read over the Doctor's shoulder as he read the offending couplet out loud.
"'Love goes toward love as schoolboys from their books,
But love from love, toward school with heavy looks.'"
The Doctor looked up at Rose, who was frowning intently at the page, her head tilted slightly to one side. She was clearly concentrating very hard. He smiled at her as she gave a small sigh and looked expectantly up at him.
"I don't get it."
"Well," he began, pointing down at the line in question, "Shakespeare was basically trying to tell the audience how much Romeo is in love with Juliet. 'Love goes towards love' – that's two lovers, like Romeo and Juliet, going towards each other willingly and eagerly because they're so much in love."
"Aww," cooed Rose. "That's sweet."
"'As schoolboys from their books'", he continued, suppressing a chuckle, "well … speaks for itself. The schoolboys hate school so much that they'll go away from their textbooks with just as much willingness and eagerness as the two lovers go towards each other."
"Ohh …" said Rose, comprehension slowly dawning.
"And 'love from love' is as painful for the two lovers –"
"As the schoolboys going 'toward school with heavy looks'!" Rose said, smiling widely. The Doctor grinned happily up at her.
"That's my girl!" he laughed, giving her a high five.
"But that's easy!" Rose said. "Why couldn't my teacher have explained that to us?"
"Aren't I the clever clogs?" he said cheekily, handing the book back to Rose. She poked him good-naturedly in the leg and put the book on her bedside table. "Anything else you don't get?"
"A bit," Rose replied, retrieving a piece of paper with some hasty scribbles on them. "I couldn't remember all the plays, but I made a note of some of the lines that I didn't get." She handed it over to him. "Or ones that I liked," she added, blushing slightly. The Doctor rolled his eyes as he accepted the list and cast an eye over it.
"'We should be woo'd, and were not made to woo'," he read. He smiled approvingly at Rose. "A Midsummer Night's Dream. Good play, that one. Went to the opening night. It went down a storm."
"I put that cause I don't know what a 'woo' is," Rose admitted.
"Wooing was basically an old-fashioned term for dating," said the Doctor matter-of-factly but not condescendingly. "Back in the day, it was the men who did all the chasing while the women just sat there and looked pretty. Y'know, courting and that."
"Oh, I see." Rose considered this. "So … in Shakespeare's time, the men did all the work? Women didn't have to do any chasing?"
"Well, occasionally they did, but it was considered terribly taboo."
"Wouldn't mind a bit of that," Rose commented, grinning. "It'd be nice to have a fuss made over me."
"I'll make sure I give Mickey the hint when we next stop off to see your mum," the Doctor said, winking at her. He glanced back down at the list.
"'There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy'." He paused for a moment. "That's what Charlie Boy said when we met him last."
"Charlie Boy?"
"Charles Dickens."
"Oh, yeah." She smiled apologetically. "Just thought that was a good quote. Kind of sums up the universe in general. I don't quite get this one, though," she added, pointing out another scribble. "'There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so'. That's just stupid."
"No, it's not," the Doctor said, trying his best not to be patronising. "It's perfectly true. Shakespeare was a clever bloke, he really knew his stuff. He was pretty big on philosophy."
"So … that's, like, a philosophical thing?"
"Yeah. Like, when the Gelth said they wanted to use dead bodies, you said 'no' because you thought it was bad."
Rose thought for a moment, considering this. The Doctor had made a valid point, but it was a point she'd hoped he wouldn't bring up in conversation again. She hadn't been fond of his brash reasoning behind 'recycling' the bodies, as he'd put it, and had been offended when he reminded her about her organ donor card. She'd come to realise that, at the time, there wouldn't have been a difference between saving a human life and saving an alien life – her own humanity had simply momentarily blinded her. Rose thought about reminding him about the Harriet Jones situation at Christmas, but she didn't think he'd appreciate her pointing out his own flawed logic, and instead contended herself with the proud knowledge that she now understood Shakespeare.
Rose tilted her head slightly to one side again, rubbing her sore neck, and studied the Doctor. He was reading the scribbles of Shakespearean quotes as intently as he would be studying a book about aliens. She smiled a little to herself. His bottom lip stuck out when he concentrated. She wondered if he was aware of it.
"Did you know you bite your tongue when you concentrate?" the Doctor suddenly piped up, still staring at the piece of paper. Not for the first time, Rose wondered if he could read her mind.
"Do I?" she said, slightly surprised. He nodded and looked up at her, his eyes twinkling.
"Well, you stick your bottom lip out when you concentrate," she replied. He looked mortified.
"Really?" he said, frowning. Belatedly, he sucked his lower lip in nervously as Rose giggled.
"Yup." She giggled a bit more as the Doctor huffed and handed her back the piece of paper. She put it back on her bedside table and flopped herself down onto her pillows. She closed her eyes, realising how tired she was. Understanding Shakespeare, she decided, really took it out of her.
"Thanks," she said sleepily, opening one eye to look at the Doctor. "For helping me understand it." He smiled down at her.
"No worries," he said. "Glad I could be of service."
"Night," she mumbled, nudging him with her foot.
"Night," he said, getting off her bed as quietly and lightly as he possibly could, trying not to disturb her.
"D'you know what?"
"What?"
"We should be woo'd," she mumbled, as she drifted slowly off to sleep, "and were not made to woo."
"I'll bear that in mind," the Doctor said quietly, smiling at Rose gently as he shut her bedroom door behind him.